RonRolheiser,OMI

Science and Christian Faith – Friends Not Foes

May 4, 2026

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During most of the two thousand years that Christianity has existed it has not been friends with science, and science has not been friends with it. From the Church condemning Galileo, to the Enlightenment thinkers declaring faith “a spent project,” science and Christian faith have been more foe than friend. Happily, this has changed.

Today Christian theology has been able to not only accept the legitimate findings of science but it has been able to integrate them healthily into a vision of salvation history. As a salient example of this we might look at the theological synthesis given us by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).

Teilhard was a prominent scientist, a paleontologist recognized internationally for his scientific work. He was also a person of exceptional faith, a mystic, a Jesuit priest, and a gifted spiritual writer.

At the time he was doing his scientific work and writing his first theological treatises, the concept of evolution was still almost universally rejected by all the Christian churches, who saw it as in opposition to the story of creation in Genesis. Indeed, the Roman Catholic authorities forbid Teilhard to publish his theological writings, and for several decades his theological writings were circulated only privately among his Jesuit colleagues. Eventually, with the advent of Vatican II and a general (cultural and religious) softening of resistance to the concept of evolution, Teilhard’s theological treatises were allowed by Church authorities to be published; albeit they still came with a warning label as dogmatically unsafe.

What is that worldview? To my mind, it is one of the great syntheses of science and Christian faith that has yet been written. In essence, what Teilhard did was to take the findings of science, particularly the concept of evolution, and meld it with a Christian vision of salvation history to produce a framework within which to more deeply understand science, the Christian faith, and the place of Christ in history.

In brief, he fused, as a perfect fit, the scientific notion of creation and evolution (what we might today call the Big Bang hypothesis) with a Christian vision of salvation history and the place of Christ in that history.

Here, in brief, is his synthesis: God is love and fifteen billion years ago, God created the universe (ex nihilo) out of love. However, God didn’t create it as a finished product, as described in Genesis, but as a cosmic infant that would evolve and grow through some billions of years to reach maturity.

Biblically, initial creation, as described in Genesis, was a “formless void.” In an evolutionary view, it took more than six days for human beings to appear; it took fourteen to fifteen billion years. And creation unfolded this way: After the initial creation (the Big Bang), God, at the center of everything, began to draw all things to Himself through love, and through billions of years, as creation responded to that invitation, it increased continually in complexity, consciousness, and unity, moving freely in love towards God.

And this went through four stages, always with God at the center, drawing creation into the mystery of love:

First, geology, earth, rocks, and water formed (“Geogenesis”). Second, from these, eventually life comes forth (“Biogenesis”). Third, some millions of years later human beings with self-reflective consciousness and free will emerge (“Noogenesis”). But, for Teilhard, there is still a fourth stage, the coming of Christ (“Christogenesis”).

 For Teilhard the birth of Christ is the penultimate culmination (spiritually and cosmically) of the evolutionary process. The unfolding of evolutionary history eventually brings us Christ, not just as the historical Jesus but also as a cosmic reality. For Teilhard, Christ is both a person and a cosmic structure within the universe which, like the person of Jesus, invites everything (humans, animals, plants, rocks, water) to an “omega point,” namely, to a community of love inside of God.

This might sound complex, but perhaps it can be explained more simply by folding Teilhard’s vision of creation into the early Christian hymn in Ephesians, 1,3-10. Here science and Christian faith (not least about the centrality of Christ) blend seamlessly:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. … In love hepredestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ … God has given us the wisdom to understand fully the mystery, a plan he was pleased to decree in Christ. A plan to be carried out in Christ, in the fullness of time, to bring all things into one in him, in the heavens and on earth.

Salvation history and evolutionary history both point to the unfolding mystery of how God is bringing all things into unity through Christ. Teilhard wonderfully folded the cosmic history of this planet into the mystery of Christ.

Science and Christian faith are friends, not foes.

