How do you combine science and faith?

Hey Catholic Girls,

I have one little question which has been bothering me for a long time. I’m a catholic girl and I go to church quite often since I’m also an altar server there. But ever since we learned a lot about evolution in school, I have some struggles . I just can’t wrap my mind around creation and evolution. I believe in Christ and I also (as quirky as this always sounds) believe in the church, but I can’t deny the stuff I learned at school. My mother told me that for her the creation in Genesis is an allegory and has not to be taken literally.

What’s your take on that topic? I know the church has a model of “theistic evolution” but what’s your take on it? How do you combine these two elements that seem so contradictory?
Sincerely,
Tina

Dear Tina,

Evolution. Here’s one time when I don’t have to beat my head against the wall and come up with strategic ways to balance my conscience with teachings and cultural understandings.

It’s true the church takes a “theistic evolution” stance on Darwin’s theory. According to Blessed Pope John Paul II, “If the human body has its origin in living material which pre-exists it, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God”. In essence, evolution can explain why are bodies are the way they are but we have to look to God to understand our souls. In the same speech to the Pontificial Academy of Sciences Pope John Paul II goes on to say that “new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis,” however, “truth cannot contradict truth.” So long as there is an acknowledgment of God in the explanation of the creation of man and the universe then evolution and faith can go hand in hand. Also, I’ve heard in Sunday School and the faith sharing communities my parents hang around that the “big bang” theory is compatible with strict Catholic devoutness because the “bang” was God.

The Vatican today says that the six day creation model does not align with modern geology or other scientific thought, therefore it is unlikely that this model is true.  It is widely taught, just like your mom explained, that the story of Genesis is indeed allegorical. While, the creation of the world might not have gone down as written in Genesis  that doesn’t change the importance the story has in Catholic theology and doctrine. Allegorical yes but marriage, the sabbath, sin and the fallen state of the world (think hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters) are established.  Allegorical yes but still doctrine.  It is within this story, as Pope John Paul II points out, we learn “the truth about man,” that humanity is both male and female and that we have free agency (there’s more to it than that but that would be a whole other post).

If we look to the way human creation is explained in Genesis 2:7 it reads “God formed man from the clay of the earth and he breathed into his face the breath of life. And man became a living soul.” The non-literal approach to this text is that our formation out of clay may have taken millions of years until we were in God’s image. Even with that said some Catholics do believe in the six day creation model and the Vatican hasn’t said that we should or should not believe in a literal Genesis story.

As for science I think this is common knowledge but the Church hasn’t always been so down with it. Some 400 years ago during the Inquisition the Church had a little–shall we say incident? Galileo published materials asserting that the earth revolved around the sun (Pope Urban VII even asked him not to, personally) and that his findings did not contradict scripture. Galileo was excommunicated and imprisoned but today the Church has learned a thing or two about the intersection of science and religion. The director of the Vatican Secret Archives, Bishop Sergio Pagano, said in 2009 “The Galileo case teaches science not to presume to teach the Church on matters of faith and sacred Scripture and, at the same time, teaches the church to approach scientific problems with much humility and circumspection.” There are things science can explain and things Scripture can and we should be humble and thoughtful about everything in between.

Recently, in regards to the Mars landing the Director of the Vatican Observatory (which funnily enough was around before the Galileo ordeal) explained “we are not afraid of science, we are not afraid of new results, new discoveries. That’s the reason why the [pope] has an observatory. Whatever the truth might be, we are open to new results, once they are confirmed by the scientific community.”

And as my brother likes to point out The Vatican even says that there could be life on other planets and is open to the idea that God’s plan involves extraterrestrials too. A Vatican spokesperson said, “We cannot place limits on the creative freedom of God.”

