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New: "Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context" by Dom Paschal Scotti

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context

by Dom Paschal Scotti

No other work on Galileo Galilei has brought together such a complete description of the historical context in its political, cultural, philosophical, religious, scientific, and personal aspects as this volume has done. In addition to covering the whole of Galileo's life, it focuses on those things that are most pertinent to the Galileo Affair, which culminated in his condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633.

It also includes an extensive discussion of the relationship between religion and science in general, and of the relationship between Christianity and science in particular, without which a true understanding of the affair is much weakened. This discussion of the relationship of Christianity with science-a long, generally positive relationship-is most timely since the case of Galileo is, as many historians and Pope Benedict XVI have stated, the beginning of the alienation of the Church from much of the intellectual culture of our present age. The "warfare between science and religion" is an old myth that should finally be retired, but for many it is still axiomatic.

This work shows the significance of astrology in the history of society and the Church (Galileo was a master astrologer), and the importance of the internal tensions and factions within the Roman Curia in the seventeenth century. It also tells of the profound battles among Church leadership over the direction of the Church in a time of uncertainty and intellectual and cultural ferment. The Galileo Affair is not just of its time and place, and it is not just about Galileo, but it touches upon that perennial issue of how the Church deals with issues of adaptation and change.

Fr. Paschal Scotti, a monk at Portsmouth Abbey in Rhode Island, was ordained a priest in 1989 and teaches at his monastery's prep school, Portsmouth Abbey School, in the History and Humanities departments. He has a Licentiate in Canon Law (J.C.L) from Catholic University of America. Besides various journal and encyclopedia articles, he has a written a study of the Edwardian English Catholic editor, Wilfrid Ward.

"The Galileo case is often misunderstood as the simple opposition of modern science to blind faith. This valuable volume not only puts that myth to rest by presenting what were the real scientific, philosophical, and theological questions at stake. It's comprehensive in explaining the history, culture, conflicts, and personalities involved in this crucial episode in Western and Christian civilization."
— Robert Royal, Author, A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century

"This exquisite history of a defining moment at the birth of modernity resists the temptation to idealize or villainize, treating both Galileo and his opponents as the flesh-and-blood creatures they actually were. The Galileo Affair is thus revealed to be not so much the clash of ideas or ideals we are so often told it was, as the clash of limited and imperfect people. Of the many versions of this story that I've encountered, this is the wisest and most balanced."
— Michael Augros, Ph.D., Author, Who Designed the Designer? A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence

"Dom Scotti has mastered all of the historical details of the great saga of Galileo and the Church, and he does not spare any of the players in his critical but fair-minded and thoughtful assessment of how the tragic confrontation unfolded and might have been avoided."
—John Farrell, Author, The Day without Yesterday: Lemaître, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology

"There is nothing like the facts to squelch a juicy rumor or a sensational story - especially one whose contour has been carefully crafted to embarrass the Church or keep her off balance. This book brings to bear the many new discoveries that have recently been made in the Galileo Affair. An open-minded reader will have abundant evidence for debunking the notion that the Church is against science."
— Rev. Joseph Koterski, S.J., Department of Philosophy, Fordham University

"Many people today think of Galileo in simplistic, black-and-white terms, as either a great and heroic scientist or a tragic, arrogant figure. As Dom Scotti demonstrates in this richly researched and often surprising work, the truth is both far more complex and far more interesting."
— Carl Olson, Editor, Catholic World Report; Author, Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

"The Galileo Affair was a clash of ideas, but it was also a complex human drama that unfolded in extremely tense and turbulent times. Geopolitical struggles, Reformation and Counter Reformation, personal ambition, zeal for truth, scientific rivalries, gossip and scandal, status and celebrity, and even an outbreak of plague were all parts of the story. Dom Scotti's profoundly learned, wonderfully readable, and richly detailed book brings that vibrant world to life."
— Stephen Barr, Ph.D., Department of Physics, University of Delaware

"The image of Galileo kneeling before the Inquisition, forced to recant his views, is exaggerated in the modern mind. But Dom Scotti paints the truthful setting of Galileo's time, not a mere recounting of facts, but a journey into the Medici family, the Papal States of the 1600s, Galileo's desire for clarity, his tastes in the arts, the multifaceted trial, and his conflicts to the last breath. For those excited about how Catholics can lead scientific progress, the visit with Galileo, the man, is a requisite pilgrimage."
— Stacy Trasancos, Author, Particles of Faith: A Catholic Guide to Navigating Science

Settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and infinite delight

The sky at the Cerro Tololo in the Valle de Elqui, Chile, is seen Oct. 11, 2015. (CNS photo/AURA Observatory of Chile via EPA)

Settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and infinite delight | Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report

The recent March for Science was a sad and sorry exercise in a view of reality that is flattened, dreary, and ultimately inhuman

Back in the early 1840s, John Henry Newman observed that physical philosophers—that is, scientists—"are ever inquiring whence things are, not why; referring them to nature, not to mind; and thus they tend to make a system a substitute for a God..." The "tending" has been, as they say, trending ever since. About a hundred years later, in 1948, Fulton Sheen remarked in his outstanding study Philosophy of Religion, that:

Science cannot give us a philosophy, not can it give us an ethics; it cannot give us a philosophy, because it immerses man in nature and avoids the important subject of his destiny. It cannot give us an ethics because science by itself is amoral. Morality comes from its ends, and science is indifferent to ends.

