Suffering--Our Great Gift from God*

The Sufferings of Job, William Blake
from Wikimedia Commons

"In a sense, everything that happens to me is a gift from God.  I may resent disappointments, rebel against a series of misfortunes which I regard as unmerited punishment.   Yet in time I may come to understand that these can be considered gifts of enlightenment."
--One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, May 4

"The witnesses of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ have handed on to the Church and to mankind a specific Gospel of suffering. The Redeemer himself wrote this Gospel, above all by his own suffering accepted in love, so that man 'should not perish but have eternal life.' This suffering, together with the living word of his teaching, became a rich source for all those who shared in Jesus’ sufferings among the first generation of his disciples and confessors and among those who have come after them down the centuries"
--Pope St. John Paul II (Salvifici Doloris, VI:25).

INTRODUCTION 

Al-Anon is a Twelve Step group for family members and friends of alcoholics and addicts.  Some twenty-five years ago I went  regularly to Twelve Step group meetings for several years and then stopped because it seemed that I might get more meaningful support  from a deeper religious faith.  A "Higher Power" just didn't cut it then.   A month ago I  came back to Twelve Steps and started to attend a men's Al-Anon group, not because of family circumstances, but because I wanted support for self-examination and from group interactions that would complement and supplement my Catholic faith.

At a meeting two weeks ago a guy new to the group whose son had just hit bottom--been arrested with drugs, needles and other stuff--wondered why this had to happen to his family.  Another member brought up the quote given at the beginning of this post and there was then, shall we say, a  heated exchange of views.   I didn't participate,  but I did recall a talk given early on by a priest, recovering from alcoholism, in which he made the same point as the quote:  the alcoholic and his family have been given a gift from God, a gift that will enable them to grow in faith and spirituality.

I've been thinking about this problem since then.  It's one piece of the general problem of theodicy, why does God allow evil to exist.  As for myself, the suffering I endured 20 to 30 years ago did serve a good purpose:  it led me to my Catholic faith, after I had realized that belief in an amorphous "Higher Power" could not by itself sustain me.   What I will attempt to show in this post is how our Catholic faith does indeed show that suffering may serve purposes we do not perceive, and that we may transform that suffering into--not joy exactly--peace.

SUFFERING DOES NOT DISPROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

A common argument atheists use in attempting to disprove the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God, is that such a God would not allow the existence of suffering.    There are variations on this argument (one in Sean O'Carrol's recent apologetic for atheistic naturalism, "The Big Picture," relies on Bayesian probability analysis).   I'm not going to discuss such propositions in this post.   The counter-arguments to atheists have been given by better theologists and philosophers than I--see, for example, Professor Peter Kreeft's audiobook "Faith and Reason", and his CERC chapter, "Faith and Reason")

We, as Catholics, accept the dogmas and doctrines of the Magisterium,  and thus have a rational basis to understand (at least partially) why "bad things happen to good people".  As Catholics we must believe in Free Will and Original Sin, that Man is flawed, and that we inflict evil on ourselves.  We also believe, as in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that if bad things happen to us in this life, there is another life in heaven that will overshadow present misfortune.

THE SAINTS TELL US TO SEEK SUFFERING WITH CHRIST

There is a special Catholic perspective on suffering:  that by our own suffering we share Christ's salvific suffering for  us.   We should, therefore, not try to avoid suffering but to welcome it.   Quotes from the saints attest to this:

St. Augustine of Hippo:

"Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine."

St. Francis of Assisi

"... our Lord Jesus, whose footsteps we ought to follow, called his betrayer “friend,” and offered himself willingly to his executioners. Therefore all those who unjustly inflict upon us tribulations, anguish, shame and injuries, sorrows and torments, martyrdom and death, are our friends whom we ought to love much, because we shall gain eternal life by those things which they make us suffer. And let us hate our body with its vices and sins, because by living in pleasures it wishes to rob us of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and eternal life, and to lose itself with everything else in hell.” 

