The goal is to make the church and the public more aware of the scientific work the Vatican does - who even knows that the pope has an observatory, and why? It’s also to teach Catholics about their own intellectual tradition. Instead of living in Italy, he will be based in Arizona and will travel much of the year. Yet Consolmagno has always seen himself as a teacher as much as a researcher, and now he will be able to educate people even as he raises money in his new post as head of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. Last month, he was given the Carl Sagan Medal, one of the most prestigious awards within planetary science.
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Preaching that old-time Catholicism of faith and reason is what Consolmagno will now be doing almost full time.įor two decades, he was curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest in the world, and he wrote scientific books and delivered research papers. And that is exactly the opposite of what God wants.” “The thing that really bothers me,” he said, “is the creeping fundamentalism among Catholics who don’t know their own faith and who are desperately trying to do the right thing and to be faithful believers, thinking that they have to sacrifice their reason to follow God. If you think that what a lot of people believe is nonsense, then maybe you don’t understand what it is they believe.”īut such debates are mostly a sideline for Consolmagno. “But I’d like to have a sense of mutual respect. “I don’t mind someone disagreeing with my views on religion,” he said.
Unlike many apologists, Consolmagno isn’t fixated on the so-called “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins who wield science like a cudgel to bash religion, and believers. If you reject reason, you are rejecting God,” Consolmagno said. While the longer answer is spelled out in the book, the two Jesuits are really aiming their lens at a bigger goal: to show how people of faith can also believe in science. Their book is titled Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?, another question that Consolmagno is asked a lot in his many speeches and media appearances, and one that Pope Francis - a fellow Jesuit and a trained chemist - has posed as part of his focus on Catholic inclusivity.Ĭonsolmagno’s short answer is “yes.” But “only if she asks!” (The other is on a mountaintop near Tucson, Ariz.)
Paul Mueller, who heads the Jesuit community at Castel Gandolfo, a hilltop town near Rome where the Vatican’s main telescope is located.
If those are the sort of musings you enjoy, and a level of ambiguity you can handle, then you will like the new book that Consolmagno has written with his fellow Jesuit, Fr. “Whether it’s something he heard from Mary, or whether it’s something he made up, why was it included?” “But what’s even more interesting to me is that this story was included, of all the stories that Matthew might have included,” he said, growing animated as he does when diving into his twin vocations of science and theology. “It’s fascinating to realize that there actually are a couple of quite plausible things it could be. “It’s fun speculation,” Consolmagno said, smiling through a graying beard while sitting on a bench in Central Park on an unseasonably warm afternoon. Guy Consolmagno gets a lot of questions this time of year about the star of Bethlehem that led the Magi to Jesus in the manger.Ĭonsolmagno is an astronomer - a planetary scientist for the Vatican observatory, in fact - who specializes in asteroids and meteorites, the very sort that may well have been the famous “star” described in the Gospel of Matthew.
New York - With Christmas just around the corner, Br.
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