Billions of planets in our galaxy capable of supporting life

I am grateful to live in a time of an unprecedented scientific knowledge explosion. Someone said recently 99 percent of our scientific knowledge has come in the past century.

Just today there is a report astronomers now think there could be billions, yes, billions, of planets in our galaxy capable of supporting life. This mind-numbing fact could not have been imagined decades back.

With such cosmic shifts in thought, the challenge to believe in a Deity who sent his Son to planet earth to share in our humanity rests before us. Astonishingly, Catholic moral theology rests upon scientific understandings which date back centuries and have not been updated with social science insights. Those who have attempted to foster change have been driven aside or out of Catholic theology departments. This is woefully shortsighted.

The journey of theology and science needs to go forward, hand in hand. Ours is a reasoned faith. When we turn our backs on reason, on knowledge flowing from reason, we become less conversant with the modern world, less able to proclaim our faith, even less fully human.

Jesus, after all, came to liberate, to call us to full and radical love, to be full human beings.