Fr. James Schall, S.J., on Extraterrestrials and the Fundamental Question

"Recently I watched a pretty good local television program in which the possibility and probability of intelligent life in other locales in the universe besides our own were discussed. In addition, I read a very good essay by Brad Miner on The Catholic Thing website titled 'Godless Space' on why God appears so seldom in the many novels and discussions about space travel and space warfare. The status of man in the universe is a subject that has long fascinated me. In my first book, Redeeming the Time (Sheed and Ward, 1968), there is a chapter entitled 'The Cosmos and Christianity.'

"No doubt the apparent size and multiplicity of stars, and presumably planets, in the universe is so large that it is easy, by the laws of probability, to conjecture that there must be many other planets in the cosmos that are fit for the habitation of creatures like ourselves. We do not actually know of any, but we cannot or will not accept the proposition that we are possibly the only 'rational' and still-physical beings in the universe. It seems odd to many that we might, in fact, be alone in the universe. Whether only one human race or many exist in the universe presents the same issue in either case: How did 'they' come to be at all? What is 'their' purpose for being rather than not being?

"In Christian theology, at least, the cosmos itself did not 'need' to exist. God would not become more 'godlike' whether he created or did not create. God was not so internally deficient, as many ancient thinkers seemed to think, that he 'needed' the world to complete himself. Christian theology and philosophy have tended to see the cosmos in terms of play or abundance, rather than in terms of necessity. The universe cannot have 'caused' itself. The existence of life on this planet, in fact, seems to require cosmic laws so precise and exact that the only explanation for our existence is that it was the result of an intelligence itself outside the physical universe, a cause that is not itself part of the same universe."

In a recent commentary, Father James V. Schall, S.J., professor emeritus of Georgetown University, reflected on the potential for extraterrestrial life and on what its origin would be.

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Catholic Pulse: Extraterrestrials and the Fundamental Question (10 OCT 14)