With news about the Higgs boson particle, the so-called “God Particle,” that’s helping scientists understand how the universe was built, Br. Consolmagno says he’s explained multiple times that “No, the God Particle has nothing to do with God…”

Although not a particle physicist, Br. Consolmagno is often interviewed because of his role as a Vatican astronomer. He says some are surprised to hear that the Vatican supports an astronomical observatory, but that science and religion complement each other:

But the real reason we do science is in fact related to the reason why so many people ask us about things like the God Particle. The disciplines of science and religion complement each other in practical ways. For example, both are involved in describing things that are beyond human language and so must speak in metaphors. Not only is the ‘God Particle’ not a piece of God, it is also not really a ‘particle’ in the sense that a speck of dust is a particle. In both cases we use familiar images to try to illustrate an entity of great importance but whose reality is beyond our power to describe literally.

Read more of Br. Consolmagno’s commentary on the Higgs boson discovery on Catholic News Service and Catholic News Agency.

One of the things that attracted me to the Society of Jesus was the Ignatian principle of finding God in all things. I saw Jesuits seeking and finding God in so many ways, from ministering in the Third World, to delving into questions of philosophy and theology to exploring the grandeur of the universe.

As someone with a background in physics and astronomy, I am no stranger to the idea that by studying God’s creation we encounter God. As a 38-year-old, first-year theology student at Boston College and a recent graduate of a physics doctoral program, I can see in hindsight a pattern of formation as a Jesuit brother that has only strengthened this idea.

After I completed philosophy studies in 2006, I began my regency assignment teaching physics and astronomy at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, a wonderful opportunity to teach in my field and minister to students.  During that time, I heard from a friend at the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, who told me about an opportunity to study meteorite physical properties in a doctoral program at the University of Central Florida. I had spent a summer at the Vatican Observatory doing exactly that kind of research. So, with the provincial’s blessing, I left regency after only one year and spent the next four years at the University of Central Florida measuring the densities of meteorites, the percentages of pore space within them and their responses to a magnetic field. And somehow, as part of graduate studies and in the context of Jesuit life, I was to find God in these rocks from outer space.

Studying meteorites can be tedious work, but the pursuit involved travel to New York, Washington, Chicago and London where meteorites are held in museum or university collections.

As I studied more than 1,300 specimens, sometimes the tedium of the repetitive process became too great. I then would hold one of the more primitive meteorites in my hand and muse upon it, reminding myself that it was 4.5 billion years old, one of the earliest objects to form when the solar system itself was forming, and holding clues to that history.

Embedded within the meteorite are a few tiny grains of material that survived the heat and shock of its forming and that remain essentially unchanged from the moment they were created in stars. They are literally stardust. I am awestruck, and in that awe I once again encounter God.

This work also allowed me to minister to people in the sciences. Simply by being a scientist and a member of a religious order, I stand as a counterexample to the false notion that science and faith are incompatible. My presence has sparked many conversations with colleagues who wish to explore that idea more deeply and who have no other way to do so.

Now that the doctorate is completed and theological studies have begun, I have not abandoned the pursuit of science. A Jesuit in the physics department at Boston College, Fr. Cyril Opeil, has provided space in his lab where I can construct some new research instruments. Furthermore, by helping out with campus ministry at my alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I can continue to have good conversations about faith and science with its many students of science and engineering.

In my spare time, I research properties of lunar materials, which led to a visit over Christmas break to study Apollo moon rocks at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

But most importantly, I am discovering that theology studies themselves provide tools for integrating these pursuits with the many other ways in which we are called to find God in all things.

This reflection originally appeared in Southern Jesuit Magazine. To download the full magazine, please click here.

As a priest and an astronomer, Jesuit Father George Coyne bridges the worlds of faith and science, but he’s quick to acknowledge that they serve two different purposes. “I can’t know if there is a God or if there is not a God by science,” he says. 