Lest it be thought that Sheen was anti-science or the enemy of scientists, consider his remark, from his 1928 book Religion Without God, that the "rock-surenes of 'Science' does not exist in the mind of the scientists themselves, although it does love and throb in the minds of publicists and propagandists. Scientists themselves disclaim they possess ultimate truth; rather they look upon it as a horizon toward which they are proceeding." Sheen was indicating that when a scientist begins to make metaphysical or philosophical assertions, he is no longer speaking as a scientist. Of course, a great number of famous scientists—Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking come to mind immediately—have used their scientific reputations in order to wade into waters that are better described as ideological and polemical. And even political.

All of those elements were obvious in the silly "March for Science" event that took place this past Saturday. I was blissfully unaware of the event until a friend sent a link to the local newspaper's coverage of the March for Science in Eugene, which featured some 1500 or so true believers. And I don't say "true believers" with any sarcasm or snarkiness; on the contrary:

“We teach science and we believe in science,” said Carrie Ann Naumoff, a fifth-grade teacher at Edison Elementary in Eugene. “We’re concerned that science is being blocked and interrupted. “We’re concerned about the EPA and concerned that ­scientists are being harassed for what they’re publishing. We want our students to have access to real information.”

"We believe in science." Whatever does that mean? What if the seventh-grade home-ec teacher (if such a thing still exists) exclaimed, "We believe in the culinary arts", or the 10th-grade French teacher solemnly explained, "We believe in language." Huh? But we do know what Ms. Naumoff means: she and the enlightened educating class are the guardians of science, which is the one, true source of truth and goodness, leading us into a future of, well, more science. However, such a belief is not really about scientific research and fact, but about a particular ideological perspective, generally called scientism, which is not about following physical evidence where it might lead, but flattening all of reality into the narrow confines of materialist proofs and premises.

Dr. Austin L. Hughes, a professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina, described it well in an 2012 essay titled "The Folly of Scientism":

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Mary was no ordinary woman: An anthropologist unearths the life of Jesus’ mother

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 6, 2016 – For the first time ever — and just in time for Advent — a new release presents an archeological and historical biography of the most adored and remarkable woman in history: MARY OF NAZARETH: History, Archeology, Legends, by author Michael Hesemann, digs into the heart of the life lived by Mary, the mother of God. From her earliest days as a small child, to the Annunciation and her life raising and loving Jesus, the most beloved, along with the lesser known chapters in the Blessed Mother’s life, Mary is examined in new and impressive detail in Hesemann’s book. Popular legends are explored, ground unearthed and contemporary sources scoured.
 
Hesemann, an accomplished author of 38 books who studied history and cultural anthropology in Germany, is uniquely situated to tell this important story of the Blessed Mother. He has participated in archaeological excavations in the Holy Land, and has helped to date discoveries in Nazareth as well as several Christian relics. Hesemann has advised and participated in TV programs for the Discovery and History Channels as well as EWTN.
 
The author’s impressive background is on display in MARY OF NAZARETH, as the reader is taken on a virtual expedition to the places where Mary lived or traveled. Included in the book are vivid, color images of the places described and investigated by Hesemann, including the Advocata icon (the oldest known Marian image), the interior of the Holy House of Loreto, Mary’s Well (the scene of the Magnificat), Mary’s tomb in the Kidron Valley and many more that bring to life in a special way the locations that played important parts in the daily life of Mary.
 
MARY OF NAZARETH provides the millions of Marian follower’s new insight into the fascinating woman who was the Mother of Jesus and the context for and the answers to many long-held queries about Mary. Hesemann also delivers the truth behind the real Christmas story, including the Three Wise Men and the Star of Bethlehem, just in time for the Advent season.
 
Says Paul Thigpen, Ph.D., author of A Year with Mary: Daily Meditations on the Mother of God: “Through historical, archaeological and textual research, Hesemann takes us on a lively adventure that sheds fascinating new light on the mother of Jesus. His personal devotion to the Virgin shines through his extensive scholarship to create a delightful and enchanting portrait of the Mother of God.”
 
For more information, to request a review copy, or to schedule an interview with Michael Hesemann, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or [email protected]) of Carmel Communications.  

Traveling with Walker Percy

 

Traveling with Walker Percy | Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at CWR

More than a novelist, Walker Percy was a fellow wayfarer and seeker, as well as a self-described "diagnostician" of the "modern malaise" and a builder of signposts in a strange land.

[Editor's note: This essay, originally posted on Ignatius Insight in November 2004, is posted here on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Walker Percy.] 

In the summer of 1995, my wife and I––both Evangelical Protestants at the time–-took a trip with the Catholic novelist Walker Percy.

He had died in 1990, but his presence was very much evident in Signposts In A Strange Land (Noonday Press, 1991, 1992), a posthumous collection of essays and interviews we took along with us and read to one another as we drove from the Pacific Northwest up into Canada on a weeklong vacation.

The title was fitting––not because of the scenery along the highways, but because at the time we found ourselves in a strange land between the familiar, but frustrating, homeland of Evangelical Protestantism and the largely unknown vistas of Catholicism. While others, including Pope John Paul II, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Theresa of Avila, and G. K. Chesterton, would escort us into the Catholic Church a couple years later, the melancholy and brilliant novelist from the Deep South journeyed with us for an important stretch of that pilgrim’s road.

More than a novelist, Walker Percy was a fellow wayfarer and seeker, as well as a self-described "diagnostician" of the "modern malaise" and a builder of signposts in a strange land.

Out of the Shadows of Southern Tragedy

Born in Georgia in 1916, Walker Percy was shadowed by tragedy from the beginning of his life. His paternal grandfather committed suicide with a shotgun in 1917. Percy’s father, a highly intelligent and successful lawyer who was prone to deep depression, killed himself in the same manner in 1929, just as Percy was entering his teens. Percy later addressed his father’s suicide, at least indirectly, in his second novel, The Last Gentleman (1966). Unbelievably, two years after his father’s suicide, Percy’s mother drowned when her car ran off a bridge not far from their home.

