Catholic Science and Catholic Scientists

This books commences: AMONG the many questions that have engaged the attention of thinking minds, especially within the last few years, none has excited a livelier or a more widespread interest than that concerning the relation between religion and science, or, more especially, the relation between modern science and the Catholic Church. Among those who let others do their thinking for them, or who are content to get their information second-hand (as it is too often, alas! doled out to them in garbled 'articles by an infidel press), and even among those whose intellectual acquirements should teach them better, there seems to be an impression-and, in many instances, a conviction that there is a conflict between the teachings of the Church and the truths of science; that the doctrines of the former can no longer be reconciled with the conclusions of the latter; that, in a word, if the Church wishes to keep abreast with the advance of science, she will not only have to modify many of her dogmas, but will be forced to abandon some of them entirely as no longer tenable. Then, again, this impression, or conviction, of these good people is confirmed by what they have heard or read about the attitude of the Church toward science in ages gone by. They have been told that the Church is the enemy of progress; that she not only does not now, but never did, encourage scientific research; and they are ever ready to point to instances which they consider as verifying such views. They adduce as facts of sober history tales of libraries burned, genius hampered and persecuted, and finish the charge with some terrible episode in the lives of the "Martyrs of Science." It is some of these points that we wish to discuss in the present article. We shall consider some of the objections brought fonvard by modern science against the teachings of the Church, and then define as clearly and succinctly as may be the nature and scope of science and religion, and state what now is, what always has been, and what ever must be the relation between human science and the Church of God.