“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Saints Alive! When Padre Pio and the Stigmata Were on Trial
Padre Pio was proclaimed a living saint for the wounds he bore for Christ, but his reputation for sanctity became another wound, this one inflicted from the Church.
Padre Pio was proclaimed a living saint for the wounds he bore for Christ, but his reputation for sanctity became another wound, this one inflicted from the Church.
September 20, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae
“Six Degrees of Separation,” a famous play by John Guare, became a 1993 film starring Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, and Stockard Channing. The plot revolved around a theory proposed in 1967 by sociologists Stanley Milgram and Frigyes Karinthy. Wikipedia describes “Six Degrees of Separation” as:
“The idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of ‘a friend of a friend’ statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.”
It’s an intriguing idea, and sometimes the connections are eerie. In “A Day Without Yesterday” I wrote about my long-time hero, Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the priest-physicist who changed the mind of Albert Einstein on the creation of the Universe. A few weeks after my post, a letter arrived from my good friend, Pierre Matthews in Belgium. Pierre sent me a photo of himself as a young man posing with his family and a family friend, the famous Father Lemaitre, in Switzerland in 1956. In a second photo, Pierre had just served Mass with the famous priest who later autographed the photo.
When I wrote of Father Lemaitre, I had no idea there are but two degrees of separation between me and this famous priest-scientist I’ve so long admired. The common connection we share with Pierre Matthews — not to mention the autographed photo — left me awestruck. The mathematical odds against such a connection are staggering. Something very similar happened later and also involving Pierre Matthews. It still jolts my senses when I think of it. The common bond this time was with Saint Padre Pio.
When Pierre visited me in prison in 2010, I told him about this blog which had been launched months earlier. When I told Pierre that I chose Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Padre Pio as the patrons of Beyond These Stone Walls, Pierre quietly and modestly said, “I’ve met Padre Pio.”
Pierre’s casual remark dropped like a bomb on our conversation. What were the odds that I would be sitting at a table in the prison visiting room with a man who traveled from Europe to tell me of how he met Padre Pio. The saint imposed his wounded and bandaged hands in blessing upon Pierre’s head over a half century earlier.
The labyrinthine ways of grace are far beyond my understanding. Pierre told me that as a youth growing up in Europe, his father enrolled him in a boarding school. When he wrote to his father about a planned visit to central Italy, his father instructed him to visit San Giovanni Rotondo and ask for Padre Pio’s blessing. Pierre, a 16-year-old at the time, had zero interest in visiting Padre Pio. But he obediently took a train to San Giovanni Rotondo. He waited there for hours. Padre Pio was nowhere to be seen.
Pierre then approached a friar and asked if he could see Padre Pio. ‘Impossible!’ he was told. Just then, he looked up and saw the famous Stigmatic walking down the stairs toward him. Padre Pio’s hands were bandaged and he wore gloves. The friar, following the young man’s gaze, whispered in Italian, ‘Do not touch his hands.’ Pierre trembled as Padre Pio approached him. He placed his bandaged hands upon Pierre’s head and whispered his blessing.
Fifty-five years later, in the visiting room of the New Hampshire State Prison, Pierre bowed his head and asked for my blessing. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I placed my hand upon Pierre knowing that the spiritual imprint of Padre Pio’s blessing was still in and upon this man, and I was overwhelmed to share in it.
This wasn’t the first time I shared space with Padre Pio. Several years ago, in November 2005, we shared the cover of Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. I also share a painful date with Padre Pio. September 23 was the date he died in 1968. On September 23, 1994 I was put into chains and taken to prison to begin a life sentence for crimes that never took place.
That’s why we shared that cover of Catalyst. Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote of his appearance on NBC’s “Today” show on October 13, 2005 during which he spoke of my trial and imprisonment declaring, “There is no segment of the American population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest.” That issue of Catalyst also contained my first major article for The Catholic League, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud” written from prison in 2005.
The Indictment of Heroic Virtue
Padre Pio was on that Catalyst cover because three years after he was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, Atlantic Monthly magazine carried a brief article by Tyler Cabot entitled “The Rocky Road to Sainthood” (November 2005). Of one of the most revered priests in Church history, Cabot wrote:
“Despite questions raised by two papal emissaries – and despite reported evidence that he raised money for right-wing religious groups and had sex with penitents – [Padre] Pio was canonized in 2002.”
I’m not sure whether the bigger scandal for Tyler Cabot and Atlantic Monthly was the sexual accusation or “raising money for right-wing religious groups.” Bill Donohue expressed surprise that such a “highly regarded magazine would publish such trash.” I was more dismayed than surprised by the irresponsibility. Yes, it’s irresponsible to tell half the story and present it as the truth.
It wasn’t the first time such attacks were launched against Padre Pio. Four years before his canonization, and thirty years after his death, The New York Times (September 24, 1998) carried an article charging that Padre Pio was the subject of no less than twelve Vatican investigations in his lifetime, and one of the investigations alleged that “Padre Pio had sex with female penitents twice a week.” It’s true that this was alleged, but it’s not the whole truth. The New York Times and Atlantic Monthly were simply following an agenda that should come as no surprise to anyone. I’ll describe below why these wild claims fell apart under scrutiny.
But first, I must write the sordid story of why Padre Pio was so accused. That’s the real scandal. It’s the story of how Padre Pio responded with heroic virtue to the experience of being falsely accused repeatedly from within the Church. His heroic virtue in the face of false witness is a trait we simply do not share. It far exceeds any grace ever given to me.
Twice Stigmatized
Early in the morning of September 20, 1918, at the age of 31, Francesco Forgione, known to the world as Padre Pio, received the Stigmata of Christ. He was horrified, and he begged the Lord to reconsider. Each morning in the month to follow, Padre Pio awoke with the hope that the wounds would be gone. He was terrified. After a month with the wounds, Padre Pio wrote a note to Padre Benedetto, his spiritual advisor, describing in simple, matter-of-fact terms what happened to him on that September 20 morning:
“On the morning of the 20th of last month, in the choir, after I had celebrated Mass . . . I saw before me a mysterious person similar to the one I had seen on the evening of 5 August. The only difference was that his hands and feet and side were dripping blood. The sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable. I thought I should die and really should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart which was about to burst out of my chest.
“The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands and feet and side were dripping blood. Imagine the agony I experienced and continue to experience almost every day. The heart wound bleeds continually, especially from Thursday evening until Saturday.
“Dear Father, I am dying of pain because of the wounds and the resulting embarrassment I feel in my soul. I am afraid I shall bleed to death if the Lord does not hear my heartfelt supplication to relieve me of this condition.
