Does Copernicus Have to be Wrong? Or, How the Bible Likes Modern Science

What Nicolai Copernicus said is right. Earth revolves around the Sun, along with all the other planets. After Copernicus, Galileo said the same thing and, more or less, proved it with his telescope. Earth is not the center of the universe. (See this post for a couple reasons why Galileo got in trouble with the church and Copernicus didn’t.) Copernicus needs no defense today, but in this post I want to make an unusual claim. The Bible, as the Catholic Church and many other Christians interpret it, can accommodate modern science. More than that, the Bible likes modern science, and so should you.

An anti-science cult

I’ll get to my main point later in a section I call “the glory of not being at the center.” First, what started this train of thought? In my Southern Minnesota hometown paper I saw a notice about a meeting of a “Scientific and Historical Study Group.” There were teasers like:

• The Moon: Our Enigmatic Neighbor and its “stunning relevance”
• The Mammon of Iniquity and “family-oriented local currency”
• A plea from Archbishop Vigano for “Christians to unite and rebuild – or to certainly perish”
• Evidence that “only a few hundred people in the world have ever seen”

It all sounded cultish to me, but that bit about the moon piqued my curiosity. At the meeting I met a laundry list of minority views. They included right-wing takes on Covid-19 and the vaccines, a plea for private money, and a critique of religious freedom in favor, I guess, of a return to Medieval Christendom. There was some science purporting to show that Earth is not as old as the consensus says it is. The Moon turned out, though, to be the real stunner as minority views go.

I have to be sympathetic toward people who cling to minority views. I once read a book about flying saucers and, for a time, was convinced they were real and patrolling our skies. There’s something very Christian and human about rooting for the underdog. I have a problem when the underdog wants to trade places with the overdog. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

A ‘French Catholic’ versus Copernicus

The odd science about the Moon comes from a French priest Fernand Crombette (1880-1970). Humbly he calls himself simply “a French Catholic.” In his thought Earth, more precisely Jerusalem or, rather, the hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified, is the center of the universe. The universe revolves around that spot.

To get to this point at the meeting, we started with doubts about what science says about the origin of the Moon. Was there a collision with an asteroid throwing off chunks of Earth that became the Moon, as majority science has it? Maybe the Moon was just a part of Earth flung off into space, instead.

Then we learned about Pangaea, the land mass that at one time included all the continents that now are separated. Fr. Crombette, and our presenter, departed from this well-accepted science in an interesting way. Pursuing his own research, Crombette “discovered” that this primitive continent had the shape of a flower with Jerusalem at its center!  You can read more of Crombette’s theories in this online article.)

As if confirming the theory, we heard that a close look at the Moon, reveals a reverse image of the same picture. Apparently, a layer of Pangaea split off from Earth and became the Moon. Most astoundingly, like a fossil preserved for all time, Mt. Calvary appears at the exact center of this image on the Moon.

There’s more to the science that puts Earth and Calvary at the center. Crombette analyses the red shift of light from distant quasars and finds they inhabit concentric spheres surrounding Earth. The few hundred people who understand the theory only need to polish it a little more before going public. Meanwhile, we lucky ones at the meeting got to be in on the parts that we could understand.

Does the Bible say Copernicus has to be wrong?

I’ve heard of an odd group of mathematicians. They once claimed, not seriously but with exquisite mathematics, that Earth might be flat. Sure, people can circumnavigate the “globe.” But with the right number of dimensions, They could explain this on the model of a phonograph needle going around a record. In 1969, though, the group had to disband. That year the Apollo Moon Mission for the first time got far enough away to see the whole spinning Earth at once. Seeing was believing even for these skeptical, but honest, mathematicians.

I can imagine the same mathematicians holding out for an Earth-centered Solar System. Until, that is, more space missions gave us views of the Earth and other planets from the perspective of the farthest planets and beyond. Again, if seeing is believing and regardless of fancy mathematics, the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Solar System.

But maybe seeing isn’t believing when seeing conflicts with what the Bible says. The Bible, I think, is the force directing, and misdirecting, Fr. Crombette’s long and lonely scientific investigations. The article mentioned above refers to “his firm conviction of the scientific and historical inerrancy of the Bible.” It also describes Crombette as a “solitary researcher.” Well, he would find himself alone, or at least without many Catholic partners in his work. The Church does not teach that the Bible is scientifically and historically inerrant. Biblical inerrancy for Catholics extends only to “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. (Second Vatican Council document on Sacred Scripture, Dei Verbum)

The Bible does give us a picture of creation with Earth at the center. But that’s only ancient science. More important for our salvation, the Bible has something to say about being at the center or the periphery.

The glory of not being at the center … OR, How the Bible likes Copernicus

Since Copernicus, science has removed humankind from the center of the universe. Scientifically we are not as significant as we once thought we were. Some Christians find that disturbing, but the Bible’s response is, So what? God’s love can reach us no matter how insignificant a place we hold in creation. In fact God prefers it that way. Let’s look at some texts:

• I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. (Isaiah 41:18
• But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend, you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off.” (Isaiah 41:8-9)
• But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. (Micah 5:2)
• John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness…. In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. (Mark 1:4,9)
• Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

The Eucharist at the center

Out of history’s 10,000 years and Earth’s billions of years, God chose a slice of time, about a thousand years. Out of all the lands of earth, God chose an area the size of a smallish U.S. state. And out of all the peoples on this planet, a nondescript nation somewhat behind its neighbors in cultural development became God’s people. Among those people it was often the least that God favored the most. It was a humble carpenter’s son from a town that was the butt of jokes such as Nathanael repeated. But into this Jesus from “Nowheresville” God poured the entire divine essence.

God is best known for loving the tiniest, most insignificant of specks. The flower of the field. The sparrow that falls. That is exactly what God does in centering his attention on a lowly planet circling around the periphery of the Milky Way, one of billions of galaxies in the 13 billion year old universe.

So, yes, Earth is at the center – the center of God’s love. It doesn’t have to be any other center. And because it isn’t any other center, we can see all the more the wonder of God’s love. And we know that the margins of society is where we need to take that love.

In the Eucharistic Bread, a tiny fragment of matter, God’s inmost depth reaches our inmost depths. And it makes no difference if we’re in the grandest cathedral or a hut in a tropical rainforest. Wherever the Eucharist is celebrated, that’s where God centers his love. That’s where Calvary and the entire history of God’s love is present again.

Jerusalem doesn’t have to be the center of the world. Calvary doesn’t have to be anything grander than the hill on which Jesus gave his life for us.