As for my own opinion, I sincerely hope that we have a Heavenly Father who ordered the chaos and constructed a plan for us to return to him someday. I think science helps all of us understand the world, a world God created. Where it does get tricky for me is where we draw the line between nice allegorical tales and historical fact. The Vatican might be cool with us saying that Genesis is not to be taken literally but they would never say that about other parts of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. How does the Vatican make these kind of judgements? It is one of those things that I am not sure I will ever be able to fully reconcile. If I were you I would keep on altar serving (I was an altar server too!!), praying and reading everything you can on the topic, especially if it’s eating at you. There is nothing wrong with taking a literal Genesis approach, a theistic evolutionary approach or saying “I’ll leave this question for another day”. What the Church asks of us in regards to this matter is to be humble and thoughtful.

Readers, what is your take on Catholicism and Evolution? Is this one time the Vatican is spot on? How do you reconcile science and faith?

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I have a follow-up question about priests. Why no women?

Hi!

My wife is Catholic and is encouraging me to investigate the Church. You’ve written on why priests are unmarried but now a follow up question: Is there a scriptural reason why women cannot become priests? Is it because Jesus’ disciples were all men? Your reference to 1 Corinthians says a MAN should remain unmarried as a priest; by inference does that mean a woman cannot become a priest? Your recent inclusion of the article regarding American Sisters pretty much shows that the Vatican will not soon authorize women priests. Is it canon or dogma that it cannot happen? Thanks much for your interesting blog!

RH

Dear RH,

Where to begin!?! In just one simple paragraph, you’ve opened the lid on a two-thousand year old argument, one that seems to be an insistent thorn in the Church’s side, or more recently, a hydra that grows two more heads each time they lop one off.

The issue began in the first centuries after Christ, when the Gnostics and a few other sects began ordaining women. The Church was in its infancy, without an explicit policy on the matter, and so they established one. They decided that if Jesus had meant for women to be priests, he would have chosen some as Apostles. They labeled the practice of ordaining women a heresy, and it has remained that way in the eyes of the Church for two thousand years.

So the simple answer to your question is: yes, the Catholic Church refuses to ordain women as priests because, after a night praying to his Father in Heaven, Jesus chose the Twelve for his mission, and those Twelve were men (Luke 6:12). In the Catholic Church, this was the beginning of apostolic succession, the idea that those Twelve were the first bishops, through whom the message of Christ and the traditions of the Church have been handed from one bishop to the next in an unbroken line for two millennia.

Reading the official Church stances, there are very few references to the Bible to support the argument against women priests. There are a few places in the Pauline letters where Paul says women should not teach—I think in Timothy, and somewhere in First Corinthians—but these are not the main sources for the Catholic Church in establishing their argument for a male-only priesthood.

Instead, they cite Jesus’ actions, as well as the opinions of (often ultra-orthodox) Church fathers through the centuries, men like St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus of Rome, Epiphanius, and St. Augustine. They also cite the fact that Eastern Orthodox churches have refrained from allowing women to be priests. There are a few more nuanced, more philosophical elements to the argument (for example, priests are stand-ins for Jesus while celebrating the mass, Jesus was a man, ergo priests should be men so people can make the connection more easily), but it’s mostly about preserving the tradition begun by Christ.

To understand why that would matter to the Church, one must understand the role of tradition in the Church. Tradition is one of the two sacred and foundational pillars of the faith, the other being Holy Scripture. When I was young, I can remember my mother telling me that it is because of a commitment to tradition that the Catholic Church has been able to withstand the march of time. You don’t change just because times change; you stick to your traditions, especially if you believe that God instituted those traditions as his plan for the salvation of the world.

You ask whether the prescription against female priests is canon law or dogma, but neither of those two terms are used to describe it in the research that I have done. Instead, it is called “infallible doctrine,” a term that was only applied in 1995. It seems that the issue was quiet for a long time (centuries, multiple centuries). But over the course of the last 50 years—unsurprisingly coinciding with the women’s liberation movement—external pressures have forced the Catholic Church into a dialogue about the practice, and so they’ve issued several treatises to buttress themselves from these attacks. In these treatises, they have refined where the practice falls in Catholic teaching.