At the same time the emeritus director of the Vatican Observatory sees no conflict between scientific and religious knowledge, though he admits that the church has not always agreed. But even in the famous case of the astronomer Galileo, there were issues other than science at stake, notably who could interpret the Bible. “Galileo was never given a chance to talk about his science,” Coyne says. “Galileo knew how to interpret scripture, but he did it privately.” The Council of Trent had forbidden private interpretation 70 years before in response to the Reformation.

Still, says Coyne, Galileo pointed the way to a happier relationship between faith and science. “Galileo anticipated by four centuries what the church would finally say about the interpretation of scripture,” argues Coyne. “Galileo said that scripture was written to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Fr. Coyne recently sat down with U.S. Catholic Magazine for a question-and-answer session about Catholicism, science and the human experience.

Give us some amazing facts about the universe that would enrich a Catholic understanding of faith.

The universe understood scientifically is an amazing challenge to both science and to religious faith. The scientific facts about the universe are very well established. First the universe is 13.7 billion years old. A billion is a one with nine zeroes behind it, so that’s a lot of years. Second, it contains 10,000 billion billion stars. That’s a one with 22 zeroes behind it.

We know the age of the universe by its expansion: Galaxies are all moving away from us. There is a very tight relationship between their distance from us and their speed. Namely, the farther away an object is, the faster it is going. If you’re two times farther away from me, you’re going away four times faster. If you’re four times farther away from me, you’re going away 16 times faster. It holds for every galaxy in the whole universe.

When we measure the age of the universe by its expansion, we discover that the universe began to expand 13.7 billion years ago, plus or minus 200 million years. It’s an amazing measurement.

How do we count all those stars?

When the Hubble telescope takes a photograph of the most distant part of the universe we can see, it produces an image called the Hubble Deep Field. The image has millions of dots of light, and every one of those dots of light is a galaxy. Hubble concentrated on a very small part of the sky, one-twentieth of the thickness of my index finger held at arm’s length. So you have a million galaxies in this little piece of the sky. What if we measured the whole sky? By multiplying all that together you get 100 billion galaxies, each of which contains, on the average, 200 billion stars.

What’s so important about that?

Now I’m getting into the religious implications. How did we come to be in this universe? The classical question is: Did this happen by chance, or was it necessary that we would come to be?

The question is a scientific question at first. Was it by chance or by necessity? We know the processes. The answer, according to modern science, is that it’s both: chance and necessity in a fertile universe.

What do you mean by a “fertile universe”?

A star lives, so to speak, by a thermonuclear furnace at its center, created by the collapse of gas that raises the temperature to millions of degrees. The furnace converts hydrogen to helium. If the star has enough mass, it will collapse again, raise the temperature even higher, and convert helium to carbon, carbon to nitrogen, and so on. As a star lives, depending on its mass, it converts lighter elements into heavier elements. When it dies, it spews out these elements to the universe.

When a generation of stars dies, a new generation is formed from that gas, which is no longer just hydrogen but is enriched with helium, carbon, silicon, nitrogen, even iron. Our sun is a third-generation star. If it were not, we wouldn’t be here.

We needed three generations of stars to get a star that could furnish the elements for life. That’s what I mean by the fertility of the universe, that through physical processes in the universe, we’re building up the chemistry until we have the chemistry for life.

What about chance and necessity?

Over 14 billion years with all these stars pouring out all this chemistry, imagine what has been happening.

The universe has a structure to it. It has laws of nature. When two hydrogen atoms meet, they have to make a hydrogen molecule. But sometimes they don’t because the temperature and pressure conditions are not correct.

So they wander throughout the universe and meet trillions of times. There are trillions of hydrogen atoms doing this. It shouldn’t surprise us when, by chance, two atoms meet at a time when the temperature and pressure conditions are correct, and they make a hydrogen molecule.

