Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science (!!!!!)

[elehhhhna]

Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer

November 3, 2005, 7:46 PM EST

VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-vatican-science,0,6358654,print.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. can someone send this to the White House?

They could use a dose of separating science and faith,
politics and faith
science and politics, too, come to think of it.

The timing of this news release is suspicious. Don't you think?

[fasttense]

2. Saw that on CNN last night.

I was surprised. I don't think the Protestants care if there is another Galileo, but that the Catholic church wants to prevent another awful episode in history is very interesting.

[klook]

3. Finally we can admit that the Sun is at the center of the Solar System-eom

[Ex Lion Tamer]

4. The Catholic Church is

pretty good about that now. It doesn't require you to deny science like many fundamentalist approaches do.

Nor does it support a literal reading of the Bible.

[DanCa]

5. This isn't coming from Pope Benedict though so I wont get my hopes up.