84: Following the Stars: Three wise women astronomers on faith, humanity and science

Episode 84: Special Epiphany episode with Jacqueline, Claudia and Laura, Catholic women from the world of astronomy and astrophysics. They share how they each hold together the questions of science and faith, especially when it comes to the story of the Epiphany. Find out what these three women think about when they look up at a dark, starry sky - with wonder, and faith but also greater scientific knowledge than the wise men in St Matthew's Gospel had. ‘It's all a question of having this open mind to the reality of what God feels like in your life and to recognise that Jesus Christ was the expression of God on earth.’

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro.  My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today.  Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good.  We are the times.  I hope you feel encouraged and affirmed and sometimes challenged as I am in these conversations.  Join our podcast community, get news and background information about the conversations and share your thoughts if you want to. You can get the newsletter and each episode straight to your inbox by going to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com and clicking on subscribe. It's free.  That web address is in the episode notes too and I'd love you to draw closer to our community. Thank you.

Listeners, thanks so much for joining this special episode of the podcast for the Feast of the Epiphany. I'm thrilled that I have three wise women here today who know about astronomy, work in the field of astronomy or maybe astrophysics. And we're going to have a really good conversation about the stars from people who know about faith and how those things, science and faith might be connected for our guests today. So I'm delighted to welcome Jacqueline, Claudia and Laura. We decided we would go straight in. So let's think about when the stars or space first became important to our guests and how their faith connects with what they see when they look at the sky or what they know about what's going on above our heads. So I wonder if we might start with Jacqueline. 

Okay. Well, some of that's easier. I got interested in astronomy when I was really very young. I'm not quite sure my age, but it was something like seven or eight and it was very much just looking up at the sky, being amazed by the stars and wanting to know more about it. But then I was generally a very curious child. I was interested in lots and lots of things.  Somehow or other, it was the astronomy that won out.  And by the time I was about 16, I was definitely convinced that I wanted to do something in astronomy. And I'd got a little backyard telescope and, you know, I was reading books on it. I don't know how to explain it, but it just, it always felt like a calling. And it's always has felt like a calling. That is, it's not a job.  It's something that is just part of my life.  I can't imagine now having lived a life that wasn't built around astronomy. I don't know why. I can't explain that.  I think lots of people get attracted to something, don't they? It's great to have something that you feel that strongly about. As for faith, that's a more difficult one because again, even as a child, I felt quite drawn to the Christian religion. My parents didn't go to church. I wasn't born into a Catholic family. They were nominally Anglicans. I was baptised. But I do remember going in on my own to the local Anglican parish church when I was old enough to walk out on my own, but still quite young, know, 11 or something, and just being attracted. The secondary school I went to, it wasn't a religious school, but the head teacher had a degree in divinity and she was quite keen on the assemblies and we had religious instruction. I then got involved with some other of my friends who were all Methodists and we had a very good community.  My social life seemed to circle around this and so I joined the Methodist Church.  I think that in that environment my interest and faith grew. I went to a teenage discussion group for teenagers with a very good leader, got very much involved. This was just the circumstances I found myself in. I would go as far to say that when I was growing up, I don't think I hardly ever met a Catholic. Catholics tended to go to their own school. They seemed to sort of race apart almost.  It was when I went to university, I met my future husband who was and is a cradle Catholic. So that was how I came to convert to Catholicism. I mean, being completely honest, at the time I felt more that if we were going to have a happy marriage, then we had to share not only our astronomy, we met at the Astronomical Society, I have to say, but we needed to share the faith and be able to go to church together. And to be honest, it wasn't that hard a decision because I didn't have a sort of very powerful denominational attachment. So when I received instruction from the very good chaplain at the university, well, that was that. We've been married for 55 years.  

Thank you, Jacqueline. That's really good. There's lots in there. And I know some listeners are always keen to hear from people who have become Catholics later in life. So it's great that we have somebody in that situation here today. Claudia, tell us a bit about you and the stars and your faith then.

