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W W W. N WC AT H O L I C . O R G | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | VO L . 2 N O . 9
Lost in space?
Does the size of the universe
mean we don’t matter?
C AT H O L I C V O I C E S
The true meaning
of freedom
PAGE 10
A S K FAT H E R
Did Pope Francis
contradict church
teaching?
PAGE 12
F E AT U R E S T O R Y
DEL OBISPO
Helping homeless
veterans
La Iglesia está
siempre en crisis
PAGE 21
PÁGINA 26
COV E R STO RY
Lost in space?
Does the size of the universe
mean we don’t matter?
By Kevin Birnbaum
T
he night sky, in its vastness and beauty, has always had a way of getting to people — filling us
with awe, making us feel small, and prompting us
to question our place in the universe. Such reactions
are evident in the Book of Psalms, where the psalmist
says to God: “When I see your heavens, the work of
your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place
— What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son
of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4-5)
The discoveries of modern astronomy seem to heighten the sense of disorientation, revealing a cosmos
much older and larger than our minds can fathom.
As far as scientists can tell, the universe is 13.8 billion
years old and contains something like 100 billion galaxies and perhaps a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000) stars.
So what are we supposed to do with this information?
Most people seem to intuit that the mindboggling
magnitude of the cosmos must mean something —
but what?
Some see the immensity of the universe, and Earth’s
relative tininess, and conclude that we are utterly insignificant and that there is almost certainly no God.
As Stephen Hawking has been quoted as saying: “We
are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a
very average star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. So it is difficult to believe in a God that would care about us or even notice
our existence.” Rather, everything boils down to the
laws of physics, we are the products of mere chance,
and both the universe and human existence ultimately
have no meaning.
The English writer G.K. Chesterton amusingly derided
“this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man” in
his 1908 book Orthodoxy. “Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a
whale?” he wrote. “It is quite futile to argue that man
is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always
small compared to the nearest tree.”
16 Northwest Catholic / November 2014 / www.NWCatholic.org
Shutterstock
On the other hand, a Christian may look at the universe and see a reflection of God’s infinity and creativity. This is the approach of the psalmist: “The heavens
declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the
works of his hands.” (Psalm 19:2) It is also the approach
of Chris Suberlak, a Ph.D. student in astronomy at the
University of Washington — but it wasn’t always.
17
COV E R STO RY
JUST HOW BIG IS THE UNIVERSE?
Scientists say the universe may contain a septillion
(that’s a 1 followed by 24 zeros) stars — more stars
than there are grains of sand on Earth. And those
stars are really, really far apart.
At Lake Sacajawea Park in Longview, there’s a model
of our solar system — the sun and the planets that
orbit it — that shrinks everything down to about 1-to2.3 billion scale, so that the sun is 2 feet in diameter
and the Earth is less than a quarter of an inch wide —
about the same size as in the illustration at right. But
in the scale model, that tiny Earth is more than 200
feet from the sun, and you have to walk more than 1.6
miles to get from the sun to Pluto (which in 2006 was
“demoted” to dwarf planet status).
And don’t forget, the Milky Way is just one of 100
billion galaxies in the universe.
Shutterstock
Stephen Brashear
But that’s nothing: The next nearest star would be
11,000 miles away — in India. And even on such a
miniature scale, traveling from one end of our Milky
Way galaxy to the other would require the equivalent
of more than 10,000 trips around the world.
Our solar system — sizes and distances not even close to scale.
Chris Suberlak studies light that was emitted before the Earth formed.
‘Science wouldn’t make sense without God’
imply the existence of God.
“Science wouldn’t make any sense without God,” he said.
Suberlak has loved science since childhood, when his father
“It wouldn’t, very simply, because God made the universe
would bring home astronomy books and show him the stars
through binoculars. “I’ve always seemed to be a scientist,” he out of love. If he made it out of love, therefore he made it
ordered. … This order brings certainty that if I am looking
said. “I always was inspired by looking at the night sky.”
for some intrinsic laws of the universe, they should exist.