St. Ignatius of Loyola:

"If God sends you many sufferings, it is a sign that He has great plans for you and certainly wants to make you a saint."

"If God gives you an abundant harvest of trials, it is a sign of great holiness which He desires you to attain. Do you want to become a great saint? Ask God to send you many sufferings. The flame of Divine Love never rises higher than when fed with the wood of the Cross, which the infinite charity of the Savior used to finish His sacrifice. All the pleasures of the world are nothing compared with the sweetness found in the gall and vinegar offered to Jesus Christ." 

St. Teresa of Avila:

"Blessed be He, Who came into the world for no other purpose than to suffer."

"One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying. He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much
more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off, and, if he has squeezed out a few tears, thinks that is prayer."

St. John of the Cross: 

"Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent."

"The purest suffering bears and carries in its train the purest understanding."

St. Rafqua Al-Rayes:

"O Christ, I unite my sufferings to yours, my pains with your pains, as I look at your head crowned with thorns."

St. John Vianney:

 "Whether we will or not, we must suffer...There are two ways of suffering — to suffer with love, and to suffer without love. The saints suffered everything with joy, patience, and perseverance, because they loved. As for us, we suffer with anger, vexation, and weariness, because we do not love. If we loved God, we should love crosses, we should wish for them, we should take pleasure in them."

There are many more--just do a web-search: "quotes saints on suffering".

POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II'S  "SALVIFICI DOLORIS"

"Born of the mystery of Redemption in the Cross of Christ, the Church has to try to meet man in a special way on the path of his suffering. In this meeting man 'becomes the way for the Church', and this way is one of the most important ones."  Pope St. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris.

In 1984 Pope St. John Paul II published his encyclical, Salvifici Doloris, three years after he had been shot by a would-be assassin.   Although I have not found any historical accounts to validate my conjecture that he suffered great pain during his recovery, it seems likely,  given that he had two sections of bowel removed.   It is reasonable to assume then that his Apostolic Letter was written in the context of his physical suffering, if not as a consequence of this suffering.

Pope St. John Paul II explores the dimensions of human suffering, from its relation in the Old Testament to God's Justice and the consequences of evil, the good man who suffers (Job), to the New Testament, in which Christ tells us to carry our cross and follow Him.   Pope St. John Paul II emphasizes that suffering is a mystery, but that by realizing  Christ suffered,  took on our sin and death, we can better understand God's purpose in allowing suffering.   By joining in suffering with Christ, we can unite our human distress with Christ's salvific suffering.   I do an injustice to the encyclical by this brief summary, and I urge the reader to read the letter in its entirety.    Two quotes are in order:

"In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed,. Christ, - without any fault of his own - took on himself "the total evil of sin". The experience of this evil determined the incomparable extent of Christ's suffering, which became the price of the Redemption." Salvifici Dolores  18

 "Those who share in Christ's sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, in which Christ descends, in a first phase, to the ultimate limits of human weakness and impotence: indeed, he dies nailed to the Cross. But if at the same time in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the Resurrection, then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's Cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ. In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering, which is man's weakness and emptying of self, and he wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self. " ibid. 23

THE FOURTH SORROWFUL MYSTERY, TAKE UP YOUR CROSS

It's a hard row to hoe, but I can only follow Catholic teaching.   When I pray the sorrowful Rosary and come to the fourth mystery, Jesus carries His cross, I pray that I can take on my sins, my failures, my suffering, offer them up and thereby  lighten the load of His cross.   We can not know what God wills for us,  but must assume that it is for our ultimate good.   And if we suffer now, we have to look to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, to envisage that final reward that faith promises us.

*In an earlier post I have "discussed and compared" the Jewish and Catholic theologies of suffering;  see "Suffering--A Catholic | Jewish Perspective".

On Pope St. John Paul II's Feast Day: His Rapprochement with Science

from Power Point Search, Sainted Word .  com

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish."  St. John Paul II, Letter to Rev. George Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory.

 "Christianity possesses the source of its justification within itself  and does not expect science to constitute its primary apologetic." ibid.

