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I have long wanted to write about the ways I struggle to reconcile my Catholic faith with my rationalist understandings of science. I certainly don't believe that there is any reasonable way to understand scriptures as literally true or historically accurate. Instead, we need to recognize them as attempts, in a pre-science world, to explain the universe, and that any Truths that they contain are limited to insights into human culture and relationships and how we should strive to make the world a better place.
But what about other elements of Catholicism? There are elements of Church teaching that I struggle with. One of those is the reliance upon miracles in assessing the merits of canonization of potential saints. My rationalist oriented mind struggles to accept that these miracles are what they are purported to be by the Church, namely Divine (i.e., supernatural) intersessions into our physical reality. I can't help think that some future scientific breakthrough might provide a perfectly natural explanation for these events (most of which are unexplained healings).
The Jesuit Post recently posted an entry that tackled this same issue. I find that the author, a Jesuit priest, does a pretty good job of expressing a lot of what I go through when I struggle to reconcile these conflicts in my mind. While I guess that I always figured I was not alone in my doubt, it is supremely reassuring to find that it is shared by priests as well.
But what about other elements of Catholicism? There are elements of Church teaching that I struggle with. One of those is the reliance upon miracles in assessing the merits of canonization of potential saints. My rationalist oriented mind struggles to accept that these miracles are what they are purported to be by the Church, namely Divine (i.e., supernatural) intersessions into our physical reality. I can't help think that some future scientific breakthrough might provide a perfectly natural explanation for these events (most of which are unexplained healings).
The Jesuit Post recently posted an entry that tackled this same issue. I find that the author, a Jesuit priest, does a pretty good job of expressing a lot of what I go through when I struggle to reconcile these conflicts in my mind. While I guess that I always figured I was not alone in my doubt, it is supremely reassuring to find that it is shared by priests as well.