That’s “chance,” but it is also more than just chance. The two hydrogen atoms have to make a hydrogen molecule if they meet with the correct conditions. We can put a probability on that. Around some stars it’s more probable because the temperature conditions are different. In some galaxies it’s more probable. It’s a combination of chance and necessity, but in a fertile universe there are many possibilities for this to happen.

With all this chemistry available over 14 billion years, chance and necessity work together to build up ever more complex molecules. You get proteins, amino acids and sugars, DNA, livers, hearts, and eventually the human brain through biological evolution.

How does God fit into that?

We know the scientific process that brought us to be. But a religious believer then asks, “Did God do it, since it seems to have a structured evolution toward a human being?”

Did God do it? Speaking as a scientist, my answer is: I don’t know. There’s no way I can know scientifically if God did it. I can be amazed that there is this movement to ever more complex, more adapted organisms, including human beings. But to me as a scientist the human being is a complex biological organism. I can’t talk about the spiritual character of the human being.

I can get evidence of it. But I can’t talk about it as a scientist, and I can’t talk about God as a scientist. If I try, I’m not doing science. I think it’s very important in modern society, certainly in modern America, not to confuse what we know from science with what we know from philosophy, theology, literature, and music.

Human culture is vast, and science is an important part of human culture. But it’s not everything.

I believe that God created the universe, and because I believe that God created the universe, I think it is valid for me as a scientist to say, “I know what the universe is like. What kind of God would make a universe like this?”

How do you answer that question?

It’s a marvelous God to my mind. In creating the universe, God did not make a washing machine or a car. God made something dynamic.

Creation has an evolutionary character to it. There is chance involved. This God didn’t make something predetermined. We don’t know completely where it’s going, even scientifically. We can’t predict everything.

Is God omnipotent? Is God omniscient as I was taught? Would God be able to know at the beginning of the universe that I was going to be born?

To respect the science, I have to say no, because God cannot know what’s not knowable. Since there are chance processes involved, it’s not completely knowable according to science. Does that limit God? Does that minimize God? I don’t think so. It glorifies God: God did not want to have something that was completely predetermined.

That God sounds different from many common understandings.

Whenever we talk about God, we’re babbling. We’re doing our best from what we know. God is not just an object that we talk about and think about and pray to. God is the source of everything, of all knowledge. But I do insist that our knowledge of God should respect our knowledge of the universe and of ourselves in the universe. That’s a challenge, but it’s a happy challenge.

I believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent. But then I have to think about what I’m saying and ask, “What do I mean by that?” I surely mean that God is all-powerful, but can God do anything God wants to do? The universe appears to me to not allow that, but it’s because God wanted the universe to be the way it is.

Why do some believers want to ignore or reject scientific knowledge?

It’s not so much they’re ignorant from the point of view of what science knows or ignorant from the point of view of what religious faith is. They don’t want to face the challenge of putting them together. But there’s no conflict—a challenge, yes. But I can’t see that there ever could be any conflict between true religious faith and true science.

Then why do faith and science seem to be at loggerheads?

Because of you journalists! I’m only kidding, but some journalists really do seem to want to stir the pot.

One problem is scientists who claim they’re practicing science when they either assert or deny God’s presence. They’re stepping outside science.

I get into trouble when I say it, but atheism is a practice of faith. An atheist cannot prove to me there is no God. The evidence we have through all of human history documents people’s deep-rooted belief in God.

Some scientists will say we’re all being duped, but that is not reasonable. Science is a rational process. It’s using our intelligence to try and understand the universe, as is philosophy, as is theology, by the way. It’s an attempt to understand.

Faith goes beyond reason, but it doesn’t contradict reason. I’m thoroughly convinced of that, not just in my own life, but in the reality of what religious faith is and what human reason can accomplish.

Most of the scientists I know who are atheists are deeply respectful of human faith. The ones that aren’t don’t understand it. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who wrote A Brief History of Time (Bantam), are both eminent scientists. But they don’t understand what religious faith is. I’ve had conversations with both, and I’ve said that to them. They respect me because they realize that I’m an objective, working scientist just as they are.