Walker and his brothers were taken in and adopted by their enigmatic and well-educated "Uncle Will," their father’s cousin, and a lawyer and author. Walker loved Uncle Will dearly and gave him credit for changing his life. In Pilgrim in the Ruins, his biography of Percy, biographer Jay Tolson notes, "If it hadn’t been for Uncle Will, Walker Percy once said, he probably would have ended up a car dealer in Athens, Georgia." Uncle Will was a Southern gentleman who held to a Stoic idealism and a Romantic view of the Old South. Though deeply affected by Will’s beliefs, the shy and studious Walker soon embraced a cynical agnosticism and the conviction that modern science held the answers to man’s origins and future. Spurning the life of the lawyer –– a profession highly esteemed in the Percy clan –– Walker chose to pursue a career in medicine. After completing undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina, he went on to Columbia to pursue studies in pathology.

From Doubt to Faith to the "Diagnostic Novel"

An anonymous corpse carrying tuberculosis changed Percy’s life forever. Attending medical school at Columbia, Percy contracted the disease while performing autopsies. Bedridden for three years, he was exhausted and often depressed. Yet later in life he admitted that despite the difficult ordeal he was secretly relieved at being able to leave medicine behind. During his lengthy rehabilitation Percy spent much time reading works of the existentialists Camus, Sartre, and Kierkegaard, as well as the writings of Catholic thinkers Blaise Pascal, Romano Guardini, and St. Thomas Aquinas. An insightful observer of human nature and relationships, Percy had growing doubts about his scientific, materialist view of reality. Years later he wrote,

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Why the Unreality?

(us.fotolia.com | yanlev)

Why the Unreality? | James Kalb | CWR

Making sense of the position and power that secular progressivism holds in public life today requires understanding both its theoretical side and its institutional side

People who reject secular progressivism, especially in its more highly developed forms, are often puzzled by its proponents. Do they really believe what they say they believe, for example that diversity is always strength, or traditional religion and morality are dangerous and irrational bigotries, or there are no significant differences between men and women?

Some say they don’t really believe such things, at least the informed and intelligent ones don’t, but just find them politically useful as claims. That view would make secular progressivism a matter of cynical demagogy and power seeking.

Others say they believe what they say they believe, but do so because of psychological quirks or historical particularities. Leftists are perpetual adolescents always in rebellion, or they’re so horrified by slavery, segregation, colonialism, Nazism, or the Wars of Religion that they find anything other than compulsory equality and rejection of transcendent claims intolerably dangerous.

Such views don’t explain the position secular progressivism holds in public life today: its increasing grip on institutions and professions, its extension to ever more aspects of life, its success in remaking mainstream political and religious movements in its image, its ambition to silence all opposition, its resilience that enables it to come back from all reverses. When non-progressives say some new initiative is silly and won’t last—“gay marriage,” “micro-aggressions,” or whatever—they’re routinely proven wrong, at least on the second point.

Such successes argue for an outlook that is rooted in basic and enduring features of modern life and how modern people look at the world. They show that even what seem like absurdities can’t be laughed off, but must be taken very seriously, because there’s more thought and institutional momentum behind them than might appear.

What I’m calling progressivism, which is the dominant view of our time, has a theoretical and an institutional side. On the theoretical side it might be summed up as a tendency toward scientism, the view that an idealized version of modern natural science is the unique model for knowledge and reason. That view denies qualitative distinctions and turns goods into preferences, because it wants to accept only what is publicly observable and quantifiable. It also implies a sort of moral egalitarianism: preferences define what is good, and all preferences are equally preferences, so they are equally valid and have an equal claim to satisfaction. To reject a preference is baseless discrimination against the person whose preference it is, and thus a form of hatred and oppression.

It’s worth noting that scientism is not scientific, and often aligns itself with obfuscation.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

When Machines Are Wiser than their Programmers

(us.fotolia.com | agsandrew)

When Machines Are Wiser than their Programmers | Dr. R. Jared Staudt | CWR

How do we decide on how to program computers when we don’t know how to live our own lives?

Sci-fi is now reality. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence truly baffles the mind, though not the imagination. Long envisioned in fiction, the creation of “intelligent” computers has arrived and not just for research purposes. Projects are underway to entrust transportation, commerce, and even warfare into the hands of autonomous robots.

In the growth of artificial intelligence one key question emerges. How do we judge the morality of robotic choices? This of course only intensifies the debate about human morality itself. In order to program morality one must understand the nature of morality. Materialists envision morality solely in terms of the mechanics of the brain and thus envision replicating this material process in computers. If the essence of morality resides in our spiritual soul (even if working through the material brain) then it would be impossible to replicate a moral sense or conscience.

The attempt to replicate morality became apparent recently in a project at Google. In a “conversation” with an “intelligent” computer the following dialogue emerged, which reveals the heart of the controversy:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Why I Welcome "Laudato Si’"

A sign greets visitors to the meditation garden at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec)

Why I Welcome Laudato Si’ | Dr. Leroy Huizenga | CWR

Francis' encyclical may have problems here and there, but it’s our job as Catholics first to listen, to read the encyclical, to pray through it, to interpret it faithfully

I'm a Benedict XVI man. I came into the Catholic Church thanks largely to his witness—his way of doing theology, his confrontation with modernity, and above all his teaching on the centrality of liturgy. Many of my convert friends and younger priests would say the same. Francis has been an adjustment, and while we read Benedict and Francis in continuity with real integrity, they are different men and different popes, certainly regarding matters formal. Ignoring that fact is dishonest.