“Will Jesus, who is so good, grant me this grace? Will he at least free me from the embarrassment caused by these outward signs? I will raise my voice and will not stop imploring him until in his mercy he takes away . . . these outward signs which cause me such embarrassment and unbearable humiliation.”
— Letters 1, No. 511
And so it began. What Padre Pio faced that September morning set in motion five decades of suspicion, accusation, and denunciation not from the secular world, but from the Catholic one. From within his own Church, Padre Pio’s visible wounds brought about exactly what he feared in his pleading letter to his spiritual director. The wounds signified in Padre Pio exactly what they first signified for the Roman Empire and the Jewish chief priests at the time Christ was crucified. They were the wounds of utter humiliation.
Within a year, as news of the Stigmata spread throughout the region, the people began to protest a rumor that Padre Pio might be moved from San Giovanni Rotondo. This brought increased scrutiny within the Church as the stories of Padre Pio’s special graces spread throughout Europe like a wildfire.
By June of 1922, just four years after the Stigmata, the Vatican’s Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) began to restrict the public’s access to Padre Pio who was accused of self-inflicting his own wounds and sexually abusing penitents. He was even accused of being a political agitator for a fascist group, and helping to incite a riot. His accusers included fellow friars, and neighboring priests, bishops, and archbishops increasingly threatened by Padre Pio’s growing fame and influence. A physician and founder of Rome’s Catholic university hospital labeled Padre Pio, sight unseen, “an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited peoples’ credulity.”
Padre Pio and I have this one thing in common. You would not believe some of the things I’ve been called, sight unseen, by people presenting themselves as the voice of the faithful.
From 1924 to 1931, accusation after accusation was investigated by the Holy See which issued a series of official statements denying the supernatural origin of Pio’s wounds and the legitimacy of his gifts. At one point, the charge that his wounds were self-inflicted was withdrawn. Several legitimate examinations found no evidence for this. It was then charged that Padre Pio’s wounds were psychologically self-induced because of his “persistent concentration on the passion of Christ.”
Finally, in the one instance in which I can personally relate to Padre Pio, he responded with sheer exasperation at his accusers: “Go out to the fields,” he wrote, “and look very closely at a bull. Concentrate on him with all your might. Do this and see if horns grow on your head!”
By June of 1931, Padre Pio was receiving hundreds of letters daily from the faithful asking for prayers. Meanwhile, the Holy See ordered him to desist from public ministry. He was barred from offering Mass in public, barred from hearing confessions, and barred from any public appearance as sexual abuse charges against him were formally investigated — again. Padre Pio was a “cancelled priest” long before it became “a thing” in the Church.
Finally, in 1933, Pope Pius XI ordered the Holy Office to reverse its ban on Padre Pio’s public celebration of Mass. The Holy Father wrote, closing the investigation: “I have not been badly disposed toward Padre Pio, but I have been badly informed.” Over the succeeding year his faculties to function as a priest were progressively restored. He was permitted to hear men’s confessions in March of 1934 and the confessions of women two months later.
Potholes on the Road to Sainthood
The accusations of sexual abuse, insanity, and fraud did not end there. They followed Padre Pio relentlessly for years. In 1960, Rome once again restricted his public ministry citing concerns that his popularity had grown out of control.
An area priest, Father Carlo Maccari, added to the furor by once again accusing the now 73-year-old Padre Pio of engaging in sex with female penitents “twice a week.” Father Maccari went on to become an archbishop, then admitted to his lie and asked for forgiveness in a public recantation on his deathbed.
When Padre Pio’s ministry was again restored, the daily lines at his confessional grew longer, and the clamoring of all of Europe seeking his blessing and his prayers grew louder. It was at this time that my friend, Pierre Matthews encountered the beleaguered and wounded saint on the stairs at San Giovanni.
The immense volume of daily letters from the faithful also continued. In 1962, Padre Pio received a pleading letter from Archbishop Karol Wotyla of Krakow in Poland. The Archbishop’s good friend, psychiatrist Wanda Poltawska, was stricken with terminal cancer and the future pope took a leap of faith to ask for Padre Pio’s prayers. When Dr. Poltawska appeared for surgery weeks later, the mass of cancer had disappeared. News of the miraculous healing reached Archbishop Wotyla on the eve of his leaving for Rome on October 5, 1962 for the convening of the Second Vatican Council.
Former Newsweek Religion Editor Kenneth Woodward wrote a riveting book entitled Making Saints (Simon & Shuster, 1990). In a masterfully written segment on Padre Pio twelve years before his canonization, Kenneth Woodward interviewed Father Paolo Rossi, the Postulator General of the Capuchin Order and the man charged with investigating Padre Pio’s cause for sainthood. Fr. Rossi was asked how he expects to demonstrate Padre Pio’s heroic virtue. The priest responded:
“People would better understand the virtue of the man if they knew the degree of hostility he experienced from the Church . . . The Order itself was told to act in a certain way toward Padre Pio. The hostility went all the way up to the Holy Office, and the Vatican Secretariat of State. Faulty information was given to the Church authorities and they acted on that information.”
— Making Saints, p.188
It is one of the Church’s great ironies that Saint Padre Pio was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002 just as the U.S. bishops were implementing a response to the newest media furor about accused U.S. priests. I am one of those priests. The irony is that if the charter the bishops adopted was imposed in Italy forty years earlier, Padre Pio may have been denied any legitimate chance of ever clearing his name. The investigations that eventually exposed those lies simply do not take place in the current milieu.
I’ll live with that irony, and I’m glad Padre Pio didn’t have to. Everything else he wrote to his spiritual director on that fateful morning of September 20, 1918 came to pass. He suffered more than the wounds of Christ. He suffered the betrayal of Christ by Judas, and the humiliation of Christ, and the scourging of Christ, and he suffered them relentlessly for fifty years. As Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote of him in First Things (June/July 2008):
“With Padre Pio, the anguish is not the absence of God, but the unsupportable weight of His presence.”
Fifty years after receiving the Stigmata, Padre Pio’s wounds disappeared. They left no scar — no trace that he ever even had them. Three days later, on September 23, 1968, Padre Pio died. I was fifteen years old — the age at which he began religious life.
In April, 2010, the body of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was moved from its shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo to a new church dedicated in his honor in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. Padre Pio’s tomb is the third most visited Catholic shrine in the world after the Vatican itself and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
The New York Times might still spread another story, but the people of God have spoken. Padre Pio was canonized by the sensus fidelium — by the near universal acclaim of believers long before the Church ratified their belief. Padre Pio is a saint of the people.
Some years ago, a priest in Dallas — who read of Padre Pio’s “Patron Saint” status on our About Page sent me a relic of Saint Pio encased in plastic. He later wrote that he doesn’t know why he sent it, and realized too late that it might not make it passed the prison censors. Indeed, the relic was refused by prison staff because they couldn’t figure out what it was. Instead of being returned to sender as it should have been, it made its way somehow to the prison chaplain who gave it to me.