What are they missing?

Stephen Hawking’s concept of God is that God is something we need to explain parts of the universe we don’t understand. I tell him, “Stephen, I’m sorry, but God is a God of love. He’s not a being I haul in to explain things when I can’t explain them myself.”

I once said to Richard Dawkins, “Richard, why did you marry the lady you married? Because she has blue eyes, paints her toenails red, has curly hair?” When you put all the facts together in general human experience—not just religious experience—you can’t explain it all rationally. Human experience has a nonrational character. That doesn’t make it irrational. You’re not crazy—you may be crazy in love—but all that means is that you can’t explain everything.

When you pray, does it make any difference that the universe has 10,000 billion billion stars?

Absolutely. When I pray to God, it’s a totally different God than I prayed to as a kid. The God that I pray to now is a God who not only made me but brought me to be in a universe that is dynamic and creative. The universe is not itself a living being, but it is a universe that has thus far given birth to human beings who can pray to God.

I pray to a God that, from my scientific knowledge, has made a universe in which people have come to be and are still coming to be, even from a scientific perspective. The universe is continuing to expand. Just in the past 50 years, look at what the human being has come to be. I’m talking about technology.

When I was growing up we had no television. Now you have one in your pocket. That is a development of the human being. Technology is an extension of ourselves.

Is there anything special about us in this enormous universe?

We are very special to God, and there’s no doubt about it. I mean, God sent his only Son to us. Being special as a piece of material in the universe is one thing; being special in knowing religious history and living a faith-filled life is another. But it’s still a challenge.

As material objects in the universe, it would be difficult for me as a scientist to defend that we’re special. Our history as human civilization certainly makes us special. But what if there is another civilization out there that is intelligent and spiritual, that has a special relationship to God? What would that do to us?

I’m going to leave that to theologians. But could God send his only-begotten Son, true God and true man, to become true God and true Martian, or whatever it is? Well, I find that very difficult to accept. But I can’t exclude it. I don’t know enough to exclude it, and I can’t limit God.

This is getting into science fiction, but in the end if God treated another spiritual civilization in a very special way, does that detract from his treating us in a very special way, however he dealt with them in the concrete?

I’m one of 10 kids. If my mother decided to buy me a new pair of pants, does that make my brother less special to my mother? I can’t imagine that discovering an intelligent, spiritual civilization that God loves in his own way would detract from God loving us.

“This was really an exciting event. This was the first time that Galileo showed off his telescope in public to the educated people of Rome, which was the center of culture in Italy at that time,” said Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican astronomer, as he stood on the same knoll.

Today, the grassy hill is part of the American Academy in Rome, which celebrated its connection to Galileo earlier this year with a number of events that included a discussion of faith and science with Brother Consolmagno.

The Renaissance men gathered on the Janiculum hill included Jesuit scholars, such as Jesuit Father Christopher Clavius, who helped devise the Gregorian calendar 40 years earlier.

Brother Consolmagno told CNS that the unveiling of the telescope was so significant because “this is the first time that science is done with an instrument. It’s not something that just any philosopher could look at. You had to have the right tool to be able to be able to see it,” because one’s own eyes were no longer enough.

“People then wanted to look for themselves and see if they were seeing the same things Galileo was seeing,” he said.

People often don’t realize that Galileo was in very good standing with the church and with many church leaders for decades before his trial in 1633, he said. Just a few weeks after he demonstrated his telescope on the Roman hillside, Galileo was “feted at the Roman College by the Jesuits, who were really impressed with the work he had done. At this point, he had burst onto the scene as one of the great intellectual lights of the 17th century,” Brother Consolmagno said.

“Even at his biggest point of trouble, Galileo was always a faithful son of the church — his two daughters were nuns — and he was friends with many of the people of Rome, including future popes,” he said.

