How the nexus of science and religion has had major impact over 2000 years

But other technological and scientific breakthroughs -- including the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions, and the invention of the birth control pill -- also had effects for good or ill, said the scholars, who have been assembled by The Evangelist as part of its preparation for the coming millennium.

The panel is made up of historians and theologians from Catholic universities throughout the U.S. This month, there were asked: "What technological/medical/scientific breakthrough or event has had the greatest impact on Christianity for good or ill?"

Their answers are arrayed here and on the next two pages.

PRINTING PRESS

"It has had both a positive and negative impact on Christianity," she added. "It makes possible the rapid, easy and economical diffusion of the Scriptures, other inspirational texts and pastoral guidance. At the same time, it has made the diffusion of error rapid, easy and very profitable.

"It has also made it possible for people to believe that all they need to do is read religious texts without being members of a Church community which puts the words into action."

Agreeing with her choice is Dr. John Dwyer, who teaches at St. Bernard's Institute in Albany. He called movable type "a major factor in the spread of literacy, and it made Scripture available to a vastly larger audience than ever before. Indirectly, but most significantly, the invention of printing challenged a Church which had grown skilled in resisting the call for reform to submit to criticism by Scripture. From that point on, the Church could no longer evade the call to place itself under the judgment of God's word.

"Finally, although it took over four centuries, the advances in the study of Scripture, which owe so much to the invention of printing, effected radical reform in the Catholic Church, because it was critical scriptural scholarship which motivated all the reforms mandated by the Second Vatican Council."

Dr. William R. Barnett, associate professor of religious studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, said that the invention of the printing press "had a somewhat ambiguous impact on Christianity. First with the Protestant Reformation, but also following the Catholic Reform of the 16th century, the printing press put the Bible in the hands of the common people and stimulated the growth of literacy in Western culture. Such a technological breakthrough allowed all kinds of documents to be circulated widely and rapidly, thereby leading to an explosion and fragmentation of opinion, for good or ill.

"Moreover, as a result of the ready availability of texts, Christianity became even more a religion of the word or the book, a development of immense importance for the worldwide mission movement of the 19th and 20th centuries."

What the printing press led to -- "the entire spectrum of electronic communications: telephone, radio, television, movies and now the internet" -- was the choice of Rev. James Wiseman, OSB, from the Department of Theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

"On the one hand, this has permitted the communication and transmission of wonderful and inspiring material (religious ceremonies, addresses by holy men and women like Mother Teresa, Mass for shut-ins). At the same time, these media have provided all sorts of harmful data to persons who would not otherwise have been infected by them (information on how to make bombs, sleazy entertainment etc.). What we allow into our minds from these sources can be just as healthy or harmful to ourselves as the kinds of food we eat."

Concurring with his selection was Rev. Charles D. Skok, professor emeritus of religious studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He cited "the negative, even deadly, aspects of the media. Christianity tends to be found lacking in a positive way in the media. The good news is that the media can become a powerful force for Christianity when Christians learn how to use this breakthrough. Now the media are a jungle. Christianity must enter this jungle with good news that the jungle can be confronted and converted with the voice that comes from the Word of God and the Church."

BIRTH CONTROL

"It has revolutionized women's understanding of themselves as not defined biologically and led to a new effort at equality between women and men," said Rev. James Dallen, professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. "That, in turn, has meant new public roles for women and even the question of ordination.

"Most significantly, the controversy over contraception enabled troubled Catholics and Catholics who disagreed with Church officials to come of age as responsible adults. How that shift will affect [the Church] in the next millennium is speculative but hope-filled. Yet the practice and the defense of contraception (or responsible parenthood) has also manifested itself as a 'contraceptive mentality' that sometimes becomes irresponsible or self-centered parenting."

Agreeing with that choice is Rev. Conrad Harkins, associate professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, who said that "the invention of the modern contraceptive pill deeply affected the sexual mores of Christian people, and their relationship to the teaching authority of the Church. The first result of the pill was the divorce between sexual activity and human life. Sexual activity was now separated from the responsibility of parenting and became a form of recreation.

