Category Archives: Priests and Religious of Science

Vatican Observatory Photometry and “The Vilnius Connection”

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“Forty Years of Photometry.” That is what is on the cover of the Specola Vaticana/Vatican Observatory’s 2019 Annual Report. If you have not had a look at the report, click here and read through it (and to see Annual Reports going back years, click here). The two gentlemen on the cover are Fr. Richard P. Boyle, S.J. (at right) and Fr. Robert Janusz, S.J. And that cover, and those gentlemen, have a connection to my “origins story” with this Sacred Space Astronomy blog and the V.O. The Annual Report’s main article starts off by noting that, Just as this year the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, so here at the Specola we mark a significant anniversary: 40 years since the pioneering publication of Father Martin McCarthy and his collaborators on stellar photometry, which laid the groundwork for what has become a major thrust of research at the Vatican Observatory. In that paper, Fr. McCarthy described … Continue reading →

Science and Water, Then and Now

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You find science everywhere.  During the early eighteenth century Spanish Franciscans established a series of missions along the San Antonio River in what is now the U.S. state of Texas.  They ministered to the native Coahuiltecan people who lived there.  The San Antonio Missions are today active Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, while also being part of the San Antonio Missions National Park, and a UN World Heritage Site.  Thus, the missions are still there.  And, as a film that introduces visitors to the San Antonio Missions emphasizes, so are the Coahuiltecans who built the missions with the Franciscans; their descendants live all over the area. One of the missions, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción de Acuña, appeared in this blog last year (click here for that post) because the sun illuminates that church in an interesting way every Feast of the Assumption.  However, as I noted in that post, while arranging that sort of … Continue reading →

Astronomy in Art & Architecture: R. A. Rosenfeld’s Astronomical History Christmas Cards

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Greetings, Readers of Sacred Space Astronomy!  Check out the astronomical art below.  These are cards made by Randall A. Rosenfeld, who is the archivist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.  I’ve been fortunate enough to be on Randall’s Christmas mailing list for some years now, and have built up this small collection of original astronomical artwork as a result.  He graciously gave the OK for me to share them with Sacred Space Astronomy readers.  These scans do not look nearly as good as the originals, because the originals feature cool stuff like stars colored with metallic ink.  A scan just will not capture that sort of thing. Many of these illustrations are based on material found in historical books on astronomy.  I have included links to the originals in many cases.  Click on those links if you have time.  I think that you will be glad that you did. The card above is the most recent one Randall has … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists | Fr. Athanasius Kircher S.J. (1602-1680): Jesuit Polymath

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This entry is part 15 of 15 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

Athanasius Kircher lived at a time when a wealth of information was coming to Rome from the missions — many of them Jesuit-run — around the world.  Missionaries were documenting new plants, animals, cultures, and natural phenomena.  Stationed in Rome himself, Kircher collected these reports and artifacts from abroad and corresponded with scientists and academics throughout Europe.  His writings — more than 40 texts — compile, report, and expand upon many different fields from linguistics to Egyptology to paleontology to magnetism and more.  Living at the end of the age of Renaissance polymaths, he has been called “the last man who knew everything.” His scientific contributions were largely hit-or-miss, many of them having been corrected or negated by later findings.  Often, historians have emphasized these failures to paint a picture him as anything from a well-meaning but failed scientist to an outright charlatan.  This bias, however, fails to recognize the value of his overall body of work.  More recently, some … Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Cities (and two churches, and two hotels, and an observatory)

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In 1934 Our Lady of Lourdes Church in West Baden Springs, Indiana was deemed structurally unsound, was pulled down, and was not rebuilt. A forest grows now where the church once stood. Revolving around Lourdes and its sister church, Our Lady of the Springs (still standing a mile or so down the road in the town of French Lick), is an interesting story about building a world we can live with. This story does involve some elements of what we usually think of as science—a Jesuit-run astronomical observatory is part of the story!—but it is mostly about science as considered more broadly: science as the process of looking carefully at the world around us and trying to measure it and to understand it and the rules by which it works, and to come up with ideas about it, on its terms, not on ours. It is a fascinating story, and one that may give us some good ideas for the … Continue reading →

Remembering Bill Stoeger: New Videos

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Today (March 24) marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Fr. Bill Stoeger. Many of us remember him for both his brilliant academic mind and his holy and gentle personality. Over the years there have been a number of posts here about him and his work… he was both a cosmologist (classmate and friend of Stephen Hawking, collaborator and co-author with a number of the great cosmologists of our era) and as a theologian. He also was greatly sought after as a spiritual director. He was also widely sought after as a speaker and subject of videos. His style was very different from most media-savvy astronomers; rather than having a glib answer ready to hand, he would speak slowly, gently, but clearly, weighing each word… and making the interviewer feel that this was perhaps the first time that question had been asked (even when in reality it was the millionth time!) Recently, at the Specola we got a lovely … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: Canon Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543); Heliocentricism