The relic of Saint Pio is affixed on my typewriter, just inches from my fingers at this moment. It’s a reminder, when I’m writing, of his presence at Beyond These Stone Walls, the ones that imprison me and the one I write for. The relic’s card bears a few lines in Italian by Padre Pio:
“Due cose al mondo non ti abbandonano mai, l’occhio di Dio che sempre ti vede e il cuore della mamma che sempre ti segue.”
“There are two things in the world that will never forsake you: the eye of God that always sees you, and the heart of His Mother that always follows you.”
— Padre Pio
Saints alive! May I never forget it!
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EPILOGUE
In 2017, Pierre Matthews, my friend and Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, passed from this life. After his death someone in his family sent me a photograph of him kneeling at the Shrine of Saint Padre Pio where he offered prayers for me and for Pornchai.
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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
For Those Who Look at the Stars and See Only Stars
An MIT astrophysicist trying to reconcile science with a quest for spiritual truth wrote upon the death of his parents, “I wish I believed.” I believe he just might.
First deep field image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScl
An MIT astrophysicist trying to reconcile science with a quest for spiritual truth wrote upon the death of his parents, “I wish I believed.” I believe he just might.
July 5, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: The image atop this post is the first of many images transmitted by the James Webb Space Telescope parked one million miles from Earth in 2022 to survey the Cosmos. I first wrote this post in 2018 for an older version of this blog. It needed to be restored for our readers, but I ended up completely rewriting it. My goal was to highlight a bridge between science and faith, but some say it also highlights a bridge between life and death.
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When Beyond These Stone Walls was just a few months old back in 2009, I wrote a post about the death of my mother. It told a story about an event that occurred on her birthday a year after she died. At first glance it seemed an ordinary event, the sort of thing usually chalked up to coincidence. But its meaning and timing and how it unfolded made it an extraordinary grace beyond comprehension. It required that I set aside the mathematical odds against such a thing and see it foremost in the light of faith.
It remains to this day a pivotal moment, a wondrous event that shook my faith out of the closet of doubt where I tend to store it when times get rough — which is often. The story told in that post may shake you, too, if it hasn’t already. By that, I do not mean that it will challenge your faith. It’s just the opposite. My story lifted for me a corner of the veil between doubt and belief. So the title I gave it was “A Corner of the Veil.”
My friend, Pornchai Moontri was with me that night when the event occurred while I offered Mass in our prison cell. I asked Pornchai if he remembers it. “How could I forget it?” he said. He described it as an “ordinary miracle,” the kind he says he has seen a lot of since his eyes were opened.
I could repeat the whole story here, but it will take too long and I have written it once already. It is but a mere click away. I will link to it again after this post. You can decide for yourself whether the story it tells is mere coincidence or something more. My analytic brain tends toward coincidence, but sometimes that just doesn’t add up. This was one of those times.
I then came upon a strange little book of fiction by Laurence Cossé first published in French as Le Coin du Voile, and in English, A Corner of the Veil (Scribner 1999). It strangely fell at my feet from a library shelf after my post with the same title.
Laurence Cossé was a journalist for Radio France when she wrote this book described by Notre Dame theologian Ralph McInerney as “a theological thriller that makes a mystery out of the absence of mystery.” It is a spellbinding account of what happens to the people and institutions of Church and State when a manuscript surfaces that irrefutably proves the existence of God.
Science, religion, and politics all transform as their experts ponder its meaning and their own continued relevancy. The reader is left to wonder whether the discovery will spark a new era of harmony or launch the final battle of the apocalypse.
“Six pages further, Father Bertrand was trembling. The proof was neither arithmetical nor physical nor esthetical nor astronomical, it was irrefutable. Proof of God’s existence had been achieved. Bertrand was tempted, for a second, to toss the bundle into the wastebasket.” (p 15)
As it does for people who awaken to faith on a personal level, the discovery immediately altered the way its readers face both life and death. The transformation was astonishing. Death came to be seen, not as an entity unto itself, but as it really is a chapter in the continuity of life, of me, of the person I call "myself," integrated into the Great Tapestry of God.
I happen to know a lot of people whose experience of living is suddenly overshadowed by the prospect of dying. They have come to know that death is drawing nearer day by day. Some of them struggle. What does death mean, and why do we wage such war against it? The age of individualism and relativism distorts death into a fearsome enemy. As Dylan Thomas wrote,
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.”
Carina Nebula image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScl
If That’s All There Is, Then Let’s Keep Dancing!
While writing this post, I received a letter from a reader in Ohio who asked me to write a note of encouragement to a friend whose death is drawing near. After a lifetime of faith, he wrote, the friend is having grave doubts and fears about the end of life and the finality of death. He is asking the age-old question put to song: “Is that all there is?”
But that is our problem. We speak in terms of “finality” as though when faced with death, all that we once believed with hope takes on the trappings of a mere children’s fantasy. I know too many people who are dying, and many of us treat it as the silent elephant in the room because we know that sooner or later we will join them just as our parents did before us. It is part of the flow of life, but we ward it off as a terror in the night. In the face of death, science alone comes up empty.
When you think of it, death is best seen as an act of love. Imagine the inherent selfishness of a humanity without death. Those we love the most in this world — those who fulfill our very purpose for being in this world — would be left out of existence if this life were ours alone to keep. But facing death with no life of faith casts both life and death into a formless, meaningless void.
I recently came across a review of a book by noted MIT physicist and astronomer Alan Lightman entitled Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (Pantheon 2018). It was reviewed by UMass physics professor Alan Hirshfeld in “A Longing for Truth and Meaning” in The Wall Street Journal April 7-8, 2018).
In some previous science posts here at Beyond These Stone Walls, I have cited both writers for other books and articles they have written. Mr. Lightman’s book, and Mr. Hirshfeld’s review of it, both raise provocative questions about “the core mysteries of human life” and the way science explores the Universe:
“Why are we here? What, if anything, is the meaning of existence? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Whence consciousness?”
I am very happy to see science ponder these questions, but they can never be answered by science alone. It comes up short when the task moves beyond the mere physics and chemistry of life to its meaning and purpose. Consider this explanation of the self, of who and what you are as a conscious being, offered by Mr. Lightman:
“Self is the name we give to the mental sensation of certain electrical and chemical flows in our neurons.”
It is too tempting for science to reduce us to fundamental biology and chemistry, but the mere mechanics of what I am do not at all define who I am. If science is the only contribution to the meaning of life and death, then it becomes obvious why so many spend significant time in denial or in dread of death.
