VISION SPOTLIGHT
MATT CASHORE/UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
FATHER TERRY Ehrman, C.S.C. with a student from his aquatics biology class collecting water samples.
Scientific wonder is God’s handiwork Loving God, loving neighbor, and loving science all fit together for these members of religious communities.
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POPULAR stereotype is that scientists and people of faith abhor each other. Like most simplistic takes on complicated topics, there’s a grain of truth—Galileo and the church had a spat, Christians reacted against Darwin, and even today fundamentalists want to scrub evolution. But Catholics and science actually go way back. Since sisters, brothers, and priests are such prominent actors in the Catholic Church, they, too, have a long-standing affinity for science. Some of the names that pop up in science class were members of religious institutes: Augustinian priest George Mendel put genetics on the map. Franciscan friar Roger Bacon pushed forward the empirical method. Other religious aren’t household names but made contributions that matter. For instance, in the latter half of the 20th century, Sister Miriam Michael Stimson, O.P. was the first scientist
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