Faith & Science & Albacete

Faith & Science & Albacete August 4, 2009

Knowing that we’ve been musing about Evolution, Genesis, Science and Faith around here, Elder Son brought this video to my attention, remarking that he found the priest to be “insightful and charming.”

Faith & Science from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Not a bad panel, eh? Proving once again that people with opposing views can still manage a good-faith debate with civility, and humor, and even admission of commonalities. As we celebrate the feastday of St. John Vianney, patron of priests, this gentle priest makes his point in a lovely way.

“To me, the God issue is a question of experience. For example, I want people I love not to die; I want friendships that are not betrayed; I want justice – desires that seem to make no sense, that appear in fact to be irrational…. there is, I admit, a certain uselessness to this, in terms of the fact that nothing in the world seems to correspond with or answer these desires. All that I ask of myself, and I think it is reasonable to ask everybody else, is to be faithful to that experience and to explore the implications of it. And if something is found that explains it, so that the question disappears, then fine, that’s the answer, and that’s that.”

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete is a very interesting character. Born in 1941, he is a physicist who, in 1968, read Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity and found himself moved from atheism to faith. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1973.

I recall watching him on Charlie Rose’s show upon Ratzinger’s becoming Pope Benedict XVI and was also being charmed and rather moved. Albacete is the author of God at the Ritz, which I mean to order and read and pass Elder Son’s way, for he is ever-curious.

You can watch all five parts of the very interesting discussion on Faith and Science beginning with Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V

On a somewhat related note, Catholic & Enjoying It has “the Epitome of Science Cool…

Albacete on being a priest on 9/11riveting stuff.

Also:
God’s Dupes? Gadzooks!

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