In September of 2016, a Catholic school in inner city Detroit opened a
$15 million STEM building. In a city known more for its economic woes and
racial unrest, it is remarkable that a Catholic school would raise such an
enormous fund from private donors for a building dedicated to the study of
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Has the Society of
Jesus, which sponsors the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy, finally recognised what so many of the new
atheists would have us believe, that we should abandon the study of theology
and dedicate ourselves exclusively to the pursuit of science and technology? More
waggishly posed: Why build a chapel when
you could build a chemistry lab?
During my years as a secondary school teacher, students were often gob-smacked
when I emphasised, over and again, that religion and science, faith and
reason, were not at odds with one another. ‘Yes, lads, you can be a thinking
believer!’ Indeed, I insisted that both the chapel and the chemistry lab must be seen as integral to Catholic
education. Each provides a venue for the rigorous and disciplined exploration
of reality in all of its beauty and perplexity. In both settings, the student learns
never to settle for facile answers to questions, pressing onward in a quest not
merely to acquire information but, more importantly, to understand more
deeply the intricacy of creation. At the heart of authentic theological and
scientific inquiry, there abides a courageous spirit that does not recoil in
fear from asking pointed and incisive questions. Thus, in a sense, we might regard
both the liturgy and the laboratory as apprenticeship programmes wherein one is trained to see what to superficial eyes
remains otherwise undetected.
The ritual
of inquiry
Science teachers know the frustration of trying to guide students through
dimensional analysis and Punnett’s squares, of memorising the Krebs Cycle and
of deriving physics equations. To instruct them, we lead them through a
process: identify the known, isolate the unknown, and employ a strategy to find
an answer to our question. We insist students ‘show their work’ and demonstrate
that they have gone through all the steps necessary to reliably arrive at the
correct answer. Even if they do not recognise it, teachers are indoctrinating
students into the ritual of inquiry. By rote practice, memorisation, and
some cajoling, we encourage students to adopt as habitual the rituals of
disciplined inquiry. But, as we know, repetition is seldom a mark of
intellectual excellence: we expect our students to probe deeply and engage
creatively with the material. We encourage them to confront what is known
with questions that push the boundaries of knowledge, turn up new insights, and
make richer the realm of science. Rituals of guided inquiry make possible the
work, the liturgy, of science.
Frustration, irritation, some sweat, fruitless and failed searches:
these are not limited to the laboratory! Anyone who has spent time in real prayer, anyone who has allowed the
ritual of the liturgy to draw his or her spirit more deeply into the depths of
prayer, knows that there is no assured formula for success. Neither public
liturgy nor private prayer furnishes practitioners with never-fail
incantations. Instead, we have as part of our heritage of spiritual inquiry rituals
that have reliably guided generations of seekers into a deeper relationship
with the Creator. Every now and again, we are given the grace of a Eureka
moment of radical insight as the hours of time spent in arid prayer reveal an
expanded horizon that gives the individual a renewed appreciation for the power
and majesty of the Holy One.
Catholic educators should encourage the study of science for the same
reason we hope for frequent participation in the Eucharist: by pushing, prodding
our students to peer beneath the surface, by wading into the dark waters of the
unknown, we enable them to risk being struck by insight and shaken by
revelation. Training our students in the rituals of inquiry – theological and
scientific – we empower them to enter into the greater liturgy of creation
where they may be ‘caught up’ in the beauty of nature and find inexhaustible
delight in their realisation that, no matter how many questions one answers, a
new question will arise that will elicit one to explore further.
Both chapel
and laboratory
Patient and deliberate inquiry, attentive to ritual and appreciative of
the vast liturgy into which we are called: these are traits shared by
theologians and scientists. Both the chapel and the laboratory are necessary
because both are arenas wherein we can risk an encounter with our Creator. We
train our students in the chapel and the laboratory because they complement
each other marvelously. Patience, wasted time, and steadfast perseverance are
as necessary for obtaining, analysing, and processing data as they are every
time we dare to pray. We, as teachers, invite our students to become what we
know ourselves to be: apprentices to those who have come before us and who
continue to inspire us as we press on in our inquiry. A student need not become
another Marie Curie or Richard Dawkins, a Mother Teresa or St Francis for them
to be successful. Our students, and our Church, succeed when they see that we
are enriched by their investigations and that we, their teachers and fellow
seekers, support their unwillingness to accept facile answers to their most
pressing questions. Both science and theology encourage students to enter more
deeply into the liturgy of creation and to celebrate the richness found
therein.
Imagine what might happen if we taught theology, or encouraged students
to experience the Eucharist, with the same brio with which we teach biology,
chemistry, and physics. We could approach the Eucharist as the moment in the
liturgy in which the matter we study actually addresses us and beckons us to
approach, to question, and to celebrate the Mystery at the heart of reason
itself? Contrary to the worries of
Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who fear that religious education clouds human
reason, we just may find ourselves graced with our own Athanasius Kirchner and
Gregor Mendel: models of faithful reason who consecrated scientific exploration
to the greater honour and glory of God.