"The widespread use of the pill," he continued, "led to a false expectation that Church authorities would accept the new order of immorality. When Pope Paul VI issued his famous defense of human life in the encyclical 'Humanae Vitae' in 1968, some Catholic theologians and priests at first led a revolt against the teaching and then sought to quietly ignore it. Many Catholics, often thrown into confusion by the wavering leadership of the clergy, came gradually to ignore or at least devalue the teaching authority of the Church."

The result among some Catholics, he continued, is the "idea of local Church democracies in which the people decide the doctrine in preference to an international or Catholic Church, whose leader was seen as out-of-touch with the real world. The learned and courageous, patient and compassionate Pope John Paul II has tirelessly and vigorously sought to proclaim the Gospel, apply it to contemporary society, and safeguard, preserve and extend the unity of the Church."

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

"This affected all areas of life," he explained, "but the Church was, in certain ways, particularly unprepared to meet this challenge. Occurring at the time of several major democratic and 'liberal' revolutions, industrialization seemed to be yet another challenge to the old order. In many ways, the Church resisted change; in other ways, it was unable or unwilling to see the effects of that change all around."

As a result, he continued, "many members of the working class disengaged from or abandoned the Church in the 19th century. That was certainly not the end of the story, but it has impacted upon the Church and the world down to the present day."

The same era was chosen by Rev. Ben Fiore, SJ, a professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, who said that the Industrial Revolution led to "the formation of urban working classes [which] presented the Church with a new social reality. The agricultural economies and oligarchical forms of social organization changed even more radically than they did with the rise of cities and the trades/crafts bourgeoisie from the late medieval period through the Renaissance.

"The Church now found itself challenged to relate to a new human situation of persons detached from the land and traditional social patterns. It also found itself confronted with new social/economic movements (such as socialism) whose ideologies competed for the allegiance of the working classes."

Father Fiore noted that, "threatened and confused, the Church at first opposed the new developments and the new social movements. Only with Pope John Paul II and his encyclical 'On Human Work' did the Church come to terms with the needs and desires of the working classes and find legitimate claims with which it could agree, and which it could defend and promote.

"The Polish pope, who matured in his ministry in a workers' republic, was able to draw positive insights from the ideology of communism/socialism and with them build a bridge to working people. The Church has emerged as a defender of the worker against the excesses both of communism and of capitalism and, as such, is a legitimate and modern defender of the rights of most of its flock, as well as most of the rest of persons in today's industrialized and industrializing world."

EMBRYOLOGY

"The breakthroughs that have resulted from cloning or in vitro fertilization have the potential for positive benefits, such as the saving of lives or the possibility of a childless couple having their long desired child," he said. "Yet, the threat of these same 'breakthroughs' from the Catholic perspective is the devaluation of the individual and the reduction of persons to the status of things.

"As developments in this area of science and medicine continue," he said, "theologians must grapple with significant issues that the scientific community cannot address: When does a cell require the respect we give to a human person? to what level of organic and cellular complexity will we assign the status of human person and recognize the existence of a soul? what is the meaning of life? what is the value of life? what is our purpose on earth?

"Science has nothing to say about these questions," he noted, "but theology has much to say. Questions of soul, of consciousness, of the sanctity of life are posed by today's scientific developments. These findings present a serious agenda for the Catholic intellectual who must call upon Church teaching, revelation and reason to respond to these questions."

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

"This revolution proved once and for all that much of the Bible could not be interpreted literally," he noted. "More importantly, when some Church authorities fought these developments, the unfortunate, incorrect and still prevalent image emerged of a Church opposed to science.

"Most importantly, the Scientific Revolution changed the Western approach to knowledge as people relied more and more upon reason and scientific proof for truth, and less and less upon on religion, tradition and authority."

Dr. Jeffrey Marlett, assistant professor of religious studies at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, narrowed the Scientific Revolution to "Copernicus' theory of heliocentric planetary system, which undermined Christianity's heretofore unquestioned anthropocentrism. Before Copernicus, humanity, including Christianity, assumed that everything revolved around us humans. Copernicus undermined that confidence irrevocably by concluding that ultimately we revolved around something else.

"Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein's relativity theory and even Neil Armstrong might be said only to underline what Copernicus first suggested: that we weren't the masters we once thought we were. This 'belittling' surfaces today in contemporary environmental radicalism, which insists that nature's importance supersedes any intrusive human agenda."

(09-30-99) [[In-content Ad]]