Yes. So as Jacqueline, I started to be fascinated by the idea of astronomy as a little kid. And my mother reminded me because when I grew up, I also found interesting many other subjects like history and politics, literacy. Still I am. But my mum remembered that I wanted my Christmas present, I wanted a telescope, when I was five years old. The fascination came by looking at the dark sky that was so pitch black. That was for me very striking. The phenomenon of sunrise and sunset were so regular compared especially to this infinity, this sense of infinity to which I was attracted, that I naturally don't like things that end in black. In this sense, I will never be an atheist, I just can't. There is no rationality in that. I just don't think with all the many questions we have that what we see is all. Actually, we also know from atomic physics that in fact there are many things that we do not see. But apart from this is something interior, really special to humans. So the sense of mystery I find common in science and in religion. So these develop in parallel. Then when I was a teenager, I discovered that I was, and still am, terrified by the idea of people that I love, they die. As a young person, I was terrified by that. And I remember that I was talking to my grandmother who used to live with us, who was already in her eighties, much less terrified than I was.  And so we discussed a lot and there was this romantic literature field in Italy and in the UK, romanticism, that I was really passionate with, with the sense that life is something very light, but yet so important and especially time scale, something that I ended up studying in my research. Our lifetimes are negligible with respect to the huge lifetime of the stars and what is the sense of it? This has always fascinated and I'm lucky enough that I keep studying it. So my family was a formally Catholic in the sense that they really liked us to go. So in Italy, the schools are not Catholic, it's all state schools. But we used to go to Mass and we used to go to play in this safe environment, oratorio, I'm not sure that this word exists, where we could meet other teenagers, but there was never any pressure from my parents. Especially my father, I don't think he was very passionate with it. But my grandmother, she was, and we used to pray together in the night. Something that as a little kid was almost a little scary, to be honest with you, because there was this halo of mystery around it. So then I went to university, I was constantly being surrounded by materialists, atheists, and the more I was surrounded by them, the more I felt my inner me into spirituality and that has never decayed. It got super strong when I got my first daughter. The sight of her eyes when I was holding her, that to me was infinity, was God. I never had any feeling like this. And to me, the love that I have, especially for my children, but also for my parents, this cannot explain by any question. This requires something different. So it is the sense of love that pushed me forward in both my work, but especially the spirituality that I conserve.

 Wow. Thank you, Claudia. That's wonderful. There's lots to respond to there, but the bit about your daughter being born and looking into her eyes, that really connects for me. And I'm sure listeners who've been in that situation too. I remember when my first son was born and something about this little person looking back at me, who just is not me and is not my husband, but is another little person who's come into the world from where? I absolutely understand, without having very good words for it, the depth of that experience. So Laura, let's come to you then. Tell us about you and the stars and your faith. Give us a flavour of that. 

So I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Like as a kid, I sort of wanted to do everything as people have been saying. But I was in eighth grade, so when I was 13, I had this brilliant science teacher and I was like that I want to do that. And I was thinking at the end of the year, Okay, I liked the physics unit and I liked the astronomy unit. So I'm going to be an astrophysicist. So I never found anything else I liked better. So that's what I ended up doing my undergrad in. And then sort of at the same time, so in middle and high school, I was going to my local church's youth group.  So it's a lot of sitting in the church basement, talking about whatever or playing silly games.  then during my undergrad, I ended up as a member of the leadership team at the Newman Center. So I was on the social justice committee. So it was a lot of reaching out to the community and seeing how all of these people could benefit from, you know, the church's charity. The way that the two intersect, I've never seen a problem with at all. It's just they're the two sides of the same coin.  My confirmation sponsor did one time ask me, she was like, how do you reconcile the two. I was like, er, but then I just went, Well, they're not mutually exclusive. Just because science says, Oh, it's the big bang. And the Bible says, Well, it was created in seven days. Just because those on the surface say different things doesn't mean that they don't work together.

 Thank you, Laura. Thank you. There's an element of service in your faith then I'm hearing there, which we often hear about, listeners will know. And just for listeners, I thought I might mention we were just speaking before we began recording. I don't know if you're surprised that there are three Catholic women in astronomy here today.  I reached out to a couple of astronomy networks in Britain asking if there was anyone who was a Catholic who would be happy to talk about astronomy for today's special episode.  And this is what happened. A group of women came forward really quickly. I don't know what that says about being a Catholic woman and finding opportunities and being good at science, I don't know, or being prepared to do science and  not be put off. I don't know what that means. I wonder whether any of you could comment on what you think about that. Were you surprised too to find there was a group of you that came forward?  

