Where the Catholic Church Stands on Science

The Catholic Church has a conflicted history with the scientific world. But with the election of Pope Francis I, can we expect that to change? Laci Green shows us how far the Church has come, and how far they have left to go.

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"More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Church's most infamous wrongs."

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DNews is a show about the science of everyday life. We post two new videos every day of the week.

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[belleobscurytee]

The Church actually started the philosophically inquiries which lead to the development of a scientific method (e.g. Roger Bacon, 13th century Franciscan).  Galileo was in trouble for reinterpreting scripture to fit his discoveries (spiritualizing certain astronomical anomalies found in the Old Testament).   Galileo's research itself was paid for by Church authorities (really the only people funding humanist advancements at the time).   If you read any of the Scholastic works of the Medieval age you will know that the Church had no problem with laws of nature (it made up the bulk of what they were studying.) In fact, the prevailing attitude was, to discover more about how the world worked was to grow closer to the mind of God.  Read a book and stop regurgitating pseudo-history.

[christopherlove]

What about Fr.  Georges Lemaitre (Father of the Big Bang Theory)? What about Fr. Gregor Mendel (Father of genetics)? Or Francis Bacon?

[AarontheGreatXCII-kngj]

*the Bible, schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, hospices, etc. are the fruits of the Holy Catholic Church*

[DFLaval]

The Catholic Church has always supported science. As indicated by another contributor, it has two observatories. The scientist that proposed the Big Bang theory was a priest. Galileo's case runs deeper and his house arrest was in an estate with some rich friends, hardly alone and despondent. Even areas of conflict have deeper reasons. The Church believes that you need to change behaviour to change some of the problems like AIDS and Climate Change. Science needs to better us but we need to be better ourselves in our actions.

[Porelorexeus]

As a Catholic I think the Church isn't given credit were credit is due since Catholic priests have historically been scientists as well. Gregor Mendel was a Catholic priest and is known as the father of modern genetics - he was born in 1822. Another Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre was the first to propose the expansion of the universe. So, the Church was very 'down with the science' before John Paul. That's a pretty flawed view of the Catholic view of evolution as well because our view would be if God had made it a perfect system then we would be perfect, but then the fall of man comes into play - basically we never condemned the view of evolution to my knowledge and so the acceptance wasn't like a major redemption.

I think the best way to avoid STDs is to practice abstinence. While condoms do prevent them from transferring they also encourage risky behavior.

Adult stem cells are better because you body will accept your own cells much better then someone else's; it is also not true that adult stem cells can't develop into any tissue because there are methods to do that. There is also a big moral concern involved in farming human embryos, which is more than a theoretical baby, which are by definition alive - bacteria is in the realm of the living and as a human I place high value in human life. Although if you really want to us embryonic stem cells then you can get them from a less morally horrendous method like the umbilical cord. I think to it's screwing the issue to say that it's the Church being behind the times; maybe you are behind on moral considerations. If even if it was just a potential life, would it be just to stop that development, or even to farm them with the intent for them not to become life; I propose this to start were you are.

The Church can't develop policy on climate change. We can only endorse stuff. All we have state wise is the Vatican which is really really small. I'm pretty sure road island is bigger.

The whole thing with Galileo was weird because the pope and Galileo were friends, but then Galileo wrote a book and the pope misunderstood it as an insult which lead to the house arrest. To me it's more of a reason why we shouldn't give people loads of power.

[ShawnRavenfire]

The thing that people need to keep in mind is that the Catholic Church is a RELIGIOUS organization, not a scientific one.  It's not their responsibility to teach or promote science.  It's just nice if they do.  (Incidentally, I went to a Catholic high school, and they had a great science program.)

[americanman]

The condemnations of Pope John you refer to (the condemnations of 1277) were made by Bishop Tempier of Paris after he was called by the Pope to review Aristotelian science. The condemnations encouraged skepticism of Aristotle's ideas, and are considered by many historians to be "the birth of modern science" as stated by Historian Pierre Duhem (as the condemnations called many Scholastic ideas into question, including some supported by Thomas Aquinas). I don't care if you chose to be ignorant in historical matters, but if you are going to speak on them please at least do a little research. 

[ImperatorRom]

Why does it always have to be science vs religion, theist vs atheists, this discussion is almost old as the human species. Can't we put aside our differences and work for a better world? Let people believe what they want, if it doesn't interfere with other people liberties or causes them harm, who the hell cares what religion they are, or if they don't believe in any God or an Higher Power. Just respect one another, is that so hard? We are all human! This is so frustrating, with this mindset we won't last much longer in this world... 
I'm gonna talk a bit about myself, just to get you guys some perspective. I'm Catholic, I've been taught to respect and tolerate others, I'm not here to push my religion on anyone, believe in what you want, if you're a good person, you're alright with me! I'm also a nuclear astrophysicist, there's no reason one can't be a believer and a scientist at the same time.
Physics tries to describe Nature as best as possible, sincerely for me, that search for knowledge is as close as possible we will get understand the Universe, God, Humanity, etc...
But enough of me, you're not gonna believe me anyway... on with the flame wars... so passes the glory of Mankind...