In his new book reflecting on the Cosmos, MIT astrophysicist Alan Lightman takes up these questions and more. Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is a view of the world through a scientist’s lens which requires the scientist to see in it, as Alan Hirshfeld describes,
“Tangible bits of matter and energy, all governed by a set of fundamental physical laws … In keeping with his ‘Central Doctrine of Science,’ he eschews unprovable hypotheses, most significantly the existence of God and the afterlife.”
But these hypotheses are only unprovable from the point of view of science which concerns itself, as it concerns astrophysicist Alan Lightman, with matter and energy and fundamental laws. But Professor Lightman has acquired the wisdom not to stop there. His reflection on the death of his parents brings him to the “impossible truth” that they no longer exist, and he will one day follow them into this nonexistence.
Is that all there is? “I wish I believed,” he wrote. But “a precipice looms for each of us, an eventual plunge into nonexistence.” As Alan Hirshfeld described it:
“A depressing prospect, for sure, yet the inevitable judgment of those for whom religious or spiritual alternatives carry no resonance.”
Pictured: Fr. Georges Lemaître, Albert Einstein and Fr. Andrew Pinsent
Threads of the Tapestry of God
I have written numerous articles about the sciences of astronomy and cosmology, the origins and mechanics of the Universe. But these are not the only tools with which to explore the universe and measure life and death. The conclusions of science and faith are not as inseparable as science might have you believe.
I have raised this analogy before, but consider these two passages from two sources that have become meaningful to me. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 296) expresses a fundamental truth of faith God created the Universe and life “out of nothing.”
Among the many contributions of science that I hold in high regard, this is one by the mathematician Robyn Arianrhod whose book, Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics (Oxford University 2005) draws the same conclusion. Don’t let the scientific language dissuade you from understanding this phenomenal bridge between science and faith:
“The Belgian priest and astrophysicist, Georges Lemaitre began to develop expanding cosmological models out of Einstein’s equations … In 1931, Lemaitre formally sowed the seeds of the Big Bang theory [which] showed that Einstein’s equations predicted the universe had expanded not from a tiny piece of matter located in an otherwise empty cosmos, but from a single point in four-dimensional spacetime … Before this point, about 13 billion years ago, there was no time and no space. No geometry, no matter. Nothing. The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.”
— Arianrhod, pp 185-187
Reflecting on the death of his parents, Alan Lightman wrote that he wished he believed in the continuity of life after death. It could be at least a starting point that sometimes science and faith share some of the same language and conclusions about the origin of life. Faith, to have any real depth, is not simply an emotional experience to assuage our fears, but rather one arrived at also through reason. Catholicism presents 2,000+ years of faith seeking understanding, of belief built upon reason.
And sometimes reason just cannot explain away our intuition that life has an Author, and when we die, the book is still not finished. I am intrigued by Professor Hirshfeld’s use of the term, “resonance” for I have also used it in some recent posts. I have described it as a sort of echo that finds its way among the “threads of the Tapestry of God” in ways that give life meaning and purpose, in ways that connect us. One way spiritual resonance manifests itself is by giving meaning to suffering.
Consider this stunning action of spiritual resonance that was described in a post, “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang.” That post was co-authored by me and Father Andrew Pinsent, PhD, a priest, physicist and Director of the Institute for Science and Religion at Oxford University.
When my friend Pornchai Moontri came into the Catholic Church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2010, one of our readers, the late Pierre Matthews in Belgium, inquired rather urgently asking to stand as Pornchai’s Godfather. They visited several times. However, it was only after I wrote about Father George Lemaitre that Pierre contacted me with the staggering revelation that the Godfather of Pornchai Moontri is the Godson of Father George Lemaitre. The mathematical odds against such a “mere coincidence” are ... well … astronomical!
It is a long time since I have viewed with awe the expanse of our galaxy spanning the night sky in all its brilliance, but like Alan Lightman, I have done so, and find it unforgettable. He is on the right track, and may one day come to see that the awe it instills in him is not the awe of science alone. “I wish I believed,” he wrote. I believe he just may.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: Fr. Gordon MacRae and Beyond These Stone Walls are now featured on Gloria.tv, an international Catholic social network and a video and news sharing platform. We are honored by this invitation, and by the Catholic fidelity demonstrated by Gloria.tv. We invite our readers to support this venue by visiting and sharing our page and other content there.
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Fr. Georges Lemaître
Editor’s Note: Continue this great adventure of science and faith with these related posts:
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang
British priest and Oxford physicist Fr Andrew Pinsent shares this amazing post about the origin of the Universe and a stunning connection that struck close to home.
British priest and Oxford physicist Fr Andrew Pinsent shares this amazing post about the origin of the Universe and a stunning connection that struck close to home.
September 1, 2021
Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I am honored to present this guest post by Father Andrew Pinsent, Research Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University. Formerly a physicist at CERN, Father Andrew now also serves on the Faculty of Theology at Oxford. Father Andrew holds a doctorate degree in particle physics from Oxford, a doctorate in philosophy from St. Louis University, and advanced degrees in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is a member of the United Kingdom Institute of Physics, the author of many publications on science and faith, and has appeared on BBC news, EWTN, and at the Vatican conference for scientists.
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Why should anyone be interested in Fr Georges Lemaître? Here’s one reason. Being both a priest and a former particle physicist at CERN, I am often asked to give talks on faith and science. Quite often young people ask me the following question, “How can you be a priest and believe in the Big Bang?” To which I am delighted to respond, “We invented it! Or more precisely, Fr Georges Lemaître invented the theory that is today called the “Big Bang” and everyone should know about him.”
Here is a little of the historical background. The Belgian priest-astrophysicist Fr Georges Lemaître in 1927 published a paper in the Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels presenting the idea of an expanding universe. When invited to a meeting of the British Association in London in 1931, on the subject of science and religion, Fr Lemaître proposed that the universe had expanded from an initial point, which he called the ‘Primeval Atom’. In 1949, the astronomer Fred Hoyle described Fr Lemaître’s theory as a ‘Big Bang’. Shortly before Fr Lemaître died in 1966, he learned of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, widely interpreted today as the faint echo of the Big Bang itself. With some modifications, the Big Bang has today become our standard grand narrative for understanding the cosmos.
Given that this history is incontrovertible (see, for example, Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996)), why then do young people still ask me, “How can you be a priest and believe in the Big Bang?” Many answers could be given in particular cases, but the underlying reason, I think, is that there is another kind of grand narrative at work. Part of that narrative today, absorbed from at least the age of ten in schools and from the media, is that faith is opposed to reason, and the Catholic Church in particular is opposed to science. The fact that a Catholic priest invented the Big Bang theory is therefore what might be called an ‘inconvenient truth’, something that cannot happen and therefore, for all intents and purposes, did not happen. More subtly, some people acknowledge Fr Lemaître’s achievement but deny that any significant implications can be drawn for understanding the relation of faith and science. They point out that his scientific work was distinct from his priesthood or that he is a ‘black swan’ event from which no wider conclusions can be drawn.
