Interview with the Pope's Astronomer

BBC Radio Ulster - Everyday Ethics, How Do We Measure Success?

Interview with Brother Guy J. Consolmagno:

‘He's the director of the Vatican Observatory, and he has spent most of his life studying galaxies far far away. And if he isn't studying objects from space, he's probably explaining how science and religion should not be competing ideologies. More about that in a moment, but he began by describing what it was like to work for one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world.’

‘Well it's an interesting place to work as an astronomer. When I got here, my instructions were do good science. So unlike the days that I was living off in NASA grant before I became a Jesuit, we have the freedom to pursue whatever astronomy is interesting to us. And that means we've got a dozen astronomers who's doing a dozen different projects with collaborators from around the world. But we're not limited to what can be funded in a three year cycle or you know, a six year, 10 year thing. It means that the kind of science we do complements the science of the people that we do. We do surveys, we will take 20 years to measure the physical properties of meteorites, that sort of thing. And it gives us the freedom to look into places that other scientists don't get to look into’

‘Many people might wonder, why does the Vatican need to do this? Why?’

‘Well, you could ask really the bigger question, why does anybody need to do astronomy? I had that crisis when I was much younger when I was about 30. And thought, you know, why am I doing astronomy when people are starving in the world? I quit astronomy at that point. I went off to the Peace Corps and worked in Kenya for two years. And the Africans reminded me that they wanted to know about astronomy, too. It's human to have this hunger about who are we, what is the world all about, what are the things in the sky, what is this conversation that human beings have been having about the universe and cosmology for the last 3000 years? It's what makes us more than just well fed cows. In particular, the Vatican does it because it makes us look good compared to the mistake they made with Galileo 400 years ago... [Pope Francis has] got a background in chemistry. And the director before me was an Argentinian Jesuit. They knew each other before he was Pope. Pope Francis was the one who told my predecessor to continue on in his studies in astronomy, that it was useful to have both the scientists and the people who work with the poor. Sometimes you can do both.’

‘Do you get much pushback? Do you receive much challenge to the Vatican pursuing science?’

‘Surprisingly no. The people in the field have known us for 125 years, we've been partaking in International Science. And as I say, because we don't have to compete with them for money, we're welcome on the field of science. The funny thing that happened to me when I became a Jesuit, I'd met a scientist had been in astronomy 15 years at that point. And so many of my friends and colleagues said, You're a Jesuit? You don't, like, you go to church? Couldn't tell. And then they started telling me about the churches they went to. And I discovered the religious background of so many people in my field who I would never have thought were science, scientists and religious. It's a kind of thing that we don't talk about, usually until we have the permission to and when I have my collar, whether I'm wearing it or not, I give people permission to ask the bigger questions, whether it's, you know, what is this all about? Or the simpler ones of you know, I've got an issue with my church. I've got an issue with my marriage. What do I do? Who can I talk to? That happens all the time.’

‘Why do you think there is that reluctance to talk about it?’

‘Well, there is this myth that goes back to the end of the 19th century, that somehow science was going to replace religion. And I think the 20th century proved that one wrong. First of all, that science doesn't seem to be so cut and dried as it was before we knew about quantum physics and relativity. And the second that we've learned that just having good technology doesn't mean you have good ethics, you know, like, Nazi Germany had great technology. But so as a result, I think people now are more open to the idea of science and religion coexisting. Yeah, we're both interested in learning truths. And we both know that we have this urge to know the truth, and we need tools to know the truth and we can help each other out that way. But there's still this suspicion, we grew up with the idea that all it had to be one or the other. You see the pop scientists on TV saying, well, I'm I must be a scientist because I don't believe in God. And it's surprised to discover that those [op scientists on TV are probably the minority.’

‘So are you a creationist or an evolutionist?’

‘I'm a Catholic. Which means that I recognize ,the current theories of evolution are as good as a theory we've got at the moment to explain how we went from inanimate atoms to the multiplicity of life we see on Earth. But in 1000 years, we may not even be asking those questions. You know, evolution isn't the final answer. And yet I'm also with my Catholic background, well aware of what St Augustine said and what St. Thomas Aquinas said, that anyone who wants to treat the scripture as if it was a science book is misunderstanding scripture and actually heaping abuse on it. That's not my term. That's the term of St Augustine writing about the year 400’