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A Soul Friend

April 27, 2026

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One of the saints who speaks to me is Therese of Lisieux, commonly known as the Little Flower. This wasn’t love at first sight. For years I was put off and left cold and uninterested by how her person and her image have become encrusted in an overly saccharine piety. She was too sweet, too pious. Not a saint for me! That changed, thanks to a friend who told me, “Don’t read books about her – read her!” I read her and found in her a soul friend.

Who is Therese of Lisieux? She was a Carmelite nun who died from tuberculous in 1897. She was only twenty-four years old when she died, and as a Carmelite nun hidden away in a convent in rural France, she died in anonymity, probably known by fewer than a hundred people. However, during the last two years of her life, as she lay dying from tuberculous, she kept several diaries. After her death, her Carmelite sisters sent her unpublished diaries to a few other convents, intending to let a small circle of religious women know of her death and a little about her life.

The rest is history. The manuscripts were leaked to a wider public and in less than ten years, printing presses were literally having trouble meeting the demand for her autobiography. Her little convent in Lisieux was receiving more than five hundred letters a day, and people from all over the world were beginning to come to Lisieux on pilgrimage. A hundred and thirty years later, little has changed. She remains extraordinarily popular.

Why? Why this perennial intrigue about Therese? Because there is something about her that touches the soul in a particularly empathic way. How so?

Therese had an anomalous background that produced an extraordinary character. Her life as a child was in many ways tragic. Her mother got sick at the time of Therese’s birth and was unable to care for her during the crucial first year of her life. She was cared for by a nurse and an aunt. As a one-year-old she was returned to her mother, but her mother was already terminally ill and when Therese was four, her mother died. Therese then chose her older sister, Pauline, to be her new mother. Five years later, Pauline entered the convent and as a nine-year-old Therese again lost a mother.

Shortly after this she took ill and almost died. This was triggered by a visit to Pauline who was then a Carmelite nun. Together with her three other sisters and her father, she had gone to visit Pauline in her convent. After Pauline had spent some time focused on her little sister, she naturally became preoccupied in adult conversation. Left out, in sheer frustration, little Therese stood right in front of her big sister and, shaking her dress, began to cry.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pauline. “You didn’t notice!” cried Therese, “I’m wearing the dress you made me!”

She then became disconsolate and on returning home took to bed and for some weeks; despite the best efforts of various doctors and every kind of cajoling by her family, hovered between life and death. Eventually she recovered. Such was the tragedy and oversensitivity of her childhood.

Yet, and this is the great anomaly, as a child, Therese was doted on and loved in a way that few children ever are. Her father, her sisters and her extended family considered her their little queen and she was cherished and made to feel extraordinarily precious and unique. Her sister Celine photographed her every move. Few children ever grow up as nurtured in love and affirmation as did Therese.

And her personality bore out the effects of both the tragedy and the love. On the one side, she could be heavy, dark, withdrawn, and otherworldly. She made easy friends with mortality, was a mystic of darkness, the austere adult, the little girl-woman, who, wounded early, grew up fast. But, on the other side, she always remained the magical child, Cinderella, who, because she was so loved and graced, developed a very robust self-esteem, a confidence and a capacity to love as few others ever have.

So loved as child, a part of her remained ever the little girl, the puella, the incarnation of childlikeness, innocence, and gaiety. Only a Therese of Lisieux could end all her letters with the phrase: I kiss you with my whole heart!

In a soul so formed lies her mystique, that is, her unique combination of depth, insight, and other worldliness, even as she desperately clings to the tiniest gifts from her family and every small token of earthly affection. Only a soul so formed could, at age twenty-two, have the complexity and wisdom to write a mystical and theological treatise that rivals that of great theological doctors, and only a soul so formed could be both a study in hyper-sensitivity and human resilience.

A saint so pathologically complex can be a soul friend to our own complex souls.

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Struggling with Our Own Complexity

April 20, 2026

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Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the founder of Madonna House, once gave a particularly insightful interview. A renowned and respected spiritual figure, she acknowledged that her path wasn’t easy, that she had her fair share of inner struggles. Why? Because, like the rest of us, she was pathologically complex. Being a human being, she suggested, isn’t easy.