Such criticisms, however, overlook the value of the negative conclusion, namely that faith and revolutionary brilliance in science were clearly not incompatible in Fr Lemaître’s life, and perhaps that there are more ‘black swans’ waiting to be rescued from neglect. Moreover, even an appreciation of the extent to which Fr Lemaître is overlooked can serve as a catalyst for a broader re-examination of cultural prejudices regarding faith and science. For example, did the Catholic Church oppose the Big Bang theory? Was Fr Lemaître exiled or disgraced? No! Fr Lemaître was honoured by the Pope, who appointed him to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936. Did atheists welcome the Big Bang theory? No, or at least many did not for a surprisingly long time! As late as 1948, at a meeting in Leningrad, Soviet astronomers affirmed the need to fight against the ‘reactionary-idealistic’ theory of a ‘primeval atom,’ (i.e. the Big Bang) support for which, it was claimed, would help ‘clericalism’ (see Kragh, p. 262).
Such opponents saw, perhaps more clearly than we do today, that although aspects of the cosmos can be modelled by mathematics, to consider the formation and evolution of the cosmos as a whole requires taking up a God-like perspective in our imaginations, an implicitly hazardous prospect (at least at first) for the materialist or physicalist. Furthermore, to explore the origins, structure and evolution of the cosmos with the expectation of discerning knowable order is a habit born out of patterns of thinking shaped over centuries by the revelation of a Creator God of reason and love. As early as the first Christian century, we find, for example, Pope St Clement I referring to the sun, moon, and stars being “…put in motion by his [God’s] appointment … in harmony and without any violation of order …” (Epistle of Pope Clement I to the Corinthians, 19:2 - 20:12 (trans. C. Hoole)), a narrative of order and love that has shaped the expectations of our culture regarding the possibility and value of cosmology.
What, then, is to be done to help raise the profile of people like Fr Georges Lemaître? Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae through his widely-read blog BTSW has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaître. Inspired in part by Fr Gordon’s work, my colleagues and I in England have now put together some high quality laminated A3 posters that we can send worldwide in a series called the “Catholic Knowledge Network”. A copy of the A3 poster for Fr Lemaître is shown at the bottom of this post. If you would like to purchase these beautiful posters (for education institutions, parish halls, classrooms, and other public spaces), please do so from our publisher, the Catholic Truth Society in London, from where they can be sent worldwide.
As a regular reader of Beyond These Stone Walls and a contributor to Fr Gordon’s legal defense fund, I thank him for this opportunity and for the remarkable worldwide impact of his blog. I also thank those who edit and maintain this blog on his behalf.
Fr Andrew Pinsent
Theology and Religion Faculty
Oxford University
Two Phenomenal Postscripts from Fr Gordon MacRae
I am indebted to Father Andrew Pinsent for the above post. After he wrote it, I came across two discoveries related to it that I thought were phenomenal. The first is an excerpt from Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2005), a wondrous book by a brilliant mathematician, Robyn Arianrhod:
“In 1931, [Georges] Lemaitre formally sowed the seeds of the Big Bang theory when he suggested the universe had started as an explosion of a ‘primeval atom,’ and that it had continued expanding from that explosive beginning .... [From] Einstein’s equation [he] predicted the universe had expanded not from a tiny piece of matter located in an otherwise empty cosmos, but from a single point in four-dimensional space-time .... Before this point, about thirteen billion years ago, there was no time and no space. No geometry, no matter, nothing. The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.”
“The Universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.” This is the conclusion of modern cosmology that began with the work of another brilliant mathematician-physicist, Fr. Georges Lemaître. If you wonder about the relevance of faith in the scientific world, you may be surprised to learn that science is using some of the same concepts as the Catechism of the Catho1ic Church to describe the origin of a created universe:
“God created the universe out of nothing.” — CCC 290
“We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create. God created freely out of nothing." — CCC 296
“God said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:4). Scripture bears witness to faith in creation ‘out of nothing’ as a truth filled with promise and hope.” — CCC 297
“Since God created everything out of nothing, He can also, through the Holy Spirit, give spiritual life to sinners by creating a pure heart in them, and bodily life to the dead through the Resurrection.” — CCC 298
As Father Andrew Pinsent described, the cosmic background radiation left by the Big Bang was first detected and identified in 1965 by American astrophysicists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. Father Lemaître died one year later having witnessed the final acceptance by science of the truth of his discovery about the origin of the created universe.
Between 1989 and 1993, NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft mapped the cosmic background radiation. It verified that the distribution of intensity of the background radiation precisely matched that of matter that emits radiation because of its temperature, as also predicted by Father Lemaître’s Big Bang theory. For the science of cosmology, the created universe, which Father Georges Lemaître said began ‘On a Day without Yesterday,’ is no longer a theory. I hope you will read anew and share my first post about the Father of the Big Bang and Modern Cosmology, “A Day Without Yesterday: Fr Georges Lemaître and the Big Bang.”
My second postscript to Father Andrew Pinsent’s article above is more personal, but just as phenomenal. After we both posted our respective articles about Father Georges Lemaître, I received a letter from Belgium where Father Lemaître had long ago taught at the University of Louvain. The letter was written from Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather, Pierre Matthews, who read both posts. His letter revealed something astonishing, something that seems as much the work of the Hand of God as the Big Bang itself.
It turns out that Fr Georges Lemaître, Father of the Big Bang and modern cosmology, was the Godfather of Pornchai Moontri’s Godfather. The photograph above depicts Pierre’s family with Fr. Lemaître and his mother on holiday at Lake Luzern, Switzerland. That’s 14-year-old Pierre just behind and to the left of Father Lemaître. Pierre’s sister and mother are to the right of Father Lemaître’s mother. In his letter with the photo Pierre wrote:
“My mother and Fr. Lemaître were both born in the same little town, Marcinelle, in Belgium. My maternal grandparents and Fr. Lemaître’s parents were close friends so my mother grew up with Georges Lemaître. He was as an uncle to me. In the summer of 1954, as the photo depicts, we spent four weeks together at the shore of Lake Luzern, Switzerland. I thought you and Pornchai might like to have this photograph.”
It was the understatement of the year. Pierre Matthews passed away in 2020 just as his Godson, Pornchai, regained his freedom.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I don’t know about you, but I needed a break from all the drama of my last several posts. Thank you for reading Fr Andrew Pinsent’s guest post and my postscript. They will be placed in our newest BTSW Library category, “Science and Faith.”
