Purify Your Bride

This story just seems incredible to me. Here is a group of people who are very bright and they choose to make a very public stand against the pope. What amazes me is how they manage to get it so far wrong. I mean saying the pope is opposed to reason and science is just about as far away from Pope Benedict’s actual thought as you can be. This is the most talked about theme of his papacy. The idea that faith and reason are not opposed but are rather complementary. So before coming out and publicly criticizing the pope for his stand on matters of science you would think they would make some sort of an effort to figure out what he has said about such matters. I guess that is to much to expect.

The pope has talked about these issues again and again. Most of these talks are available free on the internet. They are very simple talks aimed at people without theological training. Basically anyone who makes any kind of effort will be able to understand him. He is a gifted teacher and has many profound insights. Somehow they seem to have missed all this. Why? My guess is that they assumed the pope would not state clearly and publicly what he thinks about this. You see this often. People claim they have discerned the secret of what the pope really thinks. There is an assumption that there is more going on in his mind than he is letting on. But he has never worked that way. Before he became pope he published many books making it clear to anyone who cared exactly what he was thinking on pretty much any topic.

The other reason people jump to conclusions on the subject on science and religion is they think there is nothing to know. They see a contradiction and they assume there is no other way to look at things. Scientists don’t get any training in history, religion, or philosophy so they make the most simplistic analysis imaginable and think that is all there is to the question. Religion, in their mind, is just something for stupid people. Anyone intelligent would agree with them. It really shows how far we have to go to get people to embrace both faith and reason. Even some of the brightest don’t even grasp that somebody might possibly claim to embrace both. We know exactly how the pope thinks because we know he is religious. That means he must be against science. How can scientists trained in Rome have such a narrow view? It is scary how bad our faith formation has gotten.