You’d never know it by perusing the Internet, unless you’re extremely discriminating and selective, but many who were initially skeptical or confused find themselves warming to Francis. Because if you’re careful—if you read reliable sources, do some thinking, and interpret the Holy Father with that highest of theological virtues, charity—you find that most complaints about Francis are ill-informed and off-base, the fruit of suspicion, not faith; of ideology, not fidelity.

Take, for instance, the matter of episcopal appointments. It may sometimes seem that Francis is so big on collegiality he chooses bishops and cardinals from all sorts of philosophical wings of the Church (including some who really need to give the Catechism a good, solid read and think long and hard about what they really believe) as if the Church’s Tradition were simply the aggregate sum of the opinion of the world’s episcopate as currently constituted. But some of the most controversial appointments appear to be working out rather well, much better, at least, than the reactionary right feared. Conversely, some of the bishops appointed by John Paul II and then Benedict have had serious issues with fidelity, with governance, and with rhetoric (“hirsute flabmeisters” comes to mind).

Binary thinking is problematic. It’s not Catholic. Black and white thinking is indeed a problem, but good people default to it because (for good reason) they fear the opposite is the raw relativism of limitless shades of grey. That opposition is itself a binary. But the Truth shines in vivid living color, radiant as the light of God himself, neither black or white nor grey; textured, not flat; analog, not digital. Pitting Benedict against Francis runs that binary risk, and rejecting an encyclical out of hand (as many have indicated they would do) before it’s even released is binary ideological insanity.

Encyclicals are not Holy Writ; they are not divine revelation as such. But they are authoritative interpretations for the present moment, drawing on the past and leaving a legacy for the future.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Galileo was Right—But So Were His Critics

Giovanni Battista Riccioli (left) and Galileo Galilei (right) are the main characters in the new book "Setting Aside All Authority, written by Dr. Christopher M. Graney and published by University of Notre Dame Press.

Galileo was Right—But So Were His Critics | Kevin Schmiesing | CWR

An interview with Dr. Christopher M. Graney, author of "Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo"

Ever since the seventeenth century, the celebrated “Galileo affair” has been one of the featured items on the list of dark moments in the history of Catholicism. That the Church mistreated the Italian astronomer—or at least misjudged his claims concerning the structure of the solar system—seems clear. Pope John Paul II, for example, apologized for the Church’s condemnation of Galileo in 1992. No one now disputes the fact that the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around.

For anti-Catholic historians and polemicists the episode is but the most obvious instance of the supposedly perennial conflict between religion—often enough Catholicism specifically—and science. The seventeenth-century battle, in the conventional view, pitted clergymen, who relied on revelation, against scientists, who relied on empirical observation.

But what if this typical portrayal of the heliocentric debate is almost entirely wrong?

That’s the claim of Dr. Christopher M. Graney in Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). Graney, professor of physics at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, credits a question from one of his students with propelling him into an exploration of the history of heliocentrism and its skeptics. He corresponded recently about his surprising findings.

CWR: One of the blurbs on the back cover calls it “the most exciting history of science book so far this century.” I took that as hyperbole—until I read the book. It has the potential to overturn some important and entrenched narratives in the history of the relation between science and religion. To understand how, we need to know a little bit about the central character, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, whom you seem determined to rescue from obscurity. Who was he and why is he important?

Graney: Your comment about obscurity reminds me of my wife dubbing me “Riccioli’s agent.” He was an Italian Jesuit priest who worked in Bologna. He was born at the turn of the seventeenth century, so he was a very young man when Galileo was making big discoveries with the telescope in the 1610’s. Riccioli was bitten by the science bug, and eventually obtained permission from his superiors to devote time to science. He did a lot of physics experiments, including some of the first experiments to precisely study gravity. His results were quite good (he was very “detail oriented,” maybe to the point of being a little obsessive about it). He made a lot of astronomical observations with the telescope; he and his fellow Jesuit Francesco Maria Grimaldi gave the features on the moon the names we use today. Your readers may recall that Apollo 11 landed in an area on the moon called “Tranquility.” Riccioli gave it that name. He wrote a huge book on physics and astronomy, called the New Almagest, published in 1651, that became a standard reference book. He was a prominent opponent of the heliocentric theory and was well-known in his time.

CWR: One of your main contentions is that even though in the long run Copernicus would be proven right by science, considering what was known at the time Riccioli actually had the stronger scientific case. Can you describe some of the problems that heliocentric theorists in the early seventeenth century had no good answer for?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Shroud: Not a Painting, Not a Scorch, Not a Photograph

People view the Shroud of Turin on display at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, in this April 26, 2010, file photo. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

The Shroud: Not a Painting, Not a Scorch, Not a Photograph | Jim Graves | CWR

“One of my favorite testimonials as to the authenticity of the Shroud,” says Barrie Schwortz, an expert on the Shroud of Turin, “actually came from my Jewish mother.”

This June, Pope Francis will be making a pilgrimage to Turin, Italy, home of the famous Shroud of Turin, which many believe is the 2,000-year-old burial cloth of Jesus Christ. The pope’s June 21-22 visit will include time venerating the Shroud at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. Francis will then visit the tomb of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, buried in a nearby altar. The trip will also include a commemoration of St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesians and patron saint of youth who worked in Turin; this year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. The papal visit will take advantage of April 19-June 24 exposition of the Shroud, which was last displayed in public in 2010.