Please “Subscribe” to Beyond These Stone Walls if you have not done so already, and please visit our “Special Events” page. You may also like these related posts:
“A Day Without Yesterday:” Fr Georges Lemaitre and the Big Bang
Father Andrew Pinsent
Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us
The Gospel of Saint Luke opens with a news flash from the Archangel Gabriel for Zechariah the priest, and Mary — Theotokos — the new Ark of the Covenant.
Prisoners, including me, have no access at all to the online world. Though Wednesday is post day on Beyond These Stone Walls, I usually don’t get to see my finished posts until the following Saturday when printed copies arrive in the mail. So I was surprised one Saturday night when some prisoners where I live asked if they could read my posts. Then a few from other units asked for them in the prison library where I work.
Some titles became popular just by word of mouth. The third most often requested BTSW post in the library is “A Day Without Yesterday,” my post about Father Georges Lemaitre and Albert Einstein. The second most requested is “Does Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?” Prisoners love the science/religion debate. But by far the most popular BTSW post is “Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed.” And as a result of it, dozens of prisoners have asked me for copies of the prayer to Saint Michael. I’m told it’s being put up on cell walls all over the prison.
Remember “Jack Bauer Lost The Unit On Caprica,” my post about my favorite TV shows? In the otherwise vast wasteland of American television, we’re overdue for some angelic drama. For five years in the 1980s, Michael Landon and Victor French mediated the sordid details of the human condition in Highway to Heaven. The series was created and produced by Michael Landon who thought TV audiences deserved a reminder of the value of faith, hope, and mercy as we face the gritty task of living. Highway to Heaven ended in 1989, but lived on in re-runs for another decade. Then in the 1990s, Della Reese and Roma Downey portrayed “Tess and Monica,” angelic mediators in Touched by an Angel which also produced a decade of re-runs.
Spiritual Battle on a Cosmic Scale
The angels of TV-land usually worked out solutions to the drama of being human within each episode’s allotted sixty minutes. That’s not so with the angels of Scripture. Most came not with a quick fix to human madness, but with a message for coping, for giving hope, for assuring a believer, or, in the case of the Angel of the Annunciation, for announcing some really big news on a cosmic scale — like salvation! What the angels of Scripture do and say has deep theological symbolism and significance, and in trying times interest in angels seems to thrive. The Archangel Gabriel dominates the Nativity Story of Saint Luke’s Gospel, but who is he and what is the meaning of his message?
We first meet Gabriel five centuries before the Birth of Christ in the Book of Daniel. The Hebrew name, “Gabri’El” has two meanings: “God is my strength,” and “God is my warrior.” As revealed in “Angelic Justice,” the Hebrew name Micha-El means “Who is like God?” The symbolic meaning of these names is portrayed vividly as Gabriel relates to Daniel the cosmic struggle in which he and Michael are engaged:
“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand, and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me. So I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days . . . But I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth: there is none who contends at my side against these except Michael.”
— Daniel 10:12-14, 21
In the Talmud, the body of rabbinic teaching, Gabriel is understood to be one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham to begin salvation history, and later led Abraham out of the fire into which Nimrod cast him. The Talmud also attributes to Gabriel the rescue of Lot from Sodom. In Christian apocalyptic tradition, Gabriel is the “Prince of Fire” who will prevail in battle over Leviathan at the end of days. Centuries after the Canon of Old and New Testament Scripture was defined, Gabriel appears also in the Qu’ran as a noble messenger.
In Jewish folklore, Gabriel was in the role of best man at the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I found that a strange idea at first, but then it dawned on me: Who else were they going to ask? In later rabbinic Judaism, Gabriel watches over man at night during sleep, so he is invoked in the bedside “Shema” which observant Jews must recite at bedtime in a benediction called the Keri’at Shema al ha_Mitah:
“In the name of the God of Israel, may Michael be on my right hand, Gabriel on my left hand, Uriel before me, behind me Raphael, and above my head, the Divine Presence. Blessed is he who places webs of sleep upon my eyes and brings slumber to my eyelids. May it be your will to lay me down and awaken me in peace. Blessed are You, God, who illuminates the entire world with his glory.”
In a well written article in the Advent 2010 issue of Word Among Us (www.WAU.org) – “Gabriel, the Original Advent Angel,” Louise Perrotta described Gabriel’s central message to Daniel:
“History is not a haphazard series of events. Whatever the dark headlines — terrorist attacks, natural disasters, economic upheavals — we’re in the hands of a loving and all-powerful God. Earthly regimes will rise and fall, and good people will suffer. But . . . at an hour no one knows, God will bring evil to an end and establish His eternal kingdom.”
East of Eden
The Book of Tobit identifies the Archangel Raphael as one of seven angels who stand in the Presence of God. Scripture and the Hebrew Apocryphal books identify four by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. The other three are not named for us. In rabbinic tradition, these four named angels stand by the Celestial Throne of God at the four compass points, and Gabriel stands to God’s left. From our perspective, this places Gabriel to the East of God, a position of great theological significance for the fall and redemption of man.
In a previous post, “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” I described the symbolism of “East of Eden,” a title made famous by the great American writer, John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for it in 1962. I don’t mean to brag (well, maybe a little!) but a now-retired English professor at a very prestigious U.S. prep school left a comment on “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” comparing it to Steinbeck’s work. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel, but I’ve been waiting for a subtle chance to mention it again! (ahem!) But seriously, in the Genesis account of the fall of man, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to the East (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent when they disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:
“Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good from evil; and now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and to the east of the Garden of Eden he placed a Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”
— Gen.3: 22-24
A generation later, after the murder of his brother Abel, Cain too “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, East of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16). The land of Nod seems to take its name from the Hebrew “nad” which means “to wander,” and Cain described his fate in just that way: “from thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14). The entire subsequent history of Israel is the history of that wandering East of Eden. I wonder if it is also just coincidence that the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the only source of the story of the Magi, has the Magi seeing the Star of Bethlehem “in the east” and following it out of the east.
An Immaculate Reception
In rabbinic lore, Gabriel stands in the Presence of God to the left of God’s throne, a position of great significance for his role in the Annunciation to Mary. Gabriel thus stands in God’s Presence to the East, and from that perspective in St. Luke’s Nativity Story, Gabriel brings tidings of comfort and joy to a waiting world in spiritual exile East of Eden.
The Archangel’s first appearance is to Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. Zechariah is told that he and his wife are about to become the parents of John the Baptist. The announcement does not sink in easily because, like Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of salvation history, they are rather on in years. Zechariah is about to burn incense in the temple, as close to the Holy of Holies a human being can get, when the archangel Gabriel appears with news:
“Fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah . . .’”