Here’s how she described herself. I paraphrase:

“Inside me,” she said, “it seems that there are three people. There’s someone I call the ‘Baroness’. The ‘Baroness’ is the one who’s spiritual, efficient, and given over to prayer and asceticism. She’s the religious person inside me. She’s the one who founded a religious community, who writes spiritual books, challenges others, and has dedicated her life to God and the poor. The ‘Baroness’ reads the Gospels and is impatient with the things of this world. For her, life here and now must be sacrificed for the next world.

But, inside me too, there’s another person I call ‘Catherine’. ‘Catherine’ is a woman who would like fine things, luxuries, comfort, pleasure. She would like to enjoy idleness, long baths, fine clothes, putting on makeup, good food, and used to (while married) enjoy a healthy sex life. ‘Catherine’ enjoys this life and doesn’t like self-sacrifice. She’s not particularly religious and generally hates the ‘Baroness’. ‘Catherine’ and the ‘Baroness’ don’t always get along.

However, there’s still another person inside of me, who’s neither ‘Catherine’ or the ‘Baroness’. Inside me too there’s a little girl lying on a hillside in Finland, watching the clouds and daydreaming. This little girl doesn’t particularly like either ‘Catherine’ or the ‘Baroness’. … “and, as I get older, I feel more like the ‘Baroness’, long still for ‘Catherine’, but think maybe the real person inside me is the little girl daydreaming on a hillside.”

Had these words been uttered by someone still struggling with basic conversion, they wouldn’t pack much punch. They came however from a spiritual giant, from someone who had long ago mastered essential discipleship and had, long ago too, vowed herself to a radical discipleship of service to God and the poor.

If saints struggle in this way, what about the rest of us?

We all struggle because we’re all complex. It’s not a simple thing to be a human being and it’s even more complex if you’re striving to give yourself over beyond what comes naturally.

Like Catherine de Hueck Doherty, all of us have multiple “persons” inside us. Inside each of us there’s someone who has faith, who wants to live the Beatitudes, who wants to be attuned to truths and realities of the Gospels. Inside each of us, there’s a martyr who wants to die for others, a saint who wants to serve the poor, and a moral artist who wants to carry his or her solitude at a high level. But inside each of us there’s also someone who wants to taste life and all its pleasures. Inside each of us there’s a hedonist, a sensualist, a libertine, a materialist, an agnostic, and an egoist.

Beyond that, inside each of us there’s also a little girl or little boy, innocent, daydreaming, watching the clouds on some hillside, not particularly enamored with either the saint or the sinner inside us.

Who’s the real person? They all are. We’re all of these: saint and pleasure-seeker, altruist and egoist, martyr and hedonist, person-of-faith and agnostic, moral artist and compensating libertine, innocent child and jaded adult, and the task of life is not to crucify one for the other, but to have them make peace with each other.

And peace, as we know, is more than the simple absence of war. It’s a positive quality. What makes for peace? Two things: harmony and completeness.

Harmony. A melody is peaceful when all the different notes are strung together to make a harmony, a melody. To have peace, is to not have discord. And there’s also another part to peace, completeness. To play a complex melody, you need a full keyboard. Peace depends upon having enough keys at your disposal to play all the notes life demands.

That’s true too of human nature. Our complexity is not our enemy but our friend. All those seemingly opposites inside us demand a full keyboard. Because we’re both sinner and saint, hedonist and martyr, adult and child, we need a complete set of keys to play the various musical scores that life hands us.

The secret is to arrive at harmony, where the various aspects of our lives make a melody. Metaphorically, we need to move beyond a random stabbing at the keyboard that produces discord. We must also employ a full keyboard so that we can play all the notes life demands. We’ve all had enough experience in life to know that. Peace comes when we put all the complex pieces inside of us together in an order to make a beautiful melody. And, of course, the more varied the notes, the more complex the musical score, the richer the final melody.

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