The Shroud, which is a 14.5’ by 3.5’ linen cloth bearing the image of the front and back of a man who has been scourged and crucified, has been kept in Turin since 1578. Barrie Schwortz is one of the world’s leading experts on the Shroud. In 1978, Schwortz, a technical photographer, was invited to participate in the first ever in-depth scientific examination of the cloth, known as the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRUP). A non-practicing Jew at the time, he reluctantly agreed to be part of STRUP, fully expecting the team to prove that the Shroud was a painted image from the Middle Ages. But after many years of study and reflection he came to believe in its authenticity.

Troubled by frequent inaccurate media reports on the subject, in 1996 Schwortz launched a website to share the true story of the Shroud and scientific research that had been performed on it. Two decades later he still makes Shroud presentations in the media and to a variety of groups, including seminarians in Rome.

Schwortz recently spoke with CWR.

CWR: What are some of the most compelling arguments that the Shroud is authentic?

 

Barrie Schwortz (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Barrie Schwortz: Thirty-seven years ago, when I went to Italy with STRUP to examine the Shroud, I assumed it was a fake, some sort of medieval painting.  But after 10 minutes studying it, I knew it was not [a painting]. As a professional photographer, I was looking for brush strokes. But there was no paint and no brush strokes.

For 17 years I refused to accept that the Shroud was authentic. The last argument holding me back was related to the blood. The blood on the Shroud is reddish, but blood on a cloth, even after just a few hours, should turn brown or black. I had a conversation with Alan Adler, a blood chemist, on the phone and I shared my reservation. He got upset and asked, “Didn’t you read my paper?”

He had found a high content of bilirubin on the Shroud, which explains why the blood on the Shroud is red. When a man is beaten and has had no water, he can go into shock and the liver starts pumping out bilirubin. It makes the blood stay red forever. It was the last piece of the puzzle for me. I had nothing left to complain about. Sometimes I wonder why I hadn’t asked Alan Adler that question 17 years before, but I guess I wasn’t ready for the answer back then.

Although this was the final evidence that convinced me, it is no one particular piece of evidence that proves the Shroud is authentic. The entirety of evidence indicates that it is.

One of my favorite testimonials as to the authenticity of the Shroud actually came from my Jewish mother. She was originally from Poland, and had only a high school education. She heard one of my lectures, and afterwards we were driving home. She was quiet for a long time—you have to worry when a Jewish mother is quiet—so I asked her, “Mom, what did you think?” She said, “Barrie, of course it’s authentic. They wouldn’t have kept it for 2,000 years if it wasn’t.”

Now that was an excellent point. According to Jewish law, a blood-soaked shroud would have had to have been kept in the grave. To remove it, in fact, you would have been putting yourself at risk because you were violating the law.

The most plausible explanation to me for the Shroud, both because of the science and my own personal background as a Jew, is that it was the cloth that was used to wrap Jesus’ body. 

CWR: What are some of the common falsehoods about the Shroud?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Mystery of the Annunciation is the Mystery of Grace

The Mystery of the Annunciation is the Mystery of Grace | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) | Ignatius Insight

The mystery of the annunciation to Mary is not just a mystery of silence.It is above and beyond all that a mystery of grace.

We feel compelled to ask ourselves: Why did Christ really want to be born of a virgin? It was certainly possible for him to have been born of a normal marriage. That would not have affected his divine Sonship, which was not dependent on his virgin birth and could equally well have been combined with another kind of birth. There is no question here of a downgrading of marriage or of the marriage relationship; nor is it a question of better safeguarding the divine Sonship. Why then?

We find the answer when we open the Old Testament and see that the mystery of Mary is prepared for at every important stage in salvation history. It begins with Sarah, the mother of Isaac, who had been barren, but when she was well on in years and had lost the power of giving life, became, by the power of God, the mother of Isaac and so of the chosen people.

The process continues with Anna, the mother of Samuel, who was likewise barren, but eventually gave birth; with the mother of Samson, or again with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptizer. The meaning of all these events is the same: that salvation comes, not from human beings and their powers, but solely from God—from an act of his grace.

Circling the New Geocentrists: An Interview with Karl Keating

Circling the New Geocentrists: An Interview with Karl Keating | CWR 

A new book by the founder of Catholic Answers addresses the scientific mistakes, theological errors, and conspiracy-minded promoters of geocentrism

Karl Keating is founder and senior fellow at Catholic Answers (www.catholic.com), the country’s largest apologetics and evangelization organization, and the author of several books of apologetics, including Catholicism and Fundamentalism and What Catholics Really Believe. His most recent book is The New Geocentrists (Rasselas House, 2015). He spoke recently with Carl E. Olson, editor of CWR, about the book.

CWR: Your new book, The New Geocentrists, takes on a topic you’ve followed and addressed for many years. First, what is geocentrism? Second, when and why did you first become interested in it?

Keating: Just as heliocentrism is the theory that the Sun is the center of our planetary system, so geocentrism is the theory that the Earth is the center. Geocentrism is the ancient understanding, best known in the formulation given by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic theory was modified substantially in the sixteenth century by Tycho Brahe. Most modern geocentrists adhere to a variant of the Tychonian theory.

My interest in geocentrism goes back to my university days. I took a course in the history of science from Prof. Curtis Wilson, then and until his death in 2012 considered the top American expert on Johannes Kepler, who started out as Tycho’s assistant.

In Wilson’s course we took the ancient observational data, worked through the calculations, and discovered that, as observations became ever more precise, the Ptolemaic and Tychonian theories failed to account for the movements of the celestial bodies. It was this failure that led Kepler to develop his three laws of planetary motion, and it was this course that sparked my interest in geocentrism.