[vinceanthonyboniel]

thus is a mere rush judgement towards the church. please consider how the catholic church helped in the flourishing of science as a response to God's call to "stewardship".

[christophergreeley]

Everyone boos the Catholic church in the whole Galileo thing and talk about it in our classrooms as the ultimate display of close mindedness and ignorance and why modern acedmia often distances itself from relegion and why to question relegion and encourages the student not to belive or put questioning as the ultimate virtue of relegion. However if you look at the historical evidence (including in the dark ages) you will find that the acedemic (with the exception of burning Pagan text with were later copied/perserved by monks), would have considered himself free, yes scientists, artists, theologins, philosophers, and more, under the rule of the church, that the church established the college system and medical system, written records, and created the laws of evidence and belived in Aristotlian and logic (sort of, by that I mean ideas like of noncontradiction principle). Also study St. Thomas Aquinas, and his debate/questioning format in educational (I think even fairly open to the public possibly) forums, far more open minded than the curent university. Galileo and Copenicis were the exception rather than the rule.Also I don't really like a lot of what Laci Green says, and I kinda consider her pretty much a murderer for promoting abortion/pro - choice philosophy (and probably voting for it) and find i funny that she praises the right to life right-to-life, however, it's sad to see how extreme she's become and see how her ideology continues to spiral out of control and eat itself. I use to consider myself a feminist until I realized that most feminist were pro-choice, and it wasn't just an ideology of getting rid of the ridiculous sexual harassment and crap women go (and I didn't realize LGBT was a part of it but I was in support of all that) through in general, but also had all kinds of weird uneeded extremism. (not to say I haven't done the same once for a while, just kinda sad, not in a intentionally duper condecending manner) consider it no longer necessary as a Catholic, I find Catholic principal stand up for most of those things and people will disagree, but Jesus Christ and tells us to love our neighbor, and if I love my neighbor, I most probably will want to protect them against sexism/negitive sexism, unjust discrimination, sexual assault and harassment etc. Catholicsm also tells us to respect women and men and women are both made in God's image, etc.

[StuartHerrington]

As a side note, the vatican have scientists that are academically trained, and disprove creationists theorys etc.

[ShawnRavenfire]

Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, Galileo was put on trial for refusing to publish his findings, not for having made them.  Something like a hundred years earlier, Copernicus (a priest)  proposed similar ideas, and the Vatican was totally okay with it.

[ChachiTelevision]

Citing info...

1) "The Catholic Church: Builder of Western Civilication" by Tom Woods (he's a pretty excellent historian and you can even watch his special on youtube -- here's the Galileo case: /watch?v=hlE7xvc4LoY )

2) "Galileo Goes to Jail and other Myths about Science and Religion" by Ronald Numbers

There are the only two books I read that discuss Galileo, but my position on this is apparently illustrated nicely in "The Achievement of Galileo."

Can you cite your position?

[americanman]

@Chigs1764 There was no "re-configuring" of our interpretation of Genesis in reaction to the Theory of Evolution. To paraphrase St. Augustine (354-430) on Genesis "It's an allegory". 

[JRoberto]

Catholics believe God created what science studies. Physics, biology, everything. (The church believes God created physics priciples and other stuff science can discover.) But, even if was very useful, would you sacrifice a human life for the development of science? I think all good people (catholic or not) would agree we shouldn't.

[ilkka]

Did you know that Galileo was actually a christian? He believed in Christ. And many other people who have made huge discoveries have also been christian prophets. Did you know that the universe is actually thousands if not millions if not billions of times larger than we think?

[SandraL]

What is this girl saying? The Catholic Church has ALWAYS supported science!!! I think this channel needs to do more research before posting inaccurate videos!

[minorityvoice]

she really doesnt know the churches stance on science nor does she have her history right. But its ok.

[Javiermn]

Anyone who is afraid to talk about religion is really afraid of their own ignorance on the topic and doesn't want to learn. Anyone who talks about religion as if it's the only thing there is in the world is ignorant of their own ignorance. This is a healthy and positive topic that I'm glad Laci reported on. Personally I want to see what the new Pope has to say about the field of biomedical research.

[frostreaper]

Boo this girl needs more education before forming an opinion and following others!