During the centenary commemoration of the birth of Albert Einstein,¹ celebrated by the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences on November 10, 1979, Pope John Paul II spoke on the profound harmony between the truth of faith and the truth of science in the following terms.

I feel myself to be fully one with my predecessor Pius XI, and with the two who followed him in the Chair of Peter, in inviting the members of the Academy of the Sciences and all scientists with them, to bring about "the ever more noble and intense progress of the sciences, without asking any more from them; and this is because in this excellent proposal and this noble work there consists that mission of serving truth with which we charge them."²

The search for truth is the fundamental task of science. The researcher who moves on this plane of science feels all the fascination of St. Augustine's words, Intellectum valde ama,³ "love intelligence greatly," and its proper function, which is to know the truth. Pure science is a good in itself which deserves to be greatly loved, for it is knowledge, the perfection of human beings in their intelligence. Even before its technical applications, it should be loved for itself, as an integral part of human culture. Fundamental science is a universal boon, which every nation should cultivate in full freedom from all forms of international servitude or intellectual colonialism.

The freedom of fundamental research

Fundamental research should be free vis-à-vis political and economic powers, which should cooperate in its development, without fettering its creativity or enslaving it to their own ends. As with all other truth, scientific truth has, in fact, to render an account only to itself and to the supreme truth that is God, the creator of humankind and of all that is.

On its second plane, science turns toward practical applications, which find their full development in various technologies. In the phase of its concrete applications, science is necessary for humanity in order to satisfy the just requirements of life, and to conquer the various evils that threaten it. There is no doubt that applied science has rendered and will render humankind immense services, especially if it is inspired by love, regulated by wisdom, and accompanied by the courage that defends it against the undue interference of all tyrannical powers. Applied science should be allied with conscience, so that, in the triad, science-technology-conscience, it may be the cause of the true good of humankind, whom it should serve.

Unhappily, as I have had occasion to say in my encyclical Redemptor hominis, "Humankind today seems constantly to be menaced by what it constructs…. In this there seems to consist the principal chapter of the drama of human existence today" (§ 15). Humankind should emerge victorious from this drama, which threatens to degenerate into tragedy, and should once more find its authentic sovereignity over the world and its full mastery of the things it has made. At this present hour, as I wrote in the same encyclical, "the fundamental significance of this "sovereignity" and this 'mastery' of humankind over the visible world, assigned to it as a task by the Creator, consists in the priority of ethics over technology, in the primacy of person over things, and in the superiority of spirit over matter" (§ 16).

This threefold superiority is maintained to the extent that there is conserved the sense of human transcendence over the world and God's transcendence over humankind. Exercising its mission as guardian and defender of both these transcendences, the church desires to assist science to conserve its ideal purity on the plane of fundamental research, and to help it fulfill its service to humankind on the plane of practical applications.

The church freely recognizes, on the other hand, that it has benefited from science. It is to science, among other things, that there must be attributed that which Vatican II has said with regard to certain aspects of modern culture:

New conditions in the end affect the religious life itself…. The soaring of the critical spirit purifies that life from a magical conception of the world and from superstitious survivals, and demands a more and more personal and active adhesion to faith; many are the souls who in this way have come to a more living sense of God.⁴

The advantage of collaboration

Collaboration between religion and modern science is to the advantage of both, and in no way violates the autonomy of either. Just as religion requires religious freedom, so science legitimately requires freedom of research. The Second Vatican Council, after having affirmed, together with Vatican I, the just freedom of the arts and human disciplines in the domain of their proper principles and method, solemnly recognized "the legitimate autonomy of culture and particularly that of the sciences."⁵

On this occasion of the solemn commemoration of Einstein, I wish to confirm anew the declarations of Vatican II on the autonomy of science in its function of research into the truth inscribed in nature by the hand of God. Filled with admiration for the genius of the great scientist, a genius in which there is revealed the imprint of the Creator Spirit, the Church, without in any way passing a judgment on the doctrine concerning the great systems of the universe, since that is not its area of competence, nevertheless proposes this doctrine to the reflection of theologians in order to discover the harmony existing between scientific and revealed truth.

Mr. President, in your address you have rightly said that Galileo and Einstein have characterized an epoch. The greatness of Galileo is known to all, as is that of Einstein; but with this difference, that by comparison with the one whom we are today honoring before the College of Cardinals in the Apostolic Palace, the first had much to suffer—we cannot conceal it—at the hands of men and departments within the church. The Second Vatican Council has recognized and deplored certain undue interventions: "May we be permitted to deplore"—it is written in § 36 of the Conciliar Constitution Gaudium et Spes—"certain attitudes that have existed among Christians themselves, insufficiently informed as to the legitimate autonomy of science. Sources of tension and conflict, they have led many to consider that science and faith are opposed." The reference to Galileo is clearly expressed in the note appended to this text, which cites the volume Vita e opere di Galileo Galilei by Pio Paschini, published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

In order to go beyond this position adopted by the Council, I desire that theologians, scientists, and historians, animated by a spirit of sincere collaboration, deepen their examination of the Galileo case, and, in a loyal recognition of errors, from whatever side they come. I also desire that they bring about the disappearance of the mistrust that, in many souls, this affair still arouses in opposition to a fruitful concord between science and faith, between the church and the world. I give my full support to this task, which can honor the truth of faith and of science, and open the door to future collaboration.