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." St. John Paul II, Encyclical Fides et Ratio.

"It can be said, in fact, that research, by exploring the greatest and the smallest, contributes to the glory of God which is reflected in every part of the universe."
St. John Paul II, Address on the Jubilee of Scientists, 2000

NOTE:   This post was published in  June, 2014.   Today is Pope St. John Paul II's Feast Day and I thought it appropriate to post it again.

Among the many posts and articles on the canonization of St. John Paul II*, there have been few comments about his efforts to effect a rapprochement between the Church and science (notice the upper case and lack thereof).    The term "rapprochement" has been chosen with care: "an establishment or resumption of harmonious relations" (Oxford English Dictionary).   The term is applied to peace treaties after a state of war, and although the Catholic Church has not declared war on science, there are those scientists who do think there is such a war, and there are those advocates of scientism--that science explains all we need to know about the world--who have declared war on the Church.    These last ignore the founding contribution of the Church to the establishment of science (see Stacy Trasanco's Science was born of Christianity , and the contribution of Catholic Religious (Mendel, LeMaitre amongst many) to science in Fathers of Science.

There are three ways in which St. JP II tried to bring about this rapprochement:  1) redressing the Galileo Affair;  2) making the position of the Church on evolution clear and consistent with both dogma and science;  3) instituting conferences on how Divine Intervention might be manifested in several scientific disciplines.      The first two have been dealt with at some length in the blogosphere, so I'll treat those only briefly.   I'll focus on the third, which has been an invaluable resource for me in my discussions of science and religion.

THE GALILEO AFFAIR

As George Sim Johnston puts it in his book, The Galileo Affair

"The Galileo affair is the one stock argument used to show that science and Catholic dogma are antagonistic. While Galileo's eventual condemnation was certainly unjust a close look at the facts puts to rout almost every aspect of the reigning Galileo legend." George Sim Johnston

Summarizing his arguments, one can say that both Galileo and some Church officials were at fault, but it was a different time with different concerns--high officials in the Church, initially sympathetic to Galileo, were defending orthodoxy against the onslaught of the Reformation.    Galileo was condemned not for his advocacy of the Copernican theory per se, but for his advocacy that Scripture was to be interpreted loosely (even though the same had been done by St. Augustine).   And his science was wrong--circular orbits for the planets and his theory of tides.    All this is dealt with at greater length in the article linked above.

Nevertheless, this one piece of history has been the cannon used in the war of materialists and scientists against the Church, in their perceived conflict between the Church and Science.    In 1979  St. JP II asked the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to make an in-depth study of the affair.   Commenting on their report in 1992, he said, as an apology, explaining what had happened:

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...."  St. John Paul II, Address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, as quoted in  L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - November 4, 1992 

Liberal news media made much of this apology, but it was only recognizing in a formal way earlier actions of the Church--removing Galileo's book from the index, setting up a Vatican Observatory--and setting the affair in a historical context.     What was important was his  affirmation in this apology that  science and the Church both have domains of truth, which do not deny each other--as in his address on evolution, "Truth cannot contradict Truth"

ON EVOLUTION

In his 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science St. JP II, expanding on the doctrine set forth by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani Generis, asserted that

"there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points."  St. John Paul II, 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.

Among these points is the most important requirement that the soul of man is endowed by God (the Holy Spirit) and not materially constructed:

"It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity. Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides non retimere iubet"). (Humani Generis)" ibid.

He also showed much insight in commenting on the scientific aspects of evolution, that while evolution (the descent of species) is a fact, there is more than one theory--mechanism--proposed to explain evolution.

"As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person."

It is unfortunate that both scientists and lay persons do not share St. JP II's understanding but equate the Darwinian model for evolution--"survival of the fittest"--with evolution, the descent of species.   And as with his apology for the Galileo affair, the liberal media made much of his acknowledgement that evolution is a fact, but neglected the historical and theological context which he brought to that statement.

