Standing before an audience of 50 in Friendship Hall at St. Theresa Parish, Hellertown, psychologist Dr. Imrich Gombar decried the “false choice” between faith and science.
The June 20 talk was the first of three presentations on “God and Science” by Dr. Gombar. Although that relationship is one of compatibility, Dr. Gombar asserted that the secular media has created a false dichotomy by “placing our faith in conflict with science.”
He pointed to Dr. Francis Collins, a physician-geneticist who headed the Human Genome Project, an international research effort whose results were described by Dr. Collins himself as “both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.”
“Francis Collins, the most famous geneticist in the world, is a devout Christian,” said Dr. Gombar.
For the past few years, Dr. Gombar has made the rounds of high school classrooms, giving talks designed to prepare students for some of the faith challenges that are ubiquitous on today’s college campuses.
“Catholics sometimes lose their faith as young as 10 years old,” Dr. Gombar noted. “Eighty percent of former Catholics left the church before age 35. And that is significant for us. We really should make sure that we focus on the youth much more than we have been.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.”
As Pope St. John Paul II put it, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”
The third "God and Science" presentation will be Monday, July 3 at 7 p.m. in St. Theresa Parish's Friendship Hall. To register, please call the rectory at 610-838-8045.
