I watched Cosmos on Sunday night earnestly hoping to learn something new and cool, and unfortunately I didn't because I already do read about these topics near weekly just for fun. But it was nice to say "Yep, I already knew that!" and the presentation was pretty cool... Except for an uncomfortably long propaganda session bashing the Catholic church (albeit with a really sweet animation style), which took up 12 minutes of the 40 minute broadcast. I thought that time could have been better spent talking about other things. Like science. Or perhaps contributors like Copernicus, or Galileo, with maybe a dismissive blurb about how sometimes they got in trouble with the church, and then Dr. Tyson could've just gone on about more astro-, quantum-, and nuclear physics and how cool they are on their own.
I'm a huge science buff, and I firmly believe the whole "conflict" of science vs. religion is non-existent at best, and ridiculously misunderstood at its worst in the public sphere. Most importantly, modern science owes a great deal to the Catholic church, which in its history is the biggest financial contributor to scientific research, who founded the university system, invented and enforced the scientific method, devised the peer review process for earning doctorate degrees which we still use today, and made countless other contributions to education in general, and science in particular. There's a reason why Europe leads the world in science today. It's because of Catholic scientists like Georges Lemaitre who conjectured the Big Bang Theory, but he was mysteriously left unmentioned in the Big Bang segment of the show.
The relative handful of times the church lashed out at scientists was over heresy, which is a theological offense, not a scientific one. And in every case, the focus of the tribunals was on the heresy itself, while the discoveries, hypotheses, and evidence related to the science that sparked the controversy were largely put on the side for a later, unrelated debate in the scientific sphere. There were occasions of individuals turning these heresy charges into ad hominem attacks against the scientist or his specific contributions, but those were the actions of flawed individuals that stood outside the greater church's mission.
It's important to note that it is a foreign concept to the secular world that "the church" as a term can take many different textured meanings that are blurred in these circumstances, the confusion of which has horrible consequences for the divine church's mission. I'll coin a few terms myself here just to straighten out a few concepts I plan to elaborate on.
- The first one is basic, "the sanctuary," the physical buildings we set aside as "churches," structures where individual parish communities gather. This term is fairly irrelevant to the topic at hand...
- The next is what I'll call "the corporeal church", the group of people alive at any one given time that comprises the clergy - priests, bishops, cardinals, the pope, and other administrators - and really the laity is included here too, regular practicing Catholic parish members. Keep in mind that this is temporal, and the set of people alive in the corporeal church of the 1500s was different from the corporeal church of today. Also remember that it is composed of many human beings, all of which are subject to original sin and are imperfect people.
- Then there's "the mystical body" of the church, which is the extension of God Himself, His presence on earth through Jesus in the marriage of the Trinitarian Holy Spirit to flesh, whose authority was passed on through His spiritual progeny of the apostles and bishops, His physical body shared with and embedded in us through the Eucharist, leaving the full community of the modern catholic (note the little "c" for "universal") church on the material earth. In this sense, the mystical body of the church is not an organization but an organism. It's the true presence of God on earth, and its mission is to make known the ways and will of God in the tangible world, and to bring mortals into Himself through the Holy Spirit. It is from the mystical body that the catechism and doctrine flow infallibly.
The conflict of course arises when the only part of the mystical body of the church that the secular world recognizes is the current corporeal portion of it, and the necessary risks that come from only this mortal section being able to convey the will of the mystical body to the rest of humanity. The corporeal church is inevitably prone to error, but its mission is perfect in that it stems from its identity as the mystical body on earth. A major part of its mission is delivering and preserving the truth of the mystical body of God to His people alive at any given time. This is why the corporeal church cannot change doctrine. It's also why the church identifies heresy and brings it to light, as a necessary part of preserving and defending that truth.
So let's also clear up what heresy is. Heresy is a false teaching about theology that is being proliferated as truth in the theological sphere. It can only be recognized in contrast to the fact that God Himself came to earth in the form of Jesus to give us His divine will, so His life and example is the unquestionable truth straight from God's mind.
Take note that God did not come in the form of some wise, rich, powerful, or educated person, and did not find it important to write His will down. Rather, His son lived a life of example, with a public ministry of three years, during which time He took in many disciples, but a certain twelve men in particular. These 12 apostles lived with the man those three years, and likewise wrote almost nothing down themselves. A scant four books (more like "pamphlets" compared to the volume we write today), written a few decades after His life ended are not going to cover every will and teaching He had, let alone every whim and preference, or nuance to his teaching. But living with the man, they learned a lot more about him, and knew how He thought. His favorite foods, His tone of voice, His nervous ticks and pet peeves. Whether rainy days made Him sad and dreary, or happy that there was nourishment for the earth, or just glad to see variety of weather in the desert. They knew how often He bathed, what foods gave him gas, and whether He was a morning person or not. As an aside, keep in mind this man claimed to be God, was publicly executed, and came back to life, proving that He wasn't just another crazy person, or a diabolical villain capitalizing on the trust of weak-minded people for personal gain. He was the real deal. He was God.
So when someone asks "What did Jesus mean when He said this?", you can be sure the apostles knew. Those apostles instructed their successors on how to live the way Jesus did. Those successors became bishops who appointed new worthy bishops who learned their ways to their satisfaction. Those bishops appointed new successors. Yes, many humans in this line were subject to sin and mistakes - including the first apostles themselves, and in particular our first pope St. Peter! But the Holy Spirit was with them in their authenticity, and good would win out over time. This apostolic succession into the modern day ensures that if anyone knows the truth straight from the mouth of God Himself, these people will be the most reliable resource, flawed as it may be. This is the Catholic church, capital "C".
