Climate of change: The Catholic Church’s dance with science

From Galileo to genetics, the Roman Catholic Church has danced with science, sometimes in a high-tension tango but more often in a supportive waltz. Pope Francis is about to introduce a new twist: global warming.

Jun 04, 2015

By Seth Borenstein
From Galileo to genetics, the Roman Catholic Church has danced with science, sometimes in a high-tension tango but more often in a supportive waltz. Pope Francis is about to introduce a new twist: global warming.

The field of genetics was started by a Catholic cleric, Gregor Mendel. Entire aspects of astronomy, including the genesis of the Big Bang theory, began with members of the Catholic clergy. While some religions reject evolution, Catholicism has said for 65 years that evolution fits with the story of creation.

But when lay people think of the Church and science, one thing usually comes to mind: The prosecution of Galileo Galilei for heresy because he insisted that the Earth circled the sun and not the other way around.

The Catholic Church “has got an uneven and not always congenial relationship with science,” said science historian John Heilbron, who wrote a biography of Galileo. But after ticking off some of the advances in science that the Church sponsored, the retired University of California Berkeley professor emeritus added, “probably on balance, the Catholic Church’s exchange with what we call science is pretty good.” The Catholic Church teaches that science and faith are not contradictory and even work well together. After lukewarm opposition to the theory of evolution in the late 19th century, the Church has embraced that field of science that other faiths do not. There are remaining clashes about the ethics of scientific and medical practices — such as abortion and using stem cells from embryos — but that’s more about morality than the reality of science.

“The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather, requires it,” Pope Francis said last October, echoing comments made by his predecessors. “The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.”

With that complicated history looming, Pope Francis, once a chemist, will soon issue an authoritative Church document laying out the moral justification for fighting global warming, especially for the world’s poorest billions.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Scipps Institution of Oceanography climate scientist, briefed the Pope on climate change. He said scientists felt they were failing in getting the world to understand the moral hazard that man-made warming presents. Now, he said, scientists who don’t often turn to religion are looking forward to the Pope’s statement.

“Science and religion don’t mix but environment is an exception, where science and religion say the same thing,” Ramanathan said. “I think we have found a common ground.”

The Vatican even has a science academy.

“Our job, in principle, is to follow scientific developments closely and then inform the Vatican about new developments,” said the academy’s president, Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist Werner Arber. He is a Protestant; academy members include non-Catholics, like Ramanathan, and even atheist Stephen Hawking.

For Guy Consolmagno, astronomer and Jesuit Brother, that’s no big deal: “If you believe in truth, you are worshipping the same God as I am.”

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