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So why does the pope need astronomers?
by Jared Field of The Michigan Catholic
Published October 16, 2009
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Jared Field | The Michigan Catholic
"Understanding the universe is one of the ways you get to understand the creator," said Bro. Guy Consolmagno, SJ, a Vatican astronomer. |
Detroit - The fortunate few in an audience of more than 100 who could read Latin knew the answer right away.
Bro. Guy Consolmagno, SJ, a Detroit native, spoke at the packed planetarium at the Detroit Science Center Monday night to answer a question less nuanced than most that settle in the mind of a starry-eyed astronomer.
Why does the pope need an astronomer? Or, more correctly, why does he need a dozen astronomers?
On the domed ceiling of the planetarium was beamed a photo of a plaque found on the side of a telescope that sits above the papal palace in Castel Gandolfo - the pope's summer home - inscribed with these words: Deum Creatorem Venite Adoremus.
"Come let us adore God the Creator," he translated. "That's the answer to the question.
"Christianity, along with Islam and Judaism, believe in a universe ... that was created deliberately by God. This gives us the excuse to want to study. Understanding the universe is one of the ways you get to understand the creator."
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Jared Field | The Michigan Catholic
Bro. Consolmagno attended University of Detroit Jesuit High School, has earned several advanced degrees in planetary sciences and works at the Vatican observatories in Rome and in Arizona. |
Bro. Consolmagno grew up in Detroit, attended University of Detroit Jesuit High School before earning advanced degrees in planetary sciences at MIT in Boston and the University of Arizona.
He entered the Jesuit order in 1989 and was assigned to the Vatican as an astronomer and curator of the Vatican Meteorite Collection.
When he's not in Rome or at the Vatican observatory in the Arizona high country scoping the skies, Bro. Consolmagno speaks out on the mutually beneficial relationship between faith and science - that God presents challenges to science, and not the other way around.
"Don't use God to explain the things that I don't happen to understand right now, because as soon as I do understand them then suddenly I've squeezed God out of the gaps and I don't believe God anymore," he said. "One's belief or non-belief of God has nothing to do with one's science. There are plenty of scientists who believe and plenty who don't."
John Knekleian, an amateur astronomer from Lincoln Park, was one member of the choir Bro. Consolmagno preached to.
"I believe that the heavens declare God's handiwork," he said. "To me, I'm looking at creation and the wonders of what God created.
"These things don't challenge my faith ... I mean, if the universe really is this big, to me it just means that God is bigger. He created it."
In response to one listener's petition, Bro. Consolmagno breached a subject that often comes up during his presentation: How should we respond to Christians who read the Bible as if it were a science text?
"My argument for those people is not a scientific argument, but a theological argument," he said. "The God that they're looking at to me is much too narrow a God, a much too easy God; a God who doesn't have the grandeur of having been around 14 billion years and eternal above and beyond those 14 billion years. A God who has to deliberately put his thumbprint to make the human eye work is a God who's a really lousy engineer.
"I believe in a God who's an infinitely elegant engineer. One who is able to set up the laws of the universe that the possibility of you and me comes out."
The meat of Bro. Consolmagno's presentation was a history lesson on the evolution of astronomy, and how so much of what we know about the universe was first discovered by curious Christians. Until the 19th century, the bulk of the science in the world was being done by the clergy, he said. They had the time and the resources to do the research. They were men not unlike Bro. Consolmagno, picking apart perfection with precision and finding God in the truth of His creation.
The science of the skies is his life's purpose, and he's over the moon for it.
"I'm going to wake up one of these days and find out that I really am a butterfly," he said. "I never could have planned what happened to me, and it was when I stopped planning and stopped trying to control it and let God have his fun with me, that's when great things started to happen."
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