A QUEST FOR COMMON UNDERSTANDING--DIVINE INTERVENTION CONFERENCES

In 1987 St. JP II instituted the first of a series of conferences, held at the Papal Summer Residence, Castelgandalfo, bringing together scientists, philosophers and theologians.    Not all of these were Catholic and, indeed, a few were not even theists, as the term is commonly understood.    He addressed the conferees at this first meeting ("Our Knowledge of God and Nature: Physics, Philosophy and Theology") via a letter to George Coyne, SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory.  (I recommend the reader go to the link for that letter, to get the full import of St. JP II's thoughts on science and the Church.)  He stressed first, as in the quote at the beginning of this post, the contributions science could make to the Church and the Church to science, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."  

He showed a sophisticated knowledge of frontier research in physics and biology in his comments on how scientists were trying to achieve a unified picture of scientific theory in physics and biology:

"The unity we perceive in creation on the basis of our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord of the universe...seems to be reflected and even reinforced in  what  contemporary science is revealing to us....Contemporary physics forms a striking example.  The quest for unification of all four fundamental physical forces--gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear interactions--has met with increasing success....In the life sciences, too, something similar has happened.  Molecular biologists have probed the structure of living material...(and) have discovered that the same underlying constituents (genes and proteins coded by genes) serve in the make-up of all living organisms on earth." St. John Paul II, letter to George Coyne.

Although St. JPII argued that science and theology could, and should, mutually enrich the other, he did not think they should be unified, as in unified science or unified theology:

"By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities, we are not envisioning a disciplinary unity between theology and science like that which exists within a given scientific field or within theology proper....The Church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science...To be more specific, both religion and science must preserve their autonomy and their distinctiveness....Christianity possesses the source of its justification within itself  and does not expect science to constitute its primary apologetic (emphasis added).   Science must bear witness to its own worth....neither ought to assume that it forms a necessary premise for the other."   ibid.

The quotation above reminds me of my encounters playing harmony parts (tenor and bass) in our Church instrumental group:  the musical lines are distinct, for the most part different,  but the harmony enriches the melody, as does science, theology.

Although St. JP II respected the integrity and distinctiveness of science and theology, he did emphasize that they could and should enrich each other in areas such as cosmology and molecular biology, and, accordingly, set up conferences to effect such enrichment.   He stressed the importance of putting scientific findings in a proper context, and the difficulty of doing such in our contemporary setting:

"For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific community will inevitably interact....Christians will inevitably assimilate the prevailing ideas about the world, and these are inevitably shaped by science.  The only question is whether they will do this critically or unreflectively, with depth and nuance or with a shallowness that debases the Gospel and leaves us ashamed before history.   Scientists, like all human beings, will make decisions on what gives value and meaning to their lives and to their work.   This they will do well or poorly, with the reflective depth that theological wisdom can help them attain, or with an unconsidered absolutizing of their results beyond their reasonable and proper limits." ibid.

The last sentence in the above quote applies very well, I believe, to those cosmologists such as Stephen Hawking and cognitive scientists such as Stephen Pinker, who deny God on the basis of a limitless science.

I'll have to add that all the insights above (with the possible exception of the musical analogy) are those of  St. John Paul II.   I've been blessed in being able to bring these to the attention of others.

And, finally, as  a postscript, here is a list of these conferences and links to the proceedings published by the Vatican Observatory and University of Notre Dame Press.   On the web page of the Center for Natural Sciences and Theology that lists the books, you will see images of each book.  If you click on the book image, there will appear article headings at the right of the web-page, which will link to the article of interest.

Physics, Philosophy and Theology--A Quest for Common Understanding.
Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. 
Chaos and Complexity--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
Neuroscience and the Person--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
Evolutionary and Molecular Biology--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
Quantum Mechanics--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.

*In what follows I will try to avoid the cumbersome form "Pope St. John Paul II", and meaning no disrespect (he is my hero!) will refer to him as St. JP II.