The danger of heresy is when people make a claim and attribute it as a true teaching of Christianity and usurp the Catholic church's authority to gain credibility for their false teaching.
Hilariously, people who love to get on to the scientific side of the evolution vs. creationism debate should be able to resonate with this danger strongly.
The creationist viewpoint is in fact a scientific "heresy" because it makes claims about the truth of the world based in theology (although a misunderstanding of it from the Catholic church's view) and claims science as its authority falsely to prove this claim. The obvious danger is that people who are not informed could mistake the authority of science used in the argument and believe in creationism as scientific truth, when clear evidence, proven through the scientific method, supports the theory of evolution. Then they'll shape their lives according to this falsehood, leading to shutting one's mind down to the possibility that other scientific research out there is true too. Going to the other extreme, it might force one's worldview to that of Biblical literalism.
This is the same danger of heresy with theology. Someone can't go out and leverage a scientific truth, nor falsify approval of the corporeal church, to prove a theological point which is counter to what people in the apostolic succession know and have deduced through rational philosophy to be a theological truth revealed by God Himself. Uninformed people will mistake that falsehood as the truth of God, and shape their lives according to it, leading them away from God and their salvation, the ultimate purpose of their mortal lives. Or worse, cause them to shut down one's mind to the possibility that other theological knowledge out there is true too. The results of believing this falsehood seem much more dire to me than just being foolish.
So all that being said, let's look at some case studies.
Galileo's much publicized situation has plenty of bad moves on both sides of the issue. Before him, Copernicus first put forth the heliocentric theory, and he gathered some mathematical proof to back up his claims. He took his time not to accidentally imply any related theological conclusions drawn from it. Galileo on the other hand was more than happy to challenge church authorities and mock them, and leveraged his discoveries to give himself clout against them. The mystical body of the church could not allow heresy to go on like that, despite any other truths his thorough research may have revealed. So, using the corporeal branch, the mystical body of the church had to go forward with calling him out, and defending the theological truth that God has put humanity at the fore of his creation for a specific purpose. The geographic or stellar coordinates were rather irrelevant to this truth, and in the actual trials, were rarely referred to.
I expected to see some of this rehashed in Cosmos in its typical biased form, but was surprised, bewildered, and honestly appalled that not only were Galileo and Copernicus mentioned only in passing, but instead this sideshow clown Giordano Bruno was brought in, and his case droned on for a quarter of the broadcast.
Let the public know that first off, Bruno had no scientific evidence to his claims like Copernicus or Galileo. He had a dream about it, and a gut instinct. The Catholic church doesn't even recognize saints on gut instinct, there's an entire logic and evidence-based canonization process. They sure as hell aren't going to accept the ravings of a lunatic unfounded, even if through dumb luck he happened to be right later. And the mystical body is absolutely not going to allow said lunatic to begin preaching heresies based on a hunch, while scientific and theological reasoning are noticeably absent. The whole scripted "I believe an infinite God would have produced infinitely more possibilities in the universe!" or some such drivel that Bruno used in the cartoon in Cosmos is eliciting a sympathetic emotional response while dodging the hard facts of the dangers of the logical heresy, which I think is a low blow to the church. I'll concede that having him burned at the stake isn't consistent with a theology that posits that capital punishment is wrong in all circumstances, and I'll chalk that one up to the fallibility of the corporeal church of the time. But that again, doesn't change the fact that Bruno was a heretic preaching an extrapolated pantheism as Christian doctrine, which should have been and was quashed.
The portrayal of Bruno in Cosmos was not only grossly uninformed of what was at stake, or even historical facts, but it was also unnecessarily dramatized for far too long. I can only interpret that as a direct, prolonged attack on the Catholic church, because it served no other purpose in the show. Yet the Catholic church as the mystical body of God indeed carries forth a higher truth, which should be recognized in the world. Maybe not during the Cosmos program, because theology and the authority of the church are not topics that fall within its scientific sphere, and as such it should have avoided these topics all together. More importantly, why this story? The undermining of the credibility of the corporeal church in a complex, nuanced case like Galileo is one thing, but seriously? Giordano Bruno of all people? He was a dangerous idiot with a lucky guess.
My question is, what would the scientists do if Ken Ham or Stephen Meyer turned out to be right in another 200 years, based on a lucky guess? And yet you see the incensed efforts they make to stamp them out now.
That said, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's portrayal of Bruno is yet another heresy of its own to be stomped out. It leverages science (bad science, at that) and an incomplete presentation of history to prove a theological point about the church's authority and purpose. It twisted the church justifiably doing its job in its own sphere into mistakenly trying to oppress scientific research, portraying it as a villain of progress. That can easily be interpreted by the casual observer that if the church was wrong about an unrelated scientific subject, that ad hominem somehow this means other things the church teaches are wrong too, even within its own sphere of theology. Going to its extreme, it leads to scientific reductionism, the inverse of Biblical literalism - and just as foolish - the ignoring of any and all evidence of the supernatural truths of the universe, because if it isn't in the science journals, then it isn't true! Don't believe his trash and shut your mind down to the good news because of this over-dramatization.
Lastly, to do a favor to Dr. Tyson that was not shown to the church, I will go the extra mile and acknowledge that he is a brilliant and entertaining scientist, and everything else presented in Cosmos was true and awe-inspiring, in what was an otherwise enlightening program. What was left of it in the other 28 minutes, anyway.
