Friday September 17, 2010
Pope: Science Can’t Answer Life’s Biggest Questions
Day 2 of papal visit continues in London after triumphant beginning in Scotland
By Hilary White
ROME, September 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints,” Pope Benedict XVI told a group of about 3000 school children today. The pope spoke with students, teachers and educators, as well as assemblies of education officials and leaders of other religious faiths, on the second day of his official state visit to Britain.
At his first public appearance of the second day of his visit to Britain, Pope Benedict addressed a group of school children at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham, west London, encouraging them to ignore the allure of celebrity and sport hero culture and embrace the call to personal holiness. In simple language, the pope said, “By far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness” and “a good Catholic school should help all its students to become saints.”
He warned that without the “religious or ethical dimensions of life” the “scientific outlook becomes dangerous and narrow,” “just as religion becomes narrow if it rejects the legitimate contribution of science to our understanding of the world.”
He added, “We need good historians, and philosophers and economists but if the accounts they give of human life is too narrowly focused they can lead us seriously astray.”
Speaking more pointedly, he told a group of education officials, including Education Secretary Michael Gove, Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham, chairman of the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales (CESEW) and CESEW chief executive Oona Stannard, that religion must take pride of place in Catholic schools.
“The presence of religion in Catholic schools is a powerful reminder of the much-discussed Catholic ethos that needs to inform every respect of school life. It means that the life of faith needs to be the driving force for every activity in the school.”
The CESEW has come under heavy criticism from some Catholics in Britain for its endorsement of government plans to enforce secularized sex education. These plans included mandatory classes on homosexuality and information for school children on how to obtain abortions and contraception without parents’ knowledge or consent.
At a meeting later with leaders of other faiths, Benedict continued this theme, with words that some have speculated have been said in answer to Dr. Stephen Hawking’s recent assertion that the universe came into existence without God.
“Within their own spheres of competence,” the pope said, “the human and natural sciences provide us with an invaluable understanding of aspects of our existence and they deepen our grasp of the workings of the physical universe, which can then be harnessed in order to bring great benefit to the human family.
“Yet these disciplines do not and cannot answer the fundamental question, because they operate on another level altogether. They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’”