St. John Paul's Rapprochement with Science: "A Quest for Common Understanding"

From saintedward-com

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish."  St. John Paul II, Letter to Rev. George Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory.

 "Christianity possesses the source of its justification within itself  and does not expect science to constitute its primary apologetic." ibid.

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." St. John Paul II, Encyclical Fides et Ratio.

"It can be said, in fact, that research, by exploring the greatest and the smallest, contributes to the glory of God which is reflected in every part of the universe."
St. John Paul II, Address on the Jubilee of Scientists, 2000

Among the many posts and articles on the canonization of St. John Paul II*, there have been few comments about his efforts to effect a rapprochement between the Church and science (notice the upper case and lack thereof).    The term "rapprochement" has been chosen with care: "an establishment or resumption of harmonious relations" (Oxford English Dictionary).   The term is applied to peace treaties after a state of war, and although the Catholic Church has not declared war on science, there are those scientists who do think there is such a war, and there are those advocates of scientism--that science explains all we need to know about the world--who have declared war on the Church.    These last ignore the founding contribution of the Church to the establishment of science (see Stacy Trasanco's Science was born of Christianity , and the contribution of Catholic Religious (Mendel, LeMaitre amongst many) to science in Fathers of Science.

There are three ways in which St. JP II tried to bring about this rapprochement:  1) redressing the Galileo Affair;  2) making the position of the Church on evolution clear and consistent with both dogma and science;  3) instituting conferences on how Divine Intervention might be manifested in several scientific disciplines.      The first two have been dealt with at some length in the blogosphere, so I'll treat those only briefly.   I'll focus on the third, which has been an invaluable resource for me in my discussions of science and religion.

THE GALILEO AFFAIR

As George Sim Johnston puts it in his book, The Galileo Affair

"The Galileo affair is the one stock argument used to show that science and Catholic dogma are antagonistic. While Galileo's eventual condemnation was certainly unjust a close look at the facts puts to rout almost every aspect of the reigning Galileo legend." George Sim Johnston

Summarizing his arguments, one can say that both Galileo and some Church officials were at fault, but it was a different time with different concerns--high officials in the Church, initially sympathetic to Galileo, were defending orthodoxy against the onslaught of the Reformation.    Galileo was condemned not for his advocacy of the Copernican theory per se, but for his advocacy that Scripture was to be interpreted loosely (even though the same had been done by St. Augustine).   And his science was wrong--circular orbits for the planets and his theory of tides.    All this is dealt with at greater length in the article linked above.  

Nevertheless, this one piece of history has been the cannon used in the war of materialists and scientists against the Church, in their perceived conflict between the Church and Science.    In 1979  St. JP II asked the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to make an in-depth study of the affair.   Commenting on their report in 1992, he said, as an apology, explaining what had happened:

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...."  St. John Paul II, Address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, as quoted in  L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - November 4, 1992 

Liberal news media made much of this apology, but it was only recognizing in a formal way earlier actions of the Church--removing Galileo's book from the index, setting up a Vatican Observatory--and setting the affair in a historical context.     What was important was his  affirmation in this apology that  science and the Church both have domains of truth, which do not deny each other--as in his address on evolution, "Truth cannot contradict Truth"

ON EVOLUTION

In his 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science St. JP II, expanding on the doctrine set forth by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani Generis, asserted that

"there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points."  St. John Paul II, 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science.

Among these points is the most important requirement that the soul of man is endowed by God (the Holy Spirit) and not materially constructed:

"It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity. Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides non retimere iubet"). (Humani Generis)" ibid.

He also showed much insight in commenting on the scientific aspects of evolution, that while evolution (the descent of species) is a fact, there is more than one theory--mechanism--proposed to explain evolution.

"As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person."

It is unfortunate that both scientists and lay persons do not share St. JP II's understanding but equate the Darwinian model for evolution--"survival of the fittest"--with evolution, the descent of species.   And as with his apology for the Galileo affair, the liberal media made much of his acknowledgement that evolution is a fact, but neglected the historical and theological context which he brought to that statement.

