Why Astronomy? A visit to the Vatican Observatory
Every two years, the Vatican Observatory hosts a summer school for young astronomers. Aleteia spoke with Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J. and some of the students to learn about the program and the light it sheds on the practice of astronomy.
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00:30It's an interesting thing that I learned when I was about 30, and I had my doctorate.
00:41I was working at MIT as a researcher, but I was wondering, you know, why am I actually
00:45worried about the moons of Jupiter when people are starving in the world?
00:49And so I quit astronomy and joined the Peace Corps, and I went to Africa, but what I found
00:53when I got to Kenya was that the people there wanted to know about astronomy.
00:57They wanted to look through my little telescope and see the rings of Saturn, but of course
01:01they do, because this is what human beings do.
01:05Wondering about the universe is feeding our souls because we don't live by bread alone.
01:18Back in 1986, one of our astronomers, Martin McCarthy, just had this insight that the place
01:24is too quiet.
01:26It's not like a university where there are students to challenge you.
01:29Why don't we bring the students here?
01:31He had the idea of a summer school where we would have four weeks of intensive study with
01:37students who would be the best in the world, 25 of them, on some particular topic.
01:42And what we have found is that it brings this whole place to life, and it communicates to
01:48the astronomical world how much joy there is to do science for the love of the truth,
01:54to remind ourselves why we're doing this.
01:57We do it for love of truth, which to a Christian like me, to a Catholic, means love of the
02:03one who is truth.
02:07It's a month-long school, so we have a lot of time to interact and make connections.
02:13I'm Armenian, and I grew up Armenian in Lebanon, which is like a small Christian community.
02:19So growing up, the church was an important part of my upbringing.
02:23So I thought this was just a very interesting opportunity to kind of explore the relationship
02:28between the church, religion, and science.
02:44I think that's great advice, because the main drive for science is curiosity and wondering
02:51for something.
02:52It's like energy for sciences, to find something new.
02:56So I think it's really great advice for young sciences.
03:05In science, you are seeking truth, and I have my own spirituality.
03:12And we have different religions here, people from different places and different cultures.
03:19And they all are looking for the same thing.
03:24We want to understand the world.
03:26And I think that's what unites us.
03:33You read the opening book of Genesis and the description of creation there, and people
03:37go, oh, that's so non-scientific.
03:38Well, it was good science 2,500 years ago.
03:43What hasn't changed is not the science of the creation, but the God of creation.
03:51And who is the God who creates in Genesis?
03:54One who is there before creation occurs, outside of space, outside of time, creating space
04:02and time itself.
04:04One who creates as logically as day follows night.
04:09One who creates and at every stage of creation looks and says, this is good.
04:15And one who says the ultimate moment of creation, the ultimate goal of creation, is the Sabbath,
04:26the day when we stop worrying about what are we going to eat, and we allow ourselves to
04:31look at the universe and see in it the Creator, and be amazed by how it works and how incredibly
04:39subtle and elegant the Creator has been.
04:44That's astronomy.