Grappling with a Universe

IT is really astonishing how things can explode,” Piotr Janik, SJ, was telling me, “when the terrorists get involved ...”

Terrorists? It was the second anniversary of September 11 and the first day of the biennial meeting of European Jesuits in Science; perhaps too many global events were on my mind. But I couldn’t really see how terrorism fit into what Piotr, a Jesuit scholastic from Poland studying the science of cybernetics, was talking about. The puzzlement must have shown in my face.

“You know,” he tried to explain in heavily accented English, “terrorists? Some scientists are experimentalists, others are terrorists ...”

Nebula Ahh ... Theorists.

The challenges of speaking and understanding English with its treacherous phonemes and diphthongs mirrored the even more challenging issues that two dozen of us, all Jesuit scientists working in Europe, were confronting. We were spending four days together at a retreat house in the heart of Rome to discuss, in the languages of science and theology and philosophy, the meaning of our scientific labors for the Society and the world.

This was the seventh time our group had met over the past fifteen years. For most of us, it was not the first time we’d met and heard each other deal with these problems. These friendships, renewed over the years, helped us get past our mutual misunderstandings with good humor.

Yet the real problems of the world, from terrorism itself to Third World hunger to the ethical challenges of biotechnology, were never far from our minds. The need for credibility and courage in facing the problems in our technological world was a constant theme of our discussion.

As might be expected, many of the concerns of us Jesuit scientists rest on the way that science and technology are used, and potentially abused, in our modern culture. Mention genetically modified crops or stem cell research or alternate sources of energy and you’ll find Jesuits in this group who could, and would, argue either side of the issue. We know enough to recognize that the problems are real and the solutions not nearly as simple as either side would like to believe.

Stars In a practical sense, we worry about those inside the Society and Church who make pronouncements on these topics based on a naive understanding of the technical issues involved. Likewise we blanch at the philosophical immaturity of many of our fellow scientists who either ignore the social and philosophical ramifications of their work or, worse, try to draw universal principles from this week’s latest, highly uncertain ideas.

In this regard, seeing how science and society have interacted in past centuries often gives us both pause and reason for hope. We do have a habit of coming to the right conclusions for the wrong reasons! However, as Jesuit scientists with significant training in philosophy and theology, it is inevitable that our interests go beyond these sort of political issues. Just as amazing and challenging as any new discovery is the fact that we are able to perform these acts of discovery. What does the very act of trying to understand the universe mean to a human being, a creature in a relationship with the creator of that universe?

Before the meeting each participant was asked to ponder three questions: How does the Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church engage a technologically oriented world? How has my science influenced the way I understand and practice my faith? How do I express this to fellow scientists and fellow Jesuits?

Some addressed these questions directly. My own contribution, based on long conversations with many of my American engineering friends, outlined the challenges of ministry to those working in high-tech fields. I pondered how the message of the Gospel is heard—and misheard—in the ears of my “techie” friends.

Thibaud d’Oultremont, SJ, a Belgian ecologist, addressed the second question with a moving description of his spiritual and theological reflections on his working visits to the Galapagos Islands. The place that inspired Darwin’s Origin of Species became for him a place of God’s revelation.

Nebula And my Polish friend Piotr’s contribution was a startling insight of how the call of the apostles and the call of Ignatius were dislocating shifts of their mundane world views, mirrored today in the cognitive dissonance of the cyber generation between the real world and the “virtual reality” of their computer networks.

Bioethics played a large part in the dialogue. Andrea Vicini, SJ, a pediatrician and moral theologian in Naples, noted that both researchers and theologians always operate in a universe with dangers and risks, both physical and moral. Francesc Abel, SJ, a pediatrician in Barcelona, spoke movingly of some of those risks, the hard decisions faced every day by doctors like him: What actually constitutes “extraordinary means” when treating mortally ill infants? How can parents, doctors, and hospital ethical committees be prepared to make the difficult decisions of ordering further treatment or allowing peaceful death?

And, though centered in Europe, our concerns and interests were worldwide. Edgar Busutil, SJ, a biologist and social worker in Malta, commented on the intense interest in bioethical questions he found in the universities he visited in Korea. Leo D’Souza, SJ, a biologist visiting the Max Planck Institute in Germany, spoke on the very practical impact of Jesuits’ research into the genetics of the food consumed by poor people in his homeland of India. Jean-Marc Balhan, SJ, a Belgian, described how he hoped to use biology as a common meeting ground between Western and Muslim intellectuals in Turkey.