— Luke 1:12-15
This news isn’t easily accepted by Zechariah, a man of deep spiritual awareness revered for his access to the Holy of Holies and his connection to God. Zechariah doubts the message, and questions the messenger. It would be a mistake to read the Archangel Gabriel’s response in a casual tone. Hear it with thunder in the background and the Temple’s stone floor trembling slightly under Zechariah’s feet:
“I am Gabriel who stand in the Presence of God . . . and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass.”
I’ve always felt great sympathy for Zechariah. I imagined him having to make an urgent visit to the Temple men’s room after this, followed by the shock of being unable to intone the Temple prayers.
Zechariah was accustomed to great deference from people of faith, and now he is scared speechless. I, too, would have asked for proof. For a cynic, and especially a sometimes arrogant one, good news is not easily taken at face value.
Then six months later “Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1: 26-27). This encounter was far different from the previous one, and it opens with what has become one of the most common prayers of popular devotion.
Gabriel said, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” His words became the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that and centuries of “sensus fidelium,” the consensus of the faithful who revere her as “Theotokos,” the God-Bearer. Mary, like Zechariah, also questions Gabriel about the astonishing news. “How can this be since I have not known man?” There is none of the thunderous rebuke given to Zechariah, however. Saint Luke intends to place Gabriel in the presence of his greater, a position from which even the Archangel demonstrates great reverence and deference.
It has been a point of contention with non-Catholics and dissenters for centuries, but the matter seems so clear. There’s a difference between worship and reverence, and what the Church bears for Mary is the deepest form of reverence. It’s a reverence that came naturally even to the Archangel Gabriel who sees himself as being in her presence rather than the other way around. God and God alone is worshiped, but the reverence bestowed upon Mary was found in only one other place on Earth. That place was the Ark of the Covenant, in Hebrew, the “Aron Al-Berith,” the Holy of Holies which housed the Tablets of the Old Covenant. It was described in 1 Kings 8: 1-11, but the story of Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary draws on elements from the Second Book of Samuel.
These elements are drawn by Saint Luke as he describes Mary’s haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. In 2 Samuel 6:2, David visits this very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant. Upon Mary’s entry into Elizabeth’s room in Saint Luke’s account, the unborn John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. This is reminiscent of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:16.
For readers “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Saint Luke presents an account of God entering into human history in terms quite familiar to the old friends of God. God himself expressed in the Genesis account of the fall of man that man has attempted to “become like one of us” through disobedience. Now the reverse has occurred. God has become one of us to lead us out of the East, and off the path to eternal darkness and death.
In Advent, and especially today the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we honor with the deepest reverence Mary, Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the new Ark of the Covenant. Mary, whose response to the Archangel Gabriel was simple assent:
“Let it be done to me according to your word.”
“Then the Dawn from On High broke upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet on the way to peace.”
— Luke 1:78-79
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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in honor of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. You may also like these related posts:
The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God
Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
“A Day Without Yesterday:” Father Georges Lemaitre and The Big Bang
The Catholic Church in Belgium can take pride in the story of Georges Lemaitre, the priest and mathematician who changed the mind of Einstein on the creation of The Universe.
The Catholic Church in Belgium can take pride in the story of Georges Lemaitre, the priest and mathematician who changed the mind of Einstein on the creation of The Universe.
(This post needs a disclaimer, so here it is. It’s a post about science and one of its heroes. It’s a story I can’t tell without a heavy dose of science, so please bear with me. I read the post to my friends Pornchai, Joseph, and Skooter. Pornchai loved the math parts. Joseph said it was “very interesting,” and Skooter yawned and said, “You CAN’T print this.” When I told Charlene about the post, she said, “Well, people may never read your blog again.” Well, I sure hope that’s not the case. I happen to think this is a really cool story, so please indulge me these few minutes of science and history.)
The late Carl Sagan was a professor of astronomy at Cornell University when he wrote his 1980 book, Cosmos. It spent 77 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List. Later in the 1980s, Dr. Sagan narrated a popular PBS series also called “Cosmos,” based on his book. Sagan was much imitated for his monotone intonation of “BILLions and BILLions of stars.” I taped all the installments of “Cosmos,” and watched each at least twice.
More than once, I fell asleep listening to Sagan’s monotone “BILLions and BILLions of stars.” I hope you’re not doing the same right now. Science was my first love as a geeky young man. Religion and faith eventually overtook it, but science never left me. Astronomy has been a lifelong fascination, and Carl Sagan was one of its icons. That’s why I was enthralled 25 years ago to walk out of a bookstore with my reserve copy of Sagan’s first and only novel, Contact (Simon & Shuster, 1985).
Contact was about radio astronomy and the SETI project — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It wasn’t science fiction in the way “Star Trek” was science fiction. Contact was science AND fiction, a novel crafted with real science, and no one but Carl Sagan could have pulled it off. The sheer vastness of the Cosmos unfolded with crystal clarity in Sagan’s prose, a vastness the human mind can have difficulty fathoming. Anyone who thinks we are visited by aliens from other planets doesn’t understand the vastness of it all.
The central theme of Contact was the challenge astronomy poses to religion. In the story, SETI scientist Eleanor Arroway — a wonderful character portrayed in the film version by actress Jodie Foster — becomes the first radio astronomer to detect a signal emitting from another civilization. The signal came from a planet orbiting Vega, a star, not unlike our own, about 26 light years from Earth. The message of the book (and film) is clear: if another species like us exists, and we are ever to have contact, it will be in just this way — via radio waves moving through space at light speed.
Here comes the geeky part. For those who never caught the science bug, a “light year” is a unit of distance, not time. Light moves through space at a known rate of speed — about 186,000 miles per second. At that rate, light travels through space about 5.86 trillion miles in one year. That’s a “light year,” and in numbers it represents 5,860,000,000,000 miles. In the vacuum of space, radio waves also travel at the speed of light.
The galaxy in which we live — the one we call “The Milky Way” — is a more or less flat spiral disk comprised of about 100 billion stars. The Milky Way measures about 100,000 light years across. That’s a span of about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles, give or take a few. Please don’t ask me to convert this to kilometers!
This means that light — or radio waves — from across our galaxy can take up to 100,000 years to reach Earth. One of The Milky Way Galaxy’s approximately 100 billion stars is shining in my cell window at this moment. Our galaxy is one of about fifty billion galaxies now known to comprise The Universe. The largest known to us is thirteen times larger than The Milky Way. You get the picture. The Universe is immense.
If E.T. Phones Home, Make Sure It’s Collect!
