Vatican’s allowing belief in aliens creates debate

Chicago Tribune

Word that the Vatican had declared devout Catholics free to believe in aliens traveled at warp speed last week, around the globe and, quite possibly, to points unknown.

Earth-bound theologians and astrophysicists debated it, online “Jedi Council” forums erupted in geeky chatter and many who have long dared to believe that life exists beyond our terrestrial confines felt some small measure of vindication.

“If you’re sitting in a room that’s totally dark and you can’t see anything, and the door is cracked just a millimeter to let a little light in, that can be extremely useful,” said Peter Davenport, head of the National UFO Reporting Center in Washington state.

In other words, in the lonely world of alien believers, visitors are always welcome.

The Roman Catholic Church has never been considered anti-alien. In fact, Catholic priests and scholars have written about the issue of extraterrestrial life since at least the Middle Ages. What made last week’s statement significant, several experts say, is that the comments by the Rev. Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, were printed in the Vatican’s own newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. That gave his words a certain papal heft.

It has also made for some lively discussions between liberal and conservative theologians. The Rev. Christopher Corbally, vice director of the Vatican Observatory, said he has been bombarded with e-mail from colleagues pondering whether God could have created more than one world and whether other beings could be granted redemption via a Christ-like savior.

If God created human beings in His own image, how could there be others who don’t look like us? Little green men, Corbally noted, certainly do not fit the popular image of God.

“It’s a fun way to catch people’s imagination,” he said, jubilantly. “How wonderful it would be to have other life beyond our own world, because it would show how God’s creation just flows out without abandon.

“We are always trying to restrict God’s creativity, putting theological difficulties in the way. But I don’t think God bothers with theological difficulties.”

Human beings, on the other hand, have a tendency to be a bit literal when interpreting the teachings of their faiths. Proof of that can be found in the Puritanical pudding at the Salem witch trials in 1692, not to mention countless history books or even today’s headlines. Many a faithful soul today would be aghast at talk of UFOs and other forms of intelligent life.

“Any kind of literalist in Christianity would be barring these sorts of beliefs,” said Thomas O’Brien, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University. “If you were to go to some fundamentalist Christian churches, you’d hear some pastors say belief in UFOs is tantamount to a nonbelief in Jesus Christ.”

Such pooh-poohing of cosmic possibilities runs quite counter to last week’s comments from the Vatican Observatory. Funes said that to not believe life exists beyond our planet would be to “set limits on the creative liberty of God.”

And God, most believers would agree, is not someone you want to mess with. As the Rev. Thomas O’Meara, a visiting theology professor at Boston College, put it: “If you have a mature view of God, God can do what God wants.”

So the question becomes: Will this declaration from the Vatican be of any help to those who truly believe in visiting spacecraft and populated worlds more advanced than our own?

“Religion does play a big part in the UFO phenomenon,” said Julie Shuster, director of the International UFO Museum Research Center in Roswell, N.M., the Mecca of alien enthusiasts. “A lot of people feel it’s a very demonic thing. They’ll come with a family member, but they won’t set foot in the door because they don’t believe in any of it, and don’t think they should.”

Still, a sudden bump in the 160,000 visitors the center gets each year isn’t expected. And Shuster sounded a bit skeptical of why the Vatican — which, she understands, has “a wide array of books on UFOs” — picked this particular time to bring up aliens.

“Maybe they felt that, for whatever reason, the timing is right,” Shuster posited.

So what’s next? A canonical embrace of ghosts, psychic powers, fairies and, perhaps, the Easter Bunny?

Turns out that’s not necessary.

“There are no problems with ghosts and the paranormal because a lot of the personages that populate the cosmic world of Catholicism are precisely those kinds of figures,” said O’Brien, the DePaul professor. “So there’s nothing against that kind of belief.”

In fact, O’Brien and other experts agree that the Catholic faith — and many others, for that matter — is based not on things a person can’t believe in, but on the things a person must believe in.

So beliefwise, as long as you buy into the basic tenets of your religion, the sky, or in this case the universe, is the limit.