A QUEST FOR COMMON UNDERSTANDING--DIVINE INTERVENTION CONFERENCES

In 1987 St. JP II instituted the first of a series of conferences, held at the Papal Summer Residence, Castelgandalfo, bringing together scientists, philosophers and theologians.    Not all of these were Catholic and, indeed, a few were not even theists, as the term is commonly understood.    He addressed the conferees at this first meeting ("Our Knowledge of God and Nature: Physics, Philosophy and Theology") via a letter to George Coyne, SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory.  (I recommend the reader go to the link for that letter, to get the full import of St. JP II's thoughts on science and the Church.)  He stressed first, as in the quote at the beginning of this post, the contributions science could make to the Church and the Church to science, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."  

He showed a sophisticated knowledge of frontier research in physics and biology in his comments on how scientists were trying to achieve a unified picture of scientific theory in physics and biology:

"The unity we perceive in creation on the basis of our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord of the universe...seems to be reflected and even reinforced in  what  contemporary science is revealing to us....Contemporary physics forms a striking example.  The quest for unification of all four fundamental physical forces--gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear interactions--has met with increasing success....In the life sciences, too, something similar has happened.  Molecular biologists have probed the structure of living material...(and) have discovered that the same underlying constituents (genes and proteins coded by genes) serve in the make-up of all living organisms on earth." St. John Paul II, letter to George Coyne.

Although St. JPII argued that science and theology could, and should, mutually enrich the other, he did not think they should be unified, as in unified science or unified theology:

"By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities, we are not envisioning a disciplinary unity between theology and science like that which exists within a given scientific field or within theology proper....The Church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science...To be more specific, both religion and science must preserve their autonomy and their distinctiveness....Christianity possesses the source of its justification within itself  and does not expect science to constitute its primary apologetic (emphasis added).   Science must bear witness to its own worth....neither ought to assume that it forms a necessary premise for the other."   ibid.

The quotation above reminds me of my encounters playing harmony parts (tenor and bass) in our Church instrumental group:  the musical lines are distinct, for the most part different,  but the harmony enriches the melody, as does science, theology.

Although St. JP II respected the integrity and distinctiveness of science and theology, he did emphasize that they could and should enrich each other in areas such as cosmology and molecular biology, and, accordingly, set up conferences to effect such enrichment.   He stressed the importance of putting scientific findings in a proper context, and the difficulty of doing such in our contemporary setting:

"For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific community will inevitably interact....Christians will inevitably assimilate the prevailing ideas about the world, and these are inevitably shaped by science.  The only question is whether they will do this critically or unreflectively, with depth and nuance or with a shallowness that debases the Gospel and leaves us ashamed before history.   Scientists, like all human beings, will make decisions on what gives value and meaning to their lives and to their work.   This they will do well or poorly, with the reflective depth that theological wisdom can help them attain, or with an unconsidered absolutizing of their results beyond their reasonable and proper limits." ibid.

The last sentence in the above quote applies very well, I believe, to those cosmologists such as Stephen Hawking and cognitive scientists such as Stephen Pinker, who deny God on the basis of a limitless science.

I'll have to add that all the insights above (with the possible exception of the musical analogy) are those of  St. John Paul II.   I've been blessed in being able to bring these to the attention of others.

And, finally, as  a postscript, here is a list of these conferences and links to the proceedings published by the Vatican Observatory and University of Notre Dame Press.   On the web page of the Center for Natural Sciences and Theology that lists the books, you will see images of each book.  If you click on the book image, there will appear article headings at the right of the web-page, which will link to the article of interest.

Physics, Philosophy and Theology--A Quest for Common Understanding.
Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. 
Chaos and Complexity--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
Neuroscience and the Person--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
Evolutionary and Molecular Biology--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.
Quantum Mechanics--Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action.

*In what follows I will try to avoid the cumbersome form "Pope St. John Paul II", and meaning no disrespect (he is my hero!) will refer to him as St. JP II.