With the advent of the spring semester, Vatican Observatory outreach to high schools and grade schools has kicked into high gear. Last week in the days following the launch party for Br. Guy’s new book A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars, I stuck around Washington DC to conduct classroom talks for students at Gonzaga College High School.
One of my fellow Jesuit scholastics, R.J. Jacobs, teaches freshman religion and sophomore chemistry at Gonzaga for his regency (a period of full-time ministry between philosophy and theology studies). He was instrumental in arranging the talks and generating teacher interest. At first I expected to speak to a handful of classes – maybe three or four at the most – but when the week was said and done the faculty had invited me to speak to 23 science and religion classes across all four grades!
Speaking at high schools is a priority that is especially important to me. Students at that age are at a critical juncture in their spiritual lives: they must decide whether and how to make their Catholic faith their own, and discern what it means to be a person of faith in the modern world. During that process, they will inevitably encounter the popular idea that faith and science don’t mix well. As they move forward in their faith journey, I want them to consider the more nuanced perspective, expressed beautifully in A Jesuit’s
Guide to the Stars, that faith and science are compatible as long as the distinctiveness of each is preserved. I want them to know that the Vatican Observatory stands as a living testament to that compatibility.
High school students are also at the cusp of transitioning from learning what has already been passed down by previous generations to being active participants in the futures of both scientific progress and theological tradition. To that end, I like to emphasize in the talks that there is much we don’t know about the universe: what exactly are dark matter and dark energy? What’s inside the event horizon of black
holes? How common is extraterrestrial life, if indeed it even exists beyond our home planet?
On the theological side of things, there is also much remaining discussion to be had about deep questions of faith and meaning: why does a God who fills the universe allow suffering? How would the discovery of other intelligent life in the cosmos affect our understanding of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God? By the way, these are all real questions I got at Gonzaga last week! The students were particularly receptive to the idea that they could someday contribute to humanity’s deeper understanding of truth, and that they could do so as people of faith. Fostering that realization is one of the most rewarding parts of my job!