He was not, however, always a believer. The Catholicism
That’s a huge axiom that people assume, but if there is no
of his native Poland struck him as hollow, and although
God, why should they assume that? The universe doesn’t
he received the sacraments, by high school he considered
have to be ordered at all. It could be that in one part of the
himself an atheist.
universe the laws are completely different
In 2008, he moved to Great Britain to
than elsewhere.
study physics at Oxford University. To
“I’ve always seemed
“So the homogeneity of the natural laws
practice his English, he visited a Christian
of
physics is a huge assumption,” he said,
café, where he ended up engaged in debates
to be a scientist.
“and for me, only with God it makes sense
about faith. He argued with everything the
I always was inspired to assume that they are everywhere the
Christians said, but eventually some of their
same.”
arguments started to make sense.
by looking at the
“I ended up being asked this question: Do
Praising God by studying creation
you consider a universe which has matter and
night sky.”
Suberlak began attending an evangelical
is ruled by natural laws a better explanation
church, and throughout his studies at
to your life than a universe that is filled with
Oxford he also poured himself into studying the Christian
matter and natural laws and also a spiritual component?”
faith. After graduating with his master’s degree in 2012, he
The question got to the heart of Suberlak’s “existential
started a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences at Oxford, but he
crisis” over the apparent pointlessness of life in a Godless
was dissatisfied because he wasn’t doing what he loved.
universe, and he realized that an atheistic, materialistic
“I felt that the vocation that [God] called me to is
worldview couldn’t answer life’s inescapable questions:
astronomy
— to praise him by studying the beauty of his
“Why should you love? What does it mean to love? What
creation,” he said. He dropped out of Oxford in December,
does it mean to exist?”
moved back to Poland and started applying to Ph.D.
As Suberlak continued to debate and study, he came to
programs in astronomy.
believe that some of the foundational assumptions of science
While working in Warsaw in early 2013, he also felt
— that the universe is consistent and intelligible — actually
18 Northwest Catholic / November 2014 / www.NWCatholic.org
the pull back to the Catholic Church, drawn in part by
have what we need, and God made the universe for us to
the church’s openness to science. After sorting out his
have what we need. Isn’t that great?”
evangelical objections to Catholic doctrine, he went to a
He added: “My point of view is that the vastness of the
Dominican parish during Holy Week and made his first
universe points to the greatness of God, and it just makes
confession since before high school. Receiving absolution for
God more and more and more, myself less and less and less,
his sins “was very powerful,” he said, and he started going
and it makes me more and more grateful for the fact that
to Mass every day.
God chose us to save us — he sent his only Son to die for us.
That September, Suberlak came to Seattle to study
So the bigger the universe is, the bigger our gratefulness.”
astronomy at the University of Washington. He was
Suberlak’s study thus strengthens his faith, and his faith also
welcomed by the Dominican priests on
makes him a better scientist, helping him to
campus, who invited him to stay at the
grow in the patience necessary for his work.
“My point of view is
Newman Center and the priory at Blessed
Unraveling the mysteries of the universe is rarely
Sacrament Church while he looked for
as glamorous as it sounds. His research consists
that the vastness of
housing.
largely of sitting in front of a computer, reading
Suberlak’s research at UW focuses on
scientific papers, writing computer programs and
the universe points
quasars, members of a class of objects called
analyzing data.
to the greatness of
“active galactic nuclei” that produce jets of
“Perhaps it’s going to involve days of trying
highly energetic particles bright enough to be
to focus on just one tiny bit of information,
God.”
detected across the universe.
and God gives me grace to go for it,” he said.
The quasars he studies are so distant that
“At the moment I’m trying to understand the
their light has taken up to 5 billion years to reach us, he
variability of quasars, the variability of these jets that are
said, “which means it was emitted before Earth formed.”
pointed toward us. The intensity fluctuates, and we don’t
really know why.”
‘The more you know, the more beautiful it is’
The work may be tedious, but every new scientific
Such massive spans of time and space drive home the fact
discovery “makes our perception of the world richer, and
that humans “are even tinier than we thought we were,”
therefore it makes us appreciate the beauty of creation in a
Suberlak said — but that doesn’t mean we don’t matter.
deeper sense,” Suberlak said.