The case of the scientist Galileo Galilei

May I be permitted, gentlemen, to submit to your attention and your reflection, some points that seem to me important for placing the Galileo affair in its true light, in which agreements between religion and science are more important than those misunderstandings from which there has arisen the bitter and grievous conflict that has dragged itself out in the course of the following centuries.

He who is justly entitled the founder of modern physics, has explicitly declared that the truths of faith and of science can never contradict each other: "Holy Scripture and nature equally proceed from the divine Word, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as the very faithful executor of God's commands," as he wrote in his letter to Fr. Benedetto Castelli on December 21, 1613.⁶ The Second Vatican Council does not differ in its mode of expression; it even adopts similar expressions when it teaches: "Methodical research, in all domains of knowledge, if it follows moral norms, will never really be opposed to faith; both the realities of this world and of the faith find their origin in the same God."⁷

In scientific research Galileo perceived the presence of the Creator who stimulates it, anticipates and assists its intuitions, by acting in the very depths of its spirit. In connection with the telescope, he wrote at the commencement of the Sidereus Nuntius, ("the starry messenger"), recalling some of his astronomical discoveries: Quae omnia ope perspicilli a me excogitavi divina prius illuminante gratia, paucis abhinc diebus reperta, atque observata fuerunt,⁸ "I worked all these things out with the help of the telescope and under the prior illumination of divine grace they were discovered and observed by me a few days ago."

The Galilean recognition of divine illumination in the spirit of the scientist finds an echo in the already quoted text of the Conciliar Constitution on the church in the modern world: "One who strives, with perseverance and humility, to penetrate the secret of things, is as if led by the hand of God, even if not aware of it."⁹ The humility insisted on by the conciliar text is a spiritual virtue equally necessary for scientific research as for adhesion to the faith. Humility creates a climate favorable to dialogue between the believer and the scientist, it is a call for illumination by God, already known or still unknown but loved, in one case as in the other, on the part of the one who is searching for truth.

Galileo has formulated important norms of an epistemological character, which are confirmed as indispensable for placing Holy Scripture and science in agreement. In his letter to the grand duchess of Tuscany, Christine of Lorraine, he reaffirms the truth of Scripture:

Holy Scripture can never propose an untruth, always on condition that one penetrates to its true meaning, which—I think nobody can deny—is often hidden and very different from that which the simple signification of the words seems to indicate.¹⁰

Galileo introduced the principle of an interpretation of the sacred books that goes beyond the literal meaning but is in conformity with the intention and type of exposition proper to each one of them. As he affirms, it is necessary that "the wise who expound it show its true meaning."

The ecclesiastical magisterium admits the plurality of rules of interpretation of Holy Scripture. It expressly teaches, in fact, with the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu of Pius XII, the presence of different genres in the sacred books and hence the necessity of interpretations conforming to the character of each of them.

An Honest and loyal solution of long-standing oppositions

The various agreements that I have recalled do not by themselves solve all the problems of the Galileo affair, but they help to create a point of departure favorable to their honorable solution, a frame of mind propitious for an honest and loyal resolving of long-standing oppositions.

The existence of this Pontifical Academy of Science, with which Galileo was to some extent associated through the venerable institution that preceded the academy of today, in which eminent scientists participate, is a visible sign that demonstrates to all, with no racial or religious discrimination, the profound harmony that can exist between the truths of science and the truths of faith.

Notes

¹ Albert Einstein, illustrious scientist of our time (1879-1955), was the discoverer of the theories of special and general relativity. According to special relativity, measurements of space and time depend on the speed of light which transmits signals. One of the most remarkable consequences of special relativity is the equivalence of mass and energy (e = mc², c being the velocity of light). Whereas special relativity introduces time as a coordinate of all measurements (four-dimensional space-time), general relativity geometrizes the distribution of material masses, by assigning to each point of space-time a curvature determined by the mass located there. In addition, general relativity predicts that a moving mass will emit gravitational waves, a prediction that seems to have been recently confirmed in radio astronomy by experimental means. The hypothesis of universal gravitation, proposed by Newton, must thus be revised, and the conceptual difference between inertial and gravitational mass disappears. Traditional concepts of mathematics and physics are thus radically transformed.

² Motu Proprio In Multis Solaciis of October 28, 1936, concerning the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: A.A.S., 28 (1936) 424.

³ St. Augustine, Epist. 120, 3, 13; P.L. 33, 49.

⁴Gaudium et Spes, 7.

⁵ Ibid., 59.

⁶ Galileo Galilei, "Letter to Father Benedetto Castelli," December 21, 1613; EN, V, 282-85.

⁷Gaudium et Spes, 36.

⁸ Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuntius, Venetiis, apud Thomam Baglionum, MDCX, fol. 4.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Galileo Galilei, "Letter to Christine of Lorraine"; EN, V, 315.