CWR: Why the need for a book-length treatment of geocentrism and its main proponents?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

"The Theory of Everything": A God-Haunted Film

"The Theory of Everything": A God-Haunted Film | Very Rev. Robert Barron | CWR blog

Why would a scientist assume there is or is even likely to be one unifying rational form to all things, unless he assumed there is a singular, overarching intelligence that has placed it there?

The great British physicist Stephen Hawking has emerged in recent years as a poster boy for atheism, and his heroic struggles against the ravages of Lou Gehrig’s disease have made him something of a secular saint.  The new bio-pic “The Theory of Everything” does indeed engage in a fair amount of Hawking-hagiography, but it is also, curiously, a God-haunted movie.

In one of the opening scenes, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, in a bar and tells her that he is a cosmologist.  “What’s cosmology?” she asks, and he responds, “Religion for intelligent atheists.” 

“What do cosmologists worship?” she persists.  And he replies, “A single unifying equation that explains everything in the universe.” 

Later on, Stephen brings Jane to his family’s home for dinner and she challenges him, “You’ve never said why you don’t believe in God.”  He says, “A physicist can’t allow his calculations to be muddled by belief in a supernatural creator,” to which she deliciously responds, “Sounds less of an argument against God than against physicists.”

This spirited back and forth continues throughout the film, as Hawking settles more and more into a secularist view and Jane persists in her religious belief.  As Hawking’s physical condition deteriorates, Jane gives herself to his care with truly remarkable devotion, and it becomes clear that her dedication is born of her religious conviction.  Though the great scientist concluded his most popular work with a reference to “knowing the mind of God,” it is obvious by the end of the film that he meant that line metaphorically. 

The last bit of information that we learn, just before the credits roll, is that Professor Hawking continues his quest to find the theory of everything, that elusive equation that will explain all of reality.  Do you see why I say the entire film is haunted by God?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Jesuit Philosopher Works to Demonstrate Compatibility of Faith and Science

Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, during a 2010 appearance on "The Larry King Show".

Jesuit Philosopher Works to Demonstrate Compatibility of Faith and Science | Jim Graves | CWR

An interview with Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, president of the Magis Center, about faith, reason, atheism, and Stephen Hawking's "hogwash"

Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, Ph.D., 62, is president of the Magis Center (www.magiscenter.com), headquartered in the new chancery office of the Diocese of Orange, California. The center’s goal is to demonstrate that faith and reason and science are compatible, and to combat the increasing secularization of society, particularly among young people.

Fr. Spitzer was born and reared in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was an attorney and businessman; he was one of five children. His father was Lutheran; his mother a Catholic and daily communicant. He attended college at Jesuit-run Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, initially pursuing a career in public accounting and finance.

He went on a retreat led by Fr. Gerard Steckler, a former chaplain for Thomas Aquinas College, and “he got me very interested in theology and the Church.” He began attending daily Mass and taking classes in theology and Scripture. He bought a copy of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica from a used book store and began reading it. “I saw the solidity of faith in the light of reason,” he said, “and once that happened, I was ready to go.”

He joined the Society of Jesus in 1974, and was ordained a priest in 1983.

Fr. Spitzer is the author of several books, including Healing the Culture (Ignatius Press, 2000), Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life (Ignatius Press, 2008), New Proofs for the Existence of God (Eerdmans, 2010), and Ten Universal Principles (Ignatius Press, 2010), as well as numerous articles for scholarly journals, and has delivered hundreds of lectures. He is a teacher, and served as president of Gonzaga University from 1998 to 2009. He continues to produce an enormous volume of work despite suffering from poor eyesight throughout his adult life (he has not, for example, been able to drive a car for 30 years), which has gotten worse in recent years.

Fr. Spitzer recently spoke with CWR.

CWR: Prominent atheists often frame the debate between themselves and religious people by saying you either believe in “science”—however they may define it—or what they call the fairy tales of the Bible. What response would you offer such a viewpoint?

Fr. Spitzer: To start, I wouldn’t let them get away with saying faith and science contradict one another. We’re privileged to live in a time when there is more evidence from physics for a beginning of the universe than ever before. I made this point to [atheist scientist] Stephen Hawking in 2010, when I appeared along with him on Larry King Live. Stephen knows this. (Watch the discussion online.)

The debate centered on what was before the beginning of the universe. If you say “nothing”, then there has to be a God. You can’t move from nothing to something. Even Larry King got that. He asked another physicist on the program, Leonard Mlodinow, “How about that Leonard, how can you make something from nothing?” All Leonard could do was to equivocate on the term “nothing.”

CWR: Speaking of Stephen Hawking, he made the news recently when he officially declared himself to be an atheist. Do you find atheism widespread among the scientific community, or do a handful of atheist scientists receive a lot of publicity?

Fr. Spitzer: About 45% of working scientists are declared theists. Another vocal group, let’s say 20%, describe themselves as atheists. A third group is the agnostic naturalists. They’re not sure whether or not God exists, but they don’t what to compromise the naturalistic method by believing in God. I wouldn’t describe them as atheists.

CWR: Scientists often marvel at the intricacies of what Christians call Creation, but seem to suggest that these things developed on their own without a Designer outside the system to create them. Do many scientists have blinders on when it comes to God?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Anniversary of Hiroshima: John Paul II and Fulton Sheen on the Bomb and Conversion

 

The Anniversary of Hiroshima: John Paul II and Fulton Sheen on the Bomb and Conversion | Dr. R. Jared Staudt | CWR

Some reflections from two spiritual giants of the 20th century on the bombing of Hiroshima and the new, deadly era it ushered in

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. This is not simply an historical anniversary, but a continuing call to conversion. The reflections of St. John Paul II and Ven. Fulton Sheen will show how the use of atomic weapons is still a pressing moral issue, not only in terms of warfare, but in terms of broader cultural changes.

