By Priscilla Greear
Catholic News Service

ATLANTA (CNS) – Religion teacher William Raddell told educators during the National Catholic Educational Association's 2006 annual convention in Atlanta they can address the relationship between science and religion effectively by presenting the two fields as complementary.

Both reveal the glory of God and the dignity of mankind, he said.

After all, he told those gathered, the world needs more Catholic scientists with a love of God. Scientists share in the creative process through scientific discovery, Raddell said.

"Science points to the grandeur of God's plan," he said. "We see God's hand in creation and this leads us to praise God." At the same time, scientific research needs a moral framework, he said.

Raddell, religion department chair and a teacher for 34 years at the time of the talk at Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School in Cleveland and an education writer, spoke at an April 19, 2006, NCEA workshop.

He said the misconception that religion and science are incompatible contributes to the framing of debates such as "evolution versus creationism," the latter being a reading of the Book of Genesis as a literal account of creation.

He also said the "Galileo controversy" has led to centuries of bad press about the Church's attitude toward science.

The Church condemned 17th-century Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei as a heretic, but Raddell said it was not because of his theory that the earth revolved around the sun, because others, including Nicolaus Copernicus, also a Catholic, had argued the same theory earlier without controversy.

The problem was Galileo didn't "offer scientific proof that met the scientific standards of the day," but he still made his beliefs into a theological truth instead of a scientific theory in a time when it was believed that the sun, stars and planets revolved around a motionless earth and that the Bible confirmed that.

"Had he presented it as a scientific theory rather than a theological perspective we wouldn't have had the problem. It was for that that the Church said, 'You are wrong,'" Raddell said, adding Galileo was placed under "a loose house arrest."

In 1981, Pope John Paul II charged a papal commission with studying the matter. It was determined that the problem came because Galileo had not at the time proved irrefutably the double motion of the earth, a proof that would not come for another 150 years, and that theologians failed to grasp the Bible's profound nonliteral meaning in describing the physical structure of the created universe. In 1992, the pope accepted the commission's finding that the Church had erred in the Galileo matter.

Raddell explained the Church views the power to reason as a gift from God, while acknowledging that some matters of both faith and science are beyond human understanding. Pope John Paul said in Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) that "truth is the point where faith and reason meet."

"So obviously if it contains truth it is from God. However, reason alone cannot sufficiently explain the ultimate truths of existence," said Raddell. "We take a sacramental approach to life. Anything that is pure, good, true and beautiful is recognized as coming from God. That's one of the unique things about Catholicism. We look at these things as signs of God's presence being close to us."

The danger is when society tries to "deify reason, to make it the final and highest criteria for judging things" while failing to ponder the ethical and philosophical implications of research, Raddell said.

He added that after the Russians shocked the United States in the 1950s with the launching of the Sputnik satellites into outer space this country began to invest more in science education at the expense of studies of the humanities and philosophy.

"We look at what's happening in the world today, and we don't have that grounding in values," he said.

He said the "intelligent-design" theory, which some Christian groups are advocating be taught in public schools, is an alternative to the theory of evolution and asserts that creation is too complex to be a product of random chance. He called it a compromise between the theory of evolution and a literal interpretation of Genesis, and is similar to St. Thomas Aquinas' theory that "reason causes us to reflect on truths that ultimately lead us to reflect on God."

But while Catholicism doesn't espouse the theory of evolution, its position is that Catholics are free to believe or reject it as a theory for explaining the evolution of mankind, as it doesn't negate the omnipotence of the Creator of all life.

"Pope John Paul's attitude was God is the creator, and we'll leave the explanation up to the scientific community to help us understand" the world, he continued. "If God used the evolutionary process, then that's not a problem for us."