By James Dacey
If you are a regular follower of this blog, you may remember that a few weeks ago I went to see the Pope’s astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno, who was giving a talk at the British Science Festival in Birmingham.
Here is a video of that talk in full in which Brother Guy discusses many things including science, religion and the Catholic church’s view on extraterrestrial life. On serious topics such as how he squares his belief with his rational scientific thought, Consolmagno was a lot more candid than I had expected. For instance, if you skip to just over 7 minutes in you can hear how his decision to become a Jesuit just before his 40th birthday was based on a botched calculation regarding his age.
The loudest laugh of the night came when Consolmagno dismisses the idea that Catholics read the Bible as if it were a literal truth, as if it were a science book. “That’s not a Catholic idea… that’s a protestant idea,” he says with a mischievous grin on his face. (See 11 min 30 sec in.)
Video credit: David Evetts from the Birmingham Astronomical Society