St. John Paul II on Hiroshima

St. John Paul II made the following remarks during his visit to Hiroshima on February 25, 1981:

Two cities will forever have their names linked together, two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the only cities in the world that have had the ill fortune to be a reminder that man is capable of destruction beyond belief. Their names will forever stand out as the names of the only cities in our time that have been singled out as a warning to future generations that war can destroy human efforts to build a world of peace.

John Paul continued: “To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war.”

Going further, he stated to Japan’s ambassador to the Holy See on September 11, 1999: “The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a message to all our contemporaries, inviting all the earth’s peoples to learn the lessons of history and to work for peace with ever greater determination. Indeed, they remind our contemporaries of all the crimes committed during the Second World War against civilian populations, crimes and acts of true genocide.”

Reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, John Paul also spoke of

the haunting memory of the atomic explosions which struck first Hiroshima and then Nagasaki in August 1945. … Fifty years after that tragic conflict, which ended some months later also in the Pacific with the terrible events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with the subsequent surrender of Japan, it appears ever more clearly as “a self-destruction of mankind” (Centessiumus Annus, 18). War is in fact, if we look at it clearly, as much a tragedy for the victors as for the vanquished.

John Paul makes clear that we have not yet dealt with all the effects of these bombs—bombs which have inflicted our country as well as Japan.

Ven. Fulton Sheen on the moral effects of the bomb

Ven. Fulton Sheen cuts right to the heart of these effects, ironically when talking to school students about sex. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com

Time to Abandon the Genesis Story?

Time to Abandon the Genesis Story? | Dr. Dennis Bonnette | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Legitimate science can never assert that Adam and Eve are impossible. It might claim that they are improbable, but never impossible. God’s omnipotence can always make short work of long odds.

Is the Genesis story of a literal Adam and Eve a tale that is no longer rationally defensible in the first half of our 21st century? ¹

Do the findings of contemporary science exclude Catholic belief in a literal Adam and Eve?

What is the actual teaching of the Catholic Magisterium on this subject today?

While the texts of Genesis begin by referring to “man” in Genesis 1:26, by Genesis 5:3, we are told that Adam begot his son, Seth. Since generic “man” cannot generate an individual son, this latter text clearly refers to an actual individual man named Adam. ²

Informed Catholics know that Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical, Humani generis, insisted upon an actual Adam and Eve, and warned the faithful against embracing the conjectural opinion of polygenism, “which maintains that, either, after Adam, there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him, as from the first parent of all, or, that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.” ³ That same encyclical clearly stated that if scientific opinions “are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can, in no way, be admitted.” ⁴

Still, Humani generis was promulgated more than half a century ago. In light of scientific views emerging since that time, particularly claims made on behalf of paleoanthropology and genetics, many academics—including priests who deal with evolutionary thought—now consider that belief in a literal Adam and Eve to be a form of archaic mythology.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Filling in the Intellectual Gaps

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Filling in the Intellectual Gaps | Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, SJ | CWR

The narrative of a supposed antagonism between the Church and science often relies on errors of omission.

Several people have asked me questions about the accuracy of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s portrayal of the Catholic Church in the recent series Cosmos, which is airing on FOX. There is an important adage at the foundation of logic: “There are far more errors of omission than commission.” Regrettably Tyson’s presentation of the Catholic Church—and religion in general—in opposition to science presents serious errors of omission, so much so as to be incredibly misleading. I will attempt here to fill in a few of the many intellectual gaps in that oversimplified and lacking account.

The natural sciences, and philosophical reflection upon them, have been an integral part of the Catholic intellectual tradition since the time of the Copernican revolution. Indeed, Catholic priests and clerics played a central role in the development of natural science. For example, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the originator of the heliocentric universe and its mathematical justification, was a minor Catholic cleric.[1] Nicolas Steno (1638-1686), a Catholic Danish bishop, is acknowledged to be one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and geology.[2] The Augustinian monk and abbot Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) is recognized as the founder of modern genetics.[3] Msgr. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and colleague of Albert Einstein, is acknowledged to be the founder of contemporary cosmology through his discovery of the Big Bang Theory in 1927.[4] There are many other Catholic clerics who were integrally involved in the foundation and development of the natural sciences.[5]

Some have contended that the Catholic Church manifested an “antiscientific attitude” during the controversies of Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. But those controversies were not about the veracity of scientific method or its seeming heliocentric conclusion.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Cosmos and One More Telling of the Tired Myth

by Fr. Robert Barron | CWR Blog

Seth MacFarlane, well known atheist and cartoonist, is the executive producer of the remake of “Cosmos,” which recently made its national debut.  The first episode featured, along with the science, an animated feature dealing with the sixteenth century Dominican friar Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake by Church officials.  A brooding statue of Bruno stands today in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome on the very spot where the unfortunate friar was put to death. In MacFarlane’s cartoon, Bruno is portrayed as a hero of modern science, and church officials are, without exception, depicted as wild-eyed fanatics and unthinking dogmatists. 

As I watched this piece, all I could think was…here we go again. Avatars of the modern ideology feel obligated to tell their great foundation myth over and over, and central to that narrative is that both the physical sciences and liberal political arrangements emerged only after a long twilight struggle against the reactionary forces of religion, especially the Catholic religion.  Like the effigies brought out to be burned on Guy Fawkes Day, the bugbear of intolerant and violent Catholicism has to be exposed to ridicule on a regular basis.