“I know there are people who would claim that the fact
“The more you know, the more beautiful it is.”
that we are so tiny … means that we are insignificant, but
you can look at it from another perspective and think: We
19
COV E R STO RY
IS THE CHURCH ANTI-SCIENCE?
WHAT ABOUT EXTRATERRESTRIALS?
Far from it. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic
Church extols the value of scientific research:
Are we alone in the universe? Or could there be
other intelligent life out there, dwelling on planets
orbiting any of the countless stars in our galaxy or
beyond? It’s an irresistible question.
“Basic scientific research, as well as applied
research, is a significant expression of man’s
dominion over creation. Science and technology are
precious resources when placed at the service of
man and promote his integral development for the
benefit of all. By themselves however they cannot
disclose the meaning of existence and of human
progress. Science and technology are ordered
to man, from whom they take their origin and
development; hence they find in the person and in
his moral values both evidence of their purpose and
awareness of their limits.” (CCC 2293)
In May, Pope Francis speculated about what would
happen if an expedition of Martians — “green, with
long noses and big ears, just like children draw
them” — came to Earth and asked to be baptized.
While scientists have found no signs of
intelligent life on Mars (or anywhere else, for that
matter), Vatican astronomer Jesuit Brother Guy
Consolmagno has written about his “hunch” that
there are other intelligent creatures somewhere
out there: “I am not the first astronomer, nor
the first religious believer, to see the amazing
panoply of the stars in the sky at night and
intuit that God’s fecund creativity couldn’t
possibly just stop with us.”
THE CHURCH AND ASTRONOMY —
BEYOND THE ‘GALILEO AFFAIR’
Ask most people about the Catholic Church’s
history with astronomy, or science more broadly,
and one name is sure to pop up: Galileo. In 1633, the
astronomer was found guilty of “vehement suspicion
of heresy” by the Roman Inquisition for
arguing that the Earth moves around the
sun — not the proudest moment in the
history of church-science relations.
Just contemplating the possibility of
extraterrestrials can enrich our understanding
of our relationship with God, he said:
“Appreciating God as the Creator of a
universe big enough to contain those
billions and billions of galaxies and
stars makes us realize just how
immense God’s infinity
must be. Asking what it
would take for an ‘alien’ to
have something like a ‘soul’
forces us to confront just
what we mean when we use that
word. Speculating on how Christ’s
salvation could apply to other beings is a
wonderful way to appreciate anew what that
salvation means to us humans.”
But, as Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno,
an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory
(yes, there is such a thing), has written,
“the painful, and well-acknowledged,
mistake that the Church made in trying to
silence Galileo is all the more stark when
contrasted with the many more numerous
times and places where Church-supported
astronomers did get it right.” He highlights a
few of the Catholic Church’s contributions to
astronomy:
Shutterstock
“Pope Gregory XII used astronomy to reform
the calendar in 1582. Seventeenth-century
Jesuits invented the reflecting telescope and
the wave theory of light. In the 18th century
they ran a quarter of all the astronomical
observatories in Europe, and their missionaries
ran most of the observatories outside Europe:
their measurements helped determine the size of
the solar system. In the 19th century, the Jesuit
priest Angelo Secchi was the first to classify
stars and planets by their color spectra, turning
‘astronomy’ into ‘astrophysics.’ And it was the
20th-century priest (though not a Jesuit, he
was quick to point out!) Georges Lemaître who
suggested that the universe began in a kind of
cosmic explosion that came to be called the ‘Big
Bang’ theory. Modern astronomy is fundamentally
based on Church-supported astronomy.”
So, are there extraterrestrials out there?
And if so, what would that mean for
Christian understandings of original sin, the
Incarnation and Christ’s redemptive act?
At this point, we just don’t know — the
questions remain open to speculation.
Source: Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic
belief and the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life,
available at www.vofoundation.org/books-and-media
20 Northwest Catholic / November 2014 / www.NWCatholic.org
But, said Brother Consolmagno, our
speculation must be bounded by two
facts: “First, whatever is out there, it is
the creation of a loving God. And second,
regardless of what God may or may not do
with the rest of creation, nothing out there
can contradict what we know He has done
here for us.”
Source: Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic
belief and the search for extraterrestrial
intelligent life, available at www.vofoundation.
org/books-and-media