In a recent post I made a cynical comment about UFOs. I wrote, “The real proof of intelligent life in The Universe is that they don’t come here.” It was an attempt at humor, but the problem with searching for extraterrestrial intelligence is one of practical physics. The limit of our ability to “listen” is a mere few hundred light years from Earth, a tiny fraction of the galaxy — a mere survey of our own backyard. If there is another civilization out there, we may never know it.
Even if we hear from them some day, it will be a one-sided conversation. The signal we may one day receive might have been broadcast hundreds — perhaps thousands — of years earlier. If we respond, it will take hundreds or thousands of years for our response to be detected. We sure won’t be trading recipes, or asking, “What’s new?” If there’s anyone out there — and so far we know of no one else — we can forget about any exchange of ideas, let alone ambassadors.
Still, I devoured Contact twice in 1985, then I wrote Carl Sagan a letter at Cornell. I understood that Sagan was an atheist, but the central story line of Contact was the effect the discovery of life elsewhere might have on religion, especially on fundamentalist Protestant sects who seemed the most threatened by the discovery.
I thought Carl Sagan handled the controversy quite well, without judgments, and even with some respect for the religious figures among his characters. In my letter, I pointed out to Dr. Sagan that Catholicism, the largest denomination of Christians in America, would not necessarily share in the anxiety such a discovery would bring to some other faiths. I wrote that if our galactic neighbors were embodied souls, like us, then they would be in need of redemption in the same manner in which we have been redeemed.
Weeks later, when an envelope from Cornell University’s Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences arrived, I was so excited my heart was beating BILLions and BILLions of times! Carl Sagan was most gracious. He wrote that my comments were very meaningful to him, and he added, “You write in the spirit of Georges Lemaitre!”
I framed that letter and put it on my rectory office wall. I wanted everyone I knew to see that Carl Sagan compared me with Georges Lemaitre! I was profoundly moved. But no one I knew had a clue who Georges Lemaitre was. I must remedy that. He was one of the enduring heroes of my life and priesthood. He still is!
Father of the Big Bang
Georges Lemaitre died on June 20, 1966 when I was 13 years old. It was the year “Star Trek” debuted on network television and I was mesmerized by space and the prospect of space travel. Georges Lemaitre was a Belgian scientist and mathematician, a pioneer in astrophysics, and the originator of what became known in science as “The Big Bang” theory — which, by the way, is no longer considered in cosmology to be a theory.
But first and foremost, Father Lemaitre was a Catholic priest. He was ordained in 1923 after earning doctorates in mathematics and science. Father Lemaitre studied Einstein’s celebrated general theory of relativity at Cambridge University, but was troubled by Einstein’s model of an always-existing, never changing universe. It was that model, widely accepted in science, that developed a wide chasm between science and the Judeo-Christian understanding of Creation. Einstein and others came to hold that The Universe had no beginning and no end, and therefore the word “Creation” could not apply.
Father Lemaitre saw problems with Einstein’s “Steady State” theory, and what Einstein called “The Cosmological Constant” in which he maintained that The Universe was relatively unchanging over time. From his chair in science at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium from 1925 to 1931, Father Lemaitre put his formidable mind to work.
He developed both a mathematical equation and a scientific basis for what he termed the “primeval atom,” a sort of cosmic egg from which The Universe was created. He also concluded that The Universe is not static, as Einstein believed, but expanding at an ever increasing rate, and he put forward a mathematical model to prove it. In 1998, Father Lemaitre was proven to be correct.
Einstein publicly disagreed with Lemaitre’s conclusions, and the priest was not taken seriously by mainstream science largely because of that. In his book, The Universe in a Nutshell (Bantam Books, 2001), mathematician and physicist Stephen Hawking addressed the controversy:
“If galaxies are moving apart now, it means they must have been closer together in the past. About fifteen billion years ago, they would have been on top of each other, and the density would have been very large. This state was called the “primeval atom” by the Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre, who was the first to investigate the origin of the universe that we call the big bang. Einstein seems never to have taken the big bang seriously”
Stephen Hawking actually calculated the density of Father Lemaitre’s “Primeval Atom” just prior to The Big Bang. It was 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, tons per square inch. I haven’t checked this math myself, so we’ll take Professor Hawking’s word for it.
Though Einstein disagreed with Father Lemaitre at first, he respected his brilliant mathematical mind. When Einstein presented his theories to a packed audience of scientists in Brussels in 1933, he was asked if he thought his ideas were understood by everyone present. “By Professor D, perhaps,” Einstein replied, “And certainly by Lemaitre, as for the rest, I don’t think so.”
When Father Lemaitre presented his concepts of the “primeval atom” and an expanding universe, Einstein told him, “Your mathematics is perfect, but your grasp of physics is abominable.”
They were words Einstein would one day have to take back. When Edwin Hubble and other astronomers read Father Lemaitre’s paper, they became convinced that it was Einstein’s physics that was flawed. They could only conclude that the priest and scientist was correct about the creation and expansion of The Universe from the “primeval atom,” and the fact that time, space and matter actually did begin at a moment of creation, and that The Universe will end.
It’s an ironic twist that science often accuses religion of holding back the truth about science. In the case of Father Lemaitre and The Big Bang, it was science that refused to believe the evident truth that a Catholic priest proposed to a mathematical certainty: that the true origin of The Universe, and of time and space, is its creation on “a day without yesterday.”
For his work, Father Lemaitre was inducted into the Royal Academy of Belgium, and was awarded the Franqui prize by an international commission of scientists. Pope Pius XI applauded Father Lemaitre’s view of the creation of the universe and appointed him to the Pontifical Academy of Science. Later, Pope Pius XII declared that Father Lemaitre’s work was a vindication of the Biblical account of creation.
The Pope saw in Father Lemaitre’s brilliance a scientific model of a created Universe that bridged science and faith and halted the growing sense that each must entirely reject the other.
Einstein finally came around to endorse, if not openly embrace Father Lemaitre’s conclusions. He admitted that his concept of an eternal, unchanging universe was an error. “The Cosmological Constant was my greatest mistake,” he said.
In January, 1933, Father Georges Lemaitre traveled to California to present a series of seminars. When Father Lemaitre finished his lecture on the nature and origin of The Universe, a man in the back stood and applauded, and said, “This is the most beautiful and satisfying explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.” Everyone present knew that voice. It was Albert Einstein, and he actually said the “C” word so disdained by the science of his time: “Creation!”
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
“The more we know of the universe, the more profoundly we are struck by a Reason whose ways we can only contemplate with astonishment” … Albert Einstein once said that in the laws of nature, ‘there is revealed such a superior Reason that everything significant which has arisen out of human thought and arrangement is, in comparison with it, the merest empty reflection.’ In what is most vast, in the world of heavenly bodies, we see revealed a powerful Reason that holds the world together.”
“In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
“Live long and prosper.”
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