Vatican astronomer suggests aliens do not need salvation
Print Friendly VersionBy Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY -- Intelligent life may exist on other planets and has no need of redemption through Jesus Christ, the Vatican's top astronomer said.
Fr. Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted in the Wednesday (May 14) edition of the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
The interview appeared under the headline: "The extraterrestrial is my brother."
"Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on the Earth, so there could be other creatures, even intelligent ones, created by God," the Argentine Jesuit said. "This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot set limits on the creative liberty of God."
According to Funes, such creatures may never have fallen into sin, and so have no need of salvation through Christianity.
"It is not a given that they have need of redemption," he said. "They may have remained in full friendship with their Creator."
Asked about the possibility of redemption for sinful extraterrestrials, Funes said he was "sure that even they, in some way, would have the possibility of enjoying the mercy of God."
Elsewhere in the interview, Funes argued that the "big bang" theory of the universe's origins does not conflict with the biblical account of creation.
Funes also said that the Catholic Church had "recognized its errors" in its treatment of the 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was convicted by the Inquisition for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun.
I don't see the conflict.
I don't see the conflict. Humans are unique in the universe. All other creatures of the earth do not have the same kind of relationship with God that humans have, so why should creatures that might exist in other places in the universe be expected to have such a relationship, rather than one that is typical of that between God and, say, earth's other mammals?
The story about the Garden of Eden is true, but not in a completely literal sense, given that there are different versions of it present in the book of Genesis. It explains humanity's circumstances and gives us a starting point from which to build a collective relationship with God while also building individual relationships within each of our lifetimes.
Imagine being born, having no cultural context, no religious foundation, and being alone in determining the point of it all. I think we can presume that this type of speculation never takes place in the minds of our fellow Earth creatures, but do you know of any human being that hasn't questioned his or her existence even with the support and explanations offered by religion? I think we often presume that a human whose brain function or intelligence is less than typical might be such a person.
We are quick to assume that those who have limited intelligence or brain function are more like the other creatures of Earth than they are like us. There is even a tendency in some people to feel that the earthly lives of people whose mental functioning seems not to allow for self-reflection should be ended because they burden us. To counteract that inhumane attitude, we imagine that all creatures have equal status in terms of their relationship with God.
We speculate that Earth's non-human creatures experience life the way we do and that they have souls. However, though our fellow mammals experience emotions, they seem not to experience existential crises. They do not seem to be self-reflective. They certainly do not write or talk about it, if they are. We do not know their fates beyond their earthly existences. However, we are told in the Bible that they are subject to us and here for our benefit, period. We are not expected to concern ourselves with their eternal salvation or possible afterlife, but are obligated to manage them responsibly during this lifetime. We are not told that about our relationships with other humans.
The Bible also mentions angels. They are presumably above us in terms of the relationship with God. They seem to concern themselves with us, but our relationship toward them resembles the relationship of earth's other creatures toward us in that we are caught up in our own existences and usually unaware of their efforts on our behalf.
Given that there are so many different beings of which we are aware, it would seem plausible that there might be others of which we are unaware, whose existence God did not choose to reveal to us humans.
A little confict here.
A little confict here. Either the story about the garden of Eden is true or it isn't. One accepts that the universe was created as in the bible, man fell from grace and is sinful. On the other hand if the big bang is the theory then man did not need redemption from original sin.
On second thought I think the statement is more a piece of musing rather than a piece of doctrine.