October 11, 2012, marked the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and heralded the Year of Faith declared by Pope Benedict XVI. It was an invitation for Catholics to renew their relationship with Christ and the Church.
Sadly, the Catholic faith is being seriously eroded in the Western world and the reasons are many and complex. No doubt, the disloyalty and serious failings of Catholics at all levels in the Church has contributed to this sad state of affairs.
However, one must also mention the sustained and orchestrated campaign by an increasingly secular mindset that chooses to portray the Church and its adherents in the worst possible light.
There is good reason for this animosity. The Church is an uncomfortable voice which deplores the erosion of the ethical framework that underpinned Christian civilisation.
Its opposition to uncontrolled experimentation in genetics, to contraception, divorce, gay marriage, euthanasia and abortion goes against the intense and vigorous secular agenda that dominates the media today. For many, the Church is on the wrong side of history as society moves on to a more liberated outlook on life.
The Church has not only been dismissed as intrinsically corrupt but as being superstitious, against progress, and above all, inimical to reason and scientific advancement. Society is continually being presented with a totally biased picture of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and of course, the persecution of Galileo.
But close examination of the facts and history reveal a rather different picture. It is really amazing, or rather extremely disappointing, that the sustained contribution of Christianity and the Catholic Church to the advances of science in every field has been airbrushed out of the picture of human development.
The Church has always promoted reason and science, insisting that although Faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between Faith and reason.
The much maligned Catholic Middle Ages was instrumental in setting the groundwork for the development of science as we know it today. Although the pursuit of scientific knowledge is not a solely Christian endeavour, the Church has played an instrumental role.
The contribution of Christianity and the Church to the advances of science has been airbrushed out of the picture of human development
The implication that Christianity suppressed and undermined the ancient cultures of philosophical enquiry and scientific discovery is utter nonsense. When the barbarian invasions destroyed the Roman world, it was the monks who preserved its cultural treasures and developed agriculture and engineering on monastery lands and established a tradition of charity that transformed Europe.
A Church that is often accused as an impediment to learning, science and beauty can be shown to be a key promoter of higher education, scientific investigation and a patron of the arts and architecture. For example, the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen was one of the most distinguished of medieval Catholic women scientists, Ruder Boskovic, SJ, was a pioneer of atomic theory, Athanasius Kircher, SJ, started the science of bacteriology, and the Augustinian friar, Gregor Mendel, is the father of genetics.
The Church censored Galileo because his ideas promoting the Copernican theory could not be confirmed with the scientific knowledge of the time. His views were accepted as a theory and he was allowed to pursue his investigations so long as he did not insist it was an absolute fact before it could be proven.
Sadly, Galileo was confrontational and the Church behaved in a heavy-handed manner in his regard for which it eventually apologised. But this complex episode should not be manipulated to refute the contribution of the Church before, during and after Galileo in the pursuit of scientific investigation and discovery till the present day. If anything, the repeated referral to Galileo betrays anti-Catholic animosity to discredit the Church and Catholicism.
The Church’s achievements in the field of science are phenomenal and substantial and helped to make the scientific revolution possible by providing the framework possible by encouraging the free interchange of ideas, debate and discussion fostered in the university system it set up in the Middle Ages and which gave us our civilisation.
One can view an excellent talk on this topic by physicist and priest Fr Andrew Pinsent at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p48tX4UYOg.
Catholics who feel their faith threatened on this issue will feel enlightened and heartened by the demolition of the insidious myth that our faith opposes scientific endeavour.
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