Reason, Faith, and Science
Church teaching, videos, articles, and other resources
Faith and Reason
“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…” Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio
Church Documents
- Catechism of the Catholic Church: references to science
- Humani Generis: Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical about the origins of man
- Fides et Ratio: Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason
- De Vaticana Specula Astronomica Restituenda Et Emplificanda (English): founding document of the Vatican Observatory, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891
- Truth Cannot Contradict Truth: Pope John Paul II’s 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences
- Dei Filius on Faith and Science (ch. 4): Vatican I Dogmatic Constitution
Articles
Aquinas and the Argument from Motion
“Thomas Aquinas famously laid out five arguments for the existence of God, but he characterized one of them as ‘the first and more manifest way.'” – Bishop Robert Barron
The Genesis Problem
How should Catholics understand the creation narrative of Genesis in light of modern science, and vice versa?
Human Origins: Which is it? Science or Theology?
Dr. Stacy Trasancos: “Polygenism is the view that different races of humans evolved independently of one another, and it directly contradicts the literal interpretation of the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Monogenism is the doctrine that modern humans arose from a single pair of ancestors, but it has no scientific support. So, which is it? Science or theology?”