Question 6.108

6.108 Can scientific research and the Church therefore go in the same direction?

Certainly, since truth is one. In a few cases, some men of the Church may have been imprudent and disrespectful toward scientists. In his address to the participants in the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 31, 1992, John Paul II clearly acknowledged the errors committed in the case of Galileo. His remarks were even more well-founded because he did not hesitate to emphasize how far Galileo had gone outside his field by confusing, like most of his adversaries, “the scientific approach to natural phenomena and a reflection on nature, of the philosophical order, for which that approach generally calls”. John Paul II explained as follows: “That is why he rejected the suggestion made to him to present the Copernican system as a hypothesis, inasmuch as it had not been confirmed by irrefutable proof. This was, however, a requirement of the experimental method of which he was the inspired founder. Secondly, the geocentric representation of the world was commonly admitted in the culture of the time as fully agreeing with the teaching of the Bible, certain expressions of which, taken literally, seemed to affirm geocentrism. The problem posed by theologians of that age was, therefore, that of the compatibility between heliocentrism and Scripture. Thus the new science, with its methods and the freedom of research that they presupposed, obliged theologians to examine their own criteria of scriptural interpretation. Most of them did not know how to do so. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. ‘If Scripture cannot err,’ he wrote to Benedetto Castelli, ‘some of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways.’ We also know of his letter to Christine de Lorraine (1615), which is like a short treatise on biblical hermeneutics. … The majority of theologians did not recognize the formal distinction between Sacred Scripture and its interpretation, and this led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith a question that in fact pertained to scientific investigation.” Benedict XVI, too, discussed Galileo in a major address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005.

Actually, it is not fair to generalize on the basis of a few particular examples. The Church’s fiercest opponents have managed to create a myth, as though she did everything in her power to fight against science! Some powerful media groups are now largely responsible for establishing the image of a backward, obscurantist Church. This is a witch hunt, which is all the more serious because when the Church fights against some research projects-such as human stem cell research, to give a current example-she makes her arguments on the basis of a particularly well-supported ethical system and while taking into account the most recent discoveries.

Indeed, the Church has often been involved in a large number of scientific research projects, either institutionally or else through many researchers, whether Christian or not; her attitude is always motivated by the good of man and the improvement of his living conditions, especially in the field of medicine.

The Church does not want to absolutize scientific findings as though they were new dogmas. There are scientific research projects that pose serious moral dangers for the very future of man and his dignity or for respect for life. The popes, assisted particularly in recent decades by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and by many Catholics throughout the world, work so that governments might set ethical limits to some research programs. The Church must say how far we can go, and science has the obligation to respect the good of the human person; it cannot ruin man’s very being in the name of a boundless march of progress.