BQO editor Anthony Mills’ interview with Prof. Stephen Barr:
What inspired you and your colleagues to create the Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS)?
We wanted to create opportunities for Catholic scientists to meet one another and have intellectual and spiritual fellowship. Religious scientists often don’t realize how many of their colleagues share their beliefs, and they can feel isolated as a consequence. In reality, however, there are many Catholic scientists, and scientists of other faiths, including many of great distinction in their fields. An awareness of this may also help dispel the popular myth that science and religion are at odds, a misconception harmful to faith, science, and society.
We hope, too, that SCS will become a forum for serious discussion of scientific, theological, and philosophical ideas and how they relate to one another. St. John Paul II once said that “those members of the Church who are either themselves active scientists, or in some special cases both scientists and theologians, could serve as a key resource.” In particular, they can be of help to those seeking to “integrate the worlds of science and religion in their own intellectual and spiritual lives.” We are a response to that.