Brother Consolmagno said the real reason that Galileo was eventually brought before the Inquisition and found guilty of suspected heresy is still a mystery. Numerous authors have proposed different findings and the trial is still “a great puzzle for historians,” he said.

Thanks to having many friends in high places, Galileo for years managed to evade any problems for maintaining that the earth revolves around the sun, the Jesuit said.
Galileo received permission, including from the pope’s personal censor, to publish his book, “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” he said.

“He’s done everything right, he’s followed all the rules and suddenly out of nowhere he’s called to trial,” he said.

Galileo was willing and eager to make any corrections to the text, he said, but the inquisitors would not allow it. They were unable to find him guilty of heresy, however, “so they changed the verdict at the last minute to found guilty of vehement suspicion of heresy,” Brother Consolmagno said.

Whatever the political reasons were behind the trial and its verdict, he said the “terrible mistake” was that the church had used its religious authority for political ends.

Galileo’s reputation was restored in 1992 by a special Vatican commission established by Pope John Paul II.

[Catholic News Service]

Rory O'Driscoll/Winona Daily News

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, a research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory, seeks an understanding of God and the universe through prayer — and through his telescope.

Br. Consolmagno said one of the primary purposes of the observatory is to be an ongoing demonstration that the church is supportive of science and scientific research. Upon his appointment to the observatory in 1993, he said the first instruction he received was, “Guy, do good science.”

The supposed conflict between religion and science really doesn’t exist, Consolmagno said. “Science grew out of religion.”

Historically, the church has fostered science and the academic life, he pointed out, and churchmen have been in the forefront of scientific advancement.

“There is nothing in the Bible opposing evolution,” he said, “but there is something in the Bible against astrology.”

Biblical literalism is a recent development, not traditional Christianity, he said.

To apply a modern reading to a 2,000-year-old text “does violence to the text,” Consolmagno said, “and that’s not me saying it, it’s Augustine saying it.”

Read more about Consolmagno’s views on science and religion at the La Crosse Tribune.

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer and curator of the Vatican Observatory’s meteorite collection, will be doing a live chat with the Arizona Daily Star newspaper this Wednesday, Feb. 2, at 2 p.m. Eastern.

The live “cosmic chat” with Br. Consolmagno will give people from all over the world a chance to hear him “make sense of the universe” and ask him questions.

Click this link to go to the chat with Consolmagno on Wednesday.

Four Jesuits in history have had asteroids named after them. Jesuit Father George Coyne, director emeritus of the Vatican Observatory and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation and Brother Guy Consolmagno, curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory, are the two living astronomers with that distinction. They shared their observations of life, faith, friendship and the universe from their seats in the Vatican Observatory with Krista Trippet, host of the Speaking of Faith radio program on American Public Media during a recent show. Go here to download the interview or to listen to the interview directly.

Installed on the second floor of a small building on the summit of Arizona’s Mount Graham, Guy Consolmagno is multi-tasking. He’s checking email on his laptop and listening to the Penguin Cafe Orchestra on his iPod, all the while keeping an eye on a bank of computer monitors. One floor up, nestled in a silvery-white dome, a telescope is trained on a potato-shaped chunk of rock and ice known as Haumea, which orbits the sun some six billion kilometres from Earth. Thin clouds have been drifting overhead since sundown, but if they dissipate, the telescope’s digital camera will record changes in Haumea’s brightness as it tumbles through the outer reaches of the solar system, offering Consolmagno and fellow astronomers hints about the structure and evolution of our planetary family.

All this is typical fare for a scientist. What is perhaps surprising is that Consolmagno is also a Jesuit brother, that many of his colleagues are ordained priests, and that they’re scanning the heavens with the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope or, more affectionately, the “Pope scope.”

For more about Jesuit Brother Consolmagno’s worked with the Vatican Observatory, go here.