In 1976, the Vatican issued the Inter Insigniores, a declaration about why the Roman Catholic Church must continue excluding women from the priesthood. An apologetic in every way, the document traces and affirms the tradition of the male priesthood and rebuts several claims of those in favor of ordaining women. While Inter Insigniores acknowledges the rapid social change happening in the world and asserts that working for gender equality is right and just, it claims that the priesthood is not the place to do it since priesthood is a matter of divine law, above and beyond the sphere of human and social law.

That document must not have quelled the debate in the way that the Vatican had hoped, because in May of 1994, Pope John Paul II issued his Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. In it, he reasserts the arguments in the Inter Insigniores and goes on to “declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” Only a missive from God himself would make that possible, JP II seems to say, so don’t hold your breath.

But that didn’t seem to do the job either. So to put the nail in the coffin of the discussion, there was another statement from the Vatican in October of 1995, this time signed by Joseph Ratzinger, more commonly known now as Pope Benedict the XVI. In it, he declares JP II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis “infallible doctrine,” and therefore an immutable fact of Catholic life.

Given that progression, it seems that in the face of criticism, the Church tightened its grip on practice, and with the “infallible” label, it is much closer to dogma than canon law. The traditional line is that now Catholics should accept this teaching and desist arguing about the matter. As Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops when the “infallible” label was applied, said, “I ask you now prayerfully to allow the Holy Spirit to fill you with the wisdom and understanding that will enable you to accept it.” Stop fighting this fight, please, stop fighting this fight.

Of course, the modern world is not what it was in the early days of the church. Obeying authority simply because it is authority fell out of vogue decades ago, and this is evident in the number of people who defy the Church’s teachings on things like how often a Catholic must go to confession and more contemporary issues like birth control. Despite the fact that the Vatican would rather we all fell in line and stopped talking about it, the debate is still raging. Some groups are more radical, with rogue bishops ordaining women (before all are promptly excommunicated); other groups attempting to lobby from within the church to effect change. A simple google search will reveal dozens of websites with articles from prominent theologians on both sides of the issue, still hotly contesting whether Jesus chose men as part of the divine plan, or out of necessity in an era when women would not have been accepted as spiritual leaders.

Who knows where the issue will go from here. A 1995 article in the New York Times said that 61% of Catholics think women should be ordained. I’m not sure of who they polled or where, and I have no idea how that number has changed in the succeeding 17 years. But I do know that the church is by nature reactionary, and as with the married priests issue, I think it would be internal pressures (not enough priests, or less conservative priests infiltrating the highest ranks) rather than public opinion that would precipitate the change. And to be honest, I could foresee a split–a sort of Reform Catholicism–before I see the bishops and the cardinals and the popes sharing their access to power with women.

And I know you did not solicit my opinion on the matter, so forgive me, but I can’t help but share a few of my own thoughts on the matter. To be blunt, I find the Church’s stance untenable in light of its historical reality. Claiming that apostolic succession is an unbroken and holy vessel that carries the truth of Christ through the millennia clangs in the ears of anyone who has studied history–the papal schisms of the 12th century, anyone? or the Inquisition?–or is aware of the current sex abuse scandals. I also believe that it is problematic to follow tradition for sake of tradition; it may be stable to do so, but that does not make it just.

With all of this said, I hope you are able to explore the Church with your wife with an open mind and with the knowledge that a shared spiritual practice can be an incredibly strong bond. I have seen it in my own parents. And despite what I see as many and various flaws, the Catholic Church is a spiritual anchor in a difficult world, for me and another billion or so people around the world. As our beloved Mormon Girl has shown us with her characteristic honesty, any faith tradition has its demons, and our lot is to wrestle with those demons and prove that we can come out on top, as more loving, more compassionate, more enlightened souls.

All best,
Carmen, a Catholic Girl