The launching of the first rocket ever to Jupiter by NASA scientists, demonstrates the technological stage on which Pope Benedict’s New Evangelisation plan is unfolding! And reveals some of the greatest challenges ahead! Challenges posed by advanced technology which appears to be out pacing by far, our theological reflection and thinking, leaving theologians gasping for breath!
At some point in history, we thought and believed that going to the moon, which is only 384, 000, Km away from the earth was a dream and an impossible task! But on 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped where no human had ever trodden! He set foot on the moon!
The apparently inexhaustible human intellectual powers are at it again! On 5 August 2011, NASA’s Juno spacecraft blasted off heading to Jupiter about 644 million kilometers way from the earth! It is a 5-year journey to the largest planet in the solar system! In terms of surface area, Jupiter is about 122 times bigger than the earth! In July 2016, Juno is expected to settle in the orbit around Jupiter!
In 2014, NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the most advanced and sophisticated space telescope of our time! It will study the birth and evolution of galaxies, and the formation of stars and planets. It will replace the Hubble Space Telescope.
All this reveals today’s complicated context in which God’s people for whom our Lord Jesus Christ died live. The context in which the Gospel, the Good News of salvation is to be proclaimed to all humans and to all creation! We are not living in the middle ages nor in the early 1900s! We in a world of highly advanced technology! We are in the digital age whose spiritual, moral, economic and socio-political challenges the New Evangelisation seeks to address and tackle!
The Pope is very conscious and aware of the technological and complex life situation in which we live today. And this is why he has given an important position and role to science and technology in his plan of the New Evangelisation as necessary tools at the service of the Word!
In his message for the 44th World Communication Day he thus said :
All priests have as their primary duty the proclamation of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God,…
Responding adequately to this challenge amid today’s cultural shifts, to which young people are especially sensitive, necessarily involves using new communication technologies. … Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word.
… Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, and websites)…
And on 21 September 2010, when he created the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelisation, it was revealed that one of its specific tasks was the study and promotion of the use of modern forms of communication, as tools for the New Evangelisation.
In our Community of Val Notre-Dame, our Superior Dom André Barbeau, shared with us his reflections on the Lineamenta for the Synod on the New Evangelisation. And from his sharing I discovered that this document too, discussed the technological and digital culture in which we live!
Reading the document myself, I found that chapter one in the section entitled: The Sectors Calling for the New Evangelisation discussed the extensive mixing of cultures due to today’s technological means of communication. The text thus says:
Although these means of social communications, in their initial stages, were limited to the industrialized world, they are now able to influence vast portions of the developing countries. Today, no place in the world is beyond reach and, consequently, unaffected by the media and digital culture which is fast becoming the ‘forum’ of public life and social interaction.
In my view, this section touches a very important issue, which deserves all our attention, namely: Science and technology in the life, thinking and theology of the Church today. And when the Pope requests and encourages the priests to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources, we are for sure talking about technology in the life of the Church!
So at this point, I would like to give an answer to question number two at end of the introduction of this Lineamenta, which states:
In the process of discerning events in history, what should be shared with the universal Church, so that, by mutual listening to these happenings, the universal Church can recognize where the Spirit is leading her in the work of evangelization?
One of the most striking and amazing things in today’s world and which I would like to be shared with the universal Church, is the incredible speed at which science and technology are developing and advancing! All the time scientists are coming up with new discoveries and astounding findings, in addition to the newly developed scientific theories! So I would like the universal Church during the Synod on the New Evangelisation to ask herself whether or not her theological thinking is coping with the speed and pace at which science and technology are developing.
Are we for example able to integrate the developments in synthetic biology (e.g. the invention of artificial life or DNA, by Dr. Craig Venter and his team, and the invention of the artificial sperm by the Japanese scientists, etc.)? Some genetic scientists, from a mixture of human genes and animal genes are now creating being that are between humans and animals (human-animal hybrids) How is our theology tackling this?
In astrophysics, a theory has been advanced and supported in Stephen Hawking’s book the Grand Design that the universe created itself! This renders God as creator meaningless. How is our theology handling this? In particle physics we are at the level of subatomic particles like: quarks, photons, neutrinos, muons etc, is our present theology making use of this development in physics?
We have Bioethics, but science being so vast, I feel Bioethics is too limited to theologically handle all the material and findings from the different fields of science! So I think the Holy Spirit wants the Church at this point in its history to create a new body of experts who are at once scientists and theologians or at least men and women of faith, to theologically make use of the scientific and technological developments of our day! So I propose that a new Pontifical Academy be created for these experts! And I further propose that it be called: The Pontifical Academy of Techno-theology!
And by Techno-theology, I term I have coined, (techno, stands for technology) we should understand: A theology that uses scientific and technological discoveries of our time and modern scientific theories as its major material for reflection in light of the Gospel and our Christian faith. And it does so, inorder that theology may move at the same pace as science and technology.
So the proposed Pontifical Academy of Techno-theology should be a Sister Institute to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. And should be structured along the same lines of universality. Meaning, its members like those of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences should be of diverse racial, cultural and religious backgrounds, coming from different parts of the world. But what they should all have in common is faith in a Personal God and being experts in the natural sciences or technology.
This means members of this academy could be : Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews etc, as is the case with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. This would give us an opportunity to profit from the theological reflections of believing scientist who are not Christians!
But one could ask, if such an academy were created what exactly would be its contribution to the New Evangelisation? Given the fact that in today’s world especially in the West, young people generally, listen more to scientists than to religious leaders (Imams, Gurus, Pastors and Priests,) if the scientists who believe in God were brought together in such an academy, their strong voice as believers would touch many people’s hearts! Their voice would be strong instrument for the New Evangelisation plan.
I remember for example being touched very deeply by the faith testimonies of two great scientists of our time, Charles Townes (Nobel Physics Prize 1964) and William Phillips (Nobel Physics Prize 1997) published in a French magazine, Le Monde des Religions. (see, Le Monde des Religions, Janvier-Fevrier 2010 N°39 p.36-38.)
I believe and I am convinced that all these great scientists of our day, men and women of deep faith, are an indispensable tool for the New Evangelisation. Let us bring them together in a Pontifical Academy of Techno-theology and we shall live to see a changed world through their testimony of faith and theological reflections.
Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo
Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