I don't know. I can only imagine in some ways that perhaps we just happened to be three people who felt very happy to talk openly about these things. I don't know, men sometimes I think perhaps are a little bit busy in doing other things. I think all of us have expressed the fact that we have very wide interest. It isn't just about our astronomy and our faith, but we're people who are really, really interested in reaching out to our communities. Otherwise, it may just be a statistical fluke, who knows? 

Yes, it's a statistical fluke that I would have to contrast with a far smaller fraction of women in astronomy. So now I agree with Jacqueline, in my department, the two other Catholics I know of are actually two men. Maybe busy-ness or maybe we know, at least in citizen activities, in academia, there is a tendency of women being more active, probably because we have this sense of community more. In general, what I would like to emphasise for Theresa that the role of women in Catholic environment is always very nice and very good and very proactive and there is no, or at least I never had any type of discrimination, gender-based, which I think is a great point. 

You've both said really sensible things there. And there is something too, which has only just come to my mind because of something you said, Jacqueline, that is, it’s people who are Catholics who are in astronomy, but also who are prepared to talk about their faith because not everybody feels comfortable to do that. So there's a number of criteria that were required. Laura, I don't know if you have anything to add. How are you finding being a Catholic in the world of astrophysics? Are there lots of you? 

Not as far as I'm aware. I think there was one other Catholic in my undergrad program, which I keep talking about because I just finished in May. I never saw a problem with it. Like I knew that astronomy department was small. I think there was like 30 of us in my class. I was just, wasn't expecting to see a huge number of people.

You might be interested to know that your feeler email came to me via my husband, who was the person who actually got it and he passed it on to me. And I think that exactly hits the point on the head, which is he thought I would be the person who would be willing to do this, speaking more openly. There you go. 

Okay. Now I was thinking about with it being the Feast of the Epiphany for listeners, is that something that connects with you because you study the stars? Is it something that when it comes around to the Feast of the Epiphany, you feel a certain extra connection, or doesn't it work like that? Am I being a bit too simplistic? Does the Feast of the Epiphany mean something special to you because you, like the wise men in Matthew's Gospel, look at the stars? 

Yes, I think is the answer. First of all, I would want to sort of clear up on a point and I don't know whether the others will agree. And that is to me, the story in the Bible is not about astronomy. It's not a literal account of something that happened in astronomy. Like many things in the Bible, I certainly believe it's figurative. It's a beautiful story which puts across something very fundamental. And you don't have to think of it as a literal historical and astronomical event to understand what the writers were saying and why, where it features. We do know that the slaughter of the innocents was a historical fact, but it seems a bit dubious about whether there was some particular astronomical event that you can tie in. But it is a wonderful story from which we can learn a great deal about certainly what the writers felt about  the coming of Christ. Having dealt with that bit of it, I nevertheless always find that this connection with something that attracts people to think about the sky is really great publicity for astronomy. It forces people to think about it. What we do know is that the people of that time were deeply into astrology and we do know that they had dark skies as Claudia was saying. And so what happened in the sky was considered to be important. So you would quite often try and link something in the sky with a very important event. So that of itself speaks to the importance that was given to the birth of Christ. And then of course the gifts are all very symbolic. I think it's very nice that this is a story that ties into people's wonder at the sky, if I can put it that way. And so, yes, I do feel it's special. One of the things that we've done in the chapel that we attend, my husband managed to collect together some gold, frankincense and myrrh and we had it out and passed it all around and talked about it. I don't think that fascination might have been quite the same if we hadn't been astronomers.

Thank you, Jacqueline. Claudia, does the Epiphany feast day mean something to you? 