I will leave to the side for the moment the issue of liberal politics’ relation to religion, but I feel obliged, once more, to expose the dangerous silliness of the view that Catholicism and the modern sciences are implacable foes.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

15 Lies at the Basis of Our Culture

15 Lies at the Basis of Our Culture | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | CWR

Each of these lies, on examination, denies or violates a principle of reason or a fact of science

A culture is a complex composition of the manners, rites, language, laws, ideas, and customs of a people. These sources describe what a given people hold to be true, or at least valid. How they act to one another, how they build things, how and what they punish and reward, how they think of birth and death—all these make up the outlines of a given culture.

Some thinkers want to say that truth and falsity are relative to a culture (multi-culturalism). Whatever the culture does or holds becomes its own absolute in that domain. Any outside revelation or philosophy must accommodate itself to the culture, not vice versa. No such thing as a natural law or universal philosophy, whereby one might judge the content of a culture, is acknowledged.

Catholicism has long held that its essential revelation is directed to all “cultures.” Whatever is good can be accepted. If anything is found that is alien to revelation, it would need to be modified in light of universal truths. The supposed “neutrality” or autonomy of any culture, however, makes it almost impossible to judge real differences between good and evil, truth and falsity. If such differences do not objectively exist as the same for all cultures, it does not make much difference what we hold or what culture we belong to. In effect, they are all—Western, Muslim, Chinese, Hindu, Byzantine, Japanese, African, Latino, modern, ancient—meaningless.

For those who hold universal principles of reason and revelation, current Western culture, in which the American polity participates, is, in many fundamental things, based on lies. The devil, interestingly enough, is said to be the “father of lies.” This attribution indicates that the devil bases his own life on the lie of his own self-worth. It also means that he can convince human beings—who can imitate him—that the lies they live by are “true.” They are not to be challenged or repented. This “kingdom of lies” is not divided within itself. One lie follows from another. All converge to deny what man and creation are about.

What are these “lies” on which our present culture is based? Each one of them, on examination, denies or violates a principle of reason or a fact of science. But they are all strenuously adhered to as “truth” because they allow us to do what we want. They enable us to avoid responsibilities for our chosen actions. We insist that they are our “rights,” our “privileges,” or our “liberties.”

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Facing the Fallout of Artificial Reproductive Technologies

Facing the Fallout of Artificial Reproductive Technologies | Carrie Gress | CWR

An interview with Jennifer Lahl, founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture

“Egg or sperm donors don’t help other people have children, they help other people have their children,” says Jennifer Lahl, founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture.

Lahl spoke with Catholic World Report about her work to assist the most defenseless affected by the rapidly changing and largely unregulated world of biotechnology.

The CBC has produced three original, award-winning documentary films: Anonymous Father’s Day (2011), about children of sperm donors who long to know more about their biological fathers; Eggsploitation (2010), which uncovers the serious risks associated with human egg donation; and Lines That Divide (2009), focusing upon the stem-cell research debate.

CWR: Your work at the Center for Bioethics and Culture tries to help the most vulnerable affected by biotechnology. Other than, say, “spare embryos” from IVF, who else are you looking to assist?

Lahl: Our work focuses on end-of-life issues, like euthanasia, and “making life” issues via assisted reproductive technologies. The most vulnerable we seek to give a voice to are those facing terminal illness, disabilities, [the] suffering (those society says have a life not worth living), and also the stakeholders in assisted reproductive technology (ART), e.g., egg donors, surrogate mothers, and the children created by these technologies.

Of course, we do advocate against sperm donation too, and it may be a stretch to say a sperm donor is vulnerable, but we seek to educate them on the realities of donor conception.  I often say to egg donors (and it could be said of sperm donation), you didn’t help a woman (or a couple or man) have a baby, you helped her have your baby. 

CWR: The intense emotional desire to be a parent is the main motivation behind surrogacy and technologies like IVF. Your work, however, especially your films, focuses on different sets of emotions beyond those of potential parents. Tell us about those.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Faith, Resurrection, and The Dimensions of Heaven

Detail from "The Resurrection" by Piero della Francesca (c. 1460).

Faith, Resurrection, and The Dimensions of Heaven | Thomas M. Doran | CWR blog

Honest science and reason, seasoned with a healthy does of humility, are never adversaries to faith.

The Resurrection stories are replete with people failing to recognize Jesus until he says or does something evocative, puzzling even serious Christians. Skeptics use these appearances to suggest that Resurrection witnesses succumbed to a kind of transference, seeming to recognize Jesus in one of his followers, or succumbed to a wish-fulfilling delusion.

Christians counter that if skeptics were correct, why would the chroniclers of the Gospels have admitted that these Resurrection witnesses did not immediately recognize the risen Christ? Why not sanitize the Resurrection stories to delete this inconvenient fact?

Understanding the Resurrection is beyond human comprehension, and Christians believe that getting their minds around it completely is of little importance in relation to conforming themselves entirely to Christ. Still, is there a way, a coherent explanation if you will, that might give us some insight, however feeble, into how a person could be unrecognizable while remaining the same person, how a person could move through locked doors, how a person could be transported instantaneously from place to place?

Newtonian physics made no allowances for a Resurrection event in which person might move at will across time and space, in which he might – while remaining substantial – pass through closed doors, in which he might be the same person who multiplied the loaves and changed water into wine, while not being immediately recognizable to his closest disciples. Such a Jesus was ghostly or allegorical from the perspective of Newtonian science.

A clue to an explanation for how these appearances might be reconciled with science and reason can be found in the 1884 book, Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions, by the mathematician and theologian, Edwin A. Abbott, who uses the example of “flat” creatures that live in only two dimensions (length and width) on a plane, or on the surface of a sheet of paper, for example.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.