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This entry is part 13 of 15 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

When the name Copernicus is mentioned, what often comes to mind is the role that his heliocentric theory played in the Galileo affair. This creates the false impression of Copernicus as a controversial figure at loggerheads with Church authority. In reality, Copernicus was himself a Church figure. He was a canon (a church administrative role that at the time required ordination to minor orders) at his uncle’s diocese in Warmia. He held a doctorate in canon law. When his heliocentric system was presented to Pope Clement VII in 1533, it was favorably and enthusiastically received. Cardinal von Schoenberg of Capua encouraged him in a letter to promulgate the theory widely. In the seventy years after the publication of De Revolutionibus (until Galileo published his Siderius Nuncius) Copernicus’ work saw almost no objections on theological grounds. Biographical Sketch: Mikołaj Kopernik was born in Toruń in modern-day Poland on (it is believed) February 19, 1473. His father was a copper merchant, and … Continue reading →

Fr. George V. Coyne SJ (1933-2020)

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This entry is part 48 of 57 in the series Diary

George Coyne, who directed the Vatican Observatory for nearly 30 years and founded the Vatican Observatory Foundation (home of this site), died on Tuesday, February 11 at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., where he was being treated for bladder cancer. He was 87 years old. The New York Times (online edition) has run an obituary for him, which you can link to here; their recognition is a tribute to his stature as an astronomer and a Jesuit. I also wrote up a short piece about him for the L’Osservatore Romano, which they edited and ran in Italian; below you’ll find the full English text that I submitted to them. What’s curious to me is that the Times led their article by talking about George’s work in Galileo and evolution whereas I didn’t even mention that in my article. It makes sense, of course. To most readers of the Times, those topics were the things that had brought him into … Continue reading →

ⓜ The Mad Scientist

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This entry is part 20 of 28 in the series And Then I Wrote

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places…  In 2006-2007 I took a sabbatical year at Fordham University; where others take sabbaticals to get away from teaching and do research, my idea was to get a break from research and do some teaching! While there, I was invited to write a short article to introduce myself to the Fordham community. Here’s what I gave them: I fell into the scientific life by accident. I chose to attend MIT as much for its science fiction collection as anything else: the career of a mad scientist looked like fun! Once there… [In order to read the rest of this post, you have to be a paid-up member of Sacred Space, and logged in as such!]

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Religious Scientists: Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955); Jesuit paleontologist

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This entry is part 12 of 15 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

If one mentions the name Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the first thing that comes to mind is his philosophical/theological speculation on the evolution of Creation and mankind toward its ultimate Omega Point. During his lifetime (i.e. before the Second Vatican Council), such theories were quite controversial and he was not permitted to publish them. Even today, while many people embrace his writings, others continue to view them with skepticism. Regardless of one’s views regarding his theology or philosophy, one must also recognize that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was quite an accomplished scientist in the fields of paleontology and geology. He investigated early hominids, and took part in the discovery of Peking Man in China. Biographical Sketch: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born on the first of May, 1881, into a large French family in the region of Auvergne. His father instilled in him an interest in geology, and his mother encouraged his prayer and spiritual development. He attended a Jesuit … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: Sr. Mary Kenneth Keller B.V.M. (1913-1985) – Computer Science

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This entry is part 11 of 15 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

When I was little, my dad bought an Apple II+ computer.  Every Christmas, my uncle would send us a pack of computer games on 5.25-inch floppy disks. We spent countless hours playing those games on its primitive green pixelated screen.  It was fun to play games made by somebody else, but even better was when I learned to make the computer do what I wanted it to do, with a little programming.  I learned a very simple computer language called Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC.  With it, I made my own games, limited only by my imagination and skill.  For the freedom that programming in BASIC gave me, I have to thank a nun: Sr. Mary Kenneth Keller. Biographical Sketch: She was born Evelyn Marie Keller on Dec 17, 1913 (different sources disagree on this date) in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1932, she joined the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where she took the name Mary … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: Fr. Roger Boscovich S.J., F.R.S. (1711-1787) – Atomic Theory

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This entry is part 10 of 15 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

Fr. Roger Joseph Boscovich S.J. was one of the last great polymaths. His areas of study and work include physics, mathematics, atomic theory, celestial mechanics, geodesy, philosophy, theology, architecture, poetry, and more. Biographical Sketch Ruđer Josip Bošković was born May 18, 1711 to a merchant family in Dubrovnik, in what is today Croatia.  He attended the Jesuit school in Dubrovnik. In 1725, he traveled to Rome to study at the Roman College, and in 1731 entered the Jesuit order. He was ordained a priest in 1744. He showed aptitude for mathematics and the natural sciences, and from 1740-1759 served as a professor of mathematics at the Roman College.  It is during this time that he made many of his more significant scientific contributions.  In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV requested Boscovich’s input on a little problem. The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica was developing cracks.  Boscovich recommended securing the dome with iron bands, which was then implemented successfully. This led him … Continue reading →