Though American Jesuit scientists have met sporadically in the past, there is no parallel organization of U.S. Jesuits in science today for reasons accidental and historical. The impetus that has maintained the European Jesuits in Science (EJS) meetings has been the result of the leadership of a few individuals, most notably the present head of the EJS, Fr. Javier Leach, SJ, a computer scientist from Madrid.

Also, in Europe there are few institutions similar to U.S. Jesuit universities with their well-funded science departments, and so most European Jesuit scientists work alone in government-sponsored schools and labs or in conjunction with more-traditional Jesuit works in philosophy and theology. As a result, European Jesuit scientists feel a strong need to foster ties with other Jesuit scientists.

Stars Indeed, the Jesuits’ role in the interaction between science and religion has changed dramatically in the last hundred years. Once, Jesuit scientists worked primarily in separate institutes, creating in the nineteenth century a worldwide network of astronomical, geophysical, and meteorological observatories funded and staffed by the order. Today it is national governments that are funding observatories at a level that the Jesuits could never approach; my own institution, the Vatican Observatory (funded by the Holy See), is probably the last such survival of that earlier day. And indeed, the whole style of doing science today is one that fosters cross-institutional collaborations rather than one-dimensional institutional programs.

The other more-obvious “usual suspects” for this change—a shortage of younger Jesuits, a modern emphasis on faith and justice rather than intellectual work—actually don’t apply as much as one might think. The increasing role of the laity in our schools and universities has actually freed up many younger Jesuits to pursue scientific work outside of traditional Jesuit works. (A quarter of the Jesuits at our meeting were still in formation.)

And since the famous shift to “a preferential option for the poor” was first enunciated in 1975 at the Jesuits’ 32nd general congregation, the Society has grown to realize that intellectual scientific work has a profound faith and justice component. Obvious examples of this are the very practical research being done by Jesuits in India and Germany to improve food crops throughout the Third World, or water resource projects directed by Jesuits in Africa. Of course, Jesuit education has always been a time-honored pathway to social mobility; especially today this means education of the poor in technical skills, like that being done by Homeboyz (www.homeboyz.com), where Jesuits teach web design to former gang members in Milwaukee.

But in addition we now recognize that intellectual curiosity about our universe and the way it functions is a fundamental aspect of humanity whose outlet is denied to the poor at the cost of their self-confidence and dignity. I have seen villagers in Africa peer at Jupiter through my little portable telescope with exactly the same delight as do the neighbors in my hometown in Michigan.

Author and astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno, SJ, leads fellow Jesuit scientists on a tour of Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence outside Rome. On Guy’s left is Andrea Vicini, an Italian pediatrician, and to Guy’s immediate right is Ignacio Nuñez de Castro, a biologist from Spain, and Leo D’Souza, a biologist from India. Guy curates the meteorite collection at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.

Representing so many different disciplines, countries, and cultures and ranging in age from scholastics in their mid 20s to retired scholars in their 70s, those at our meeting engaged in discussions as lively as you’d expect from any group of Jesuits. And as we talked, we were encouraged by knowing that not just scientists were listening. Father General wrote to ask us for the results of our contemplations; his delegate, Fr. Guilliermo Rodríguez-Izquierdo, SJ—himself a physicist—attended several of the sessions. And Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Martini, retired archbishop of Milan, spent an hour and a half with the group. In many ways his comments, coming from a Biblical scholar with years of pastoral work in the Church, echoed the insights of the scientists—the need to live a life filled with uncertainty and vulnerability but always faithful to the search for truth.

When we adjourned, we visited the Vatican Observatory in nearby Castel Gandolfo, enjoying the gardens and the local pizza along with a glimpse of Mars through the observatory’s vintage telescope. Thought provoking as the regular sessions were, it was this sense of fellowship that ultimately capped the conference. Though accents and emphases differed, all of us spoke in the common language not only of scientists but also of the Spiritual Exercises and the Jesuit way of proceeding.

As ambassadors of the Church in the scientific world, aware of how experimenters’ new data and theorists’ new ideas can upend our comfortable world views, we are also students of a time-honored spirituality that encourages us to embrace the life of the mind. It is in such explosions of the intellect that we are driven to look again, more deeply and more humbly, at our place in the natural universe. That is where we can find the God who created everything, infinitely complex and beautiful and good.