Oh, it means a lot because in Italy it's also a feast. The conclusion was the moment as we were younger, on the 6th of January, then we would take down all the Christmas decorations, which felt sad. However, in the night between the 5th and the 6th, what we used to do, what is used, especially in Northern Italy where I come from, is to set up a burning fire, which should close the year, the past year and clear us for the year ahead. The origin of this may not be strictly Catholic. However, it was so strongly symbolic. We all love that. And we bring something that we really wanted to be burned and to leave. And looking forward to the future with proposals, with the new things to do. With an eye to the future for doing good things. So it's a lovely thing. By the way, we got the sweets according to how good we have been during the past year.  So I love that. And I want it because in the UK, there is no such a tradition. So I try to be in Italy for the Epiphany every time I can, but with the school of the girls, it wasn't possible. It will be possible this year. And I will think about our conversation. As Jacqueline said, the dark skies, there were no industry. Can you imagine what the people at the time could see in terms of astronomical events? But they didn't have at the same time the vision we have to explain that the comet is just a nearby object. So I try to feel the same fascination by looking up to the dark and try to imagine what it could have been. It is a fantastic story that to me, especially, is important because it's connected to baby Jesus. And I love babies, it is clear.

That's great. And how about you Laura? Is it something you might get involved with for the Feast of the Epiphany? 

Yeah, it's the marking of the end of Christmas. The return to ordinary life is more of what it is for me. It's a lot of, Okay, I probably have an essay due, life needs to happen. I know that there isn't a whole lot of, as Jacqueline was saying, actual astronomy in that story, but I feel like it does always come up. People have done the math, where were they from probably? Or was it a comet? It probably wasn't just spontaneously a star that just appeared, that's a whole other thing that is very complicated. 

A lot of work has been done on trying to tie in any possible astronomical events with the period and what might have happened. I would say largely with not much success, all sorts of things have been tried, like was it a comet or was it a conjunction of planets or a nova or something? But of course, even the description of what the star is supposed to do to move in a certain way and then stop seems just so incredibly improbable. It's not the way the bodies move in the sky. I think if anybody had really come up with a convincing astronomical explanation, we would probably know by now because people have really tried very, very hard. So I think we have to settle back on, personally, on it being a fable or even a parable or whatever, but with a rather beautiful setting that fits in with how people felt about things at the time and when they were writing it. 

Well, I think a reality check is good. Thank you, Jacqueline.  What you've explained there about the science not really connecting with the description of this event in the way it's told in the gospel. I think that's, is that maybe the nut of why people feel that science and faith don't go together? That actually science explains away faith. But obviously you've all explained that that's not how you experience it. But I wonder if that's why people on the surface think that Well, these things aren't going to go together. Because as soon as you're a scientist, you're going to look at the stars and you're say, Well, that didn't happen. So QED. When actually, for each of you, you've not found that to be a problem. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about, because the other side of it, think, is that for some scientists, and I think you might have alluded to this, Claudia, something about the things that cannot be explained very well and that there is much more than we're able to explain, actually draws you out of very flat explanations that seem to rubbish faith, that actually something about science makes you see that there is a lot more to the world than we think there is or than we can explain with provable facts. Claudia, you're nodding. Maybe we'll start with you this time. 

Yes, happily. So when I was studying cosmology, especially, and the origin of the universe as a student, I already felt that the more we pushed, all these equations can really disappear towards the point that is called the origin, even if that was treated mathematically by Lemaître in such a clean way. The discovery of the spatial acceleration of the universe, the galaxy goes far away, naturally points to a single event that also Laura called creation. We can call it creation, but it's ineluctable. This to me started to trigger, I was just in my 20s, deep thought that obviously there is something else. I'm actually quite surprised when people think there is not. And all the effort also sometimes led by people that I know or trying to find explanation that avoids the creation. Fred Hoyle started with this, assuming that the universe was static and was always there, which I don't find particularly easy to think because the timescale we were speaking about explodes, but also the recent assumption of that there are multiverses, which is just pushing the problem outside and actually amplifying. I don't see why it gets any easier. So there are many, many things that especially the science of the past century - I mentioned the big bang, but also quantum mechanics, the fact that we cannot at the same time describe an event and localise it. The principle of Heisenberg to me was highly stimulating. I was actually happy to find these questions rather than find them frustrating. So I think we need to have a humble eye instead of an arrogant one and recognise that even in our own equation there are assumptions that are really strong. We know that at the beginning if matter would have been homogeneous instead of slightly asymmetric, we would not be here talking about it. We know that without dark matter - that we cannot know what it is, when I got my PhD in 98, a famous astronomer told me that dark matter would have been found within a few years. It is now 27 years and we don't know what it is. Without that dark matter, the Milky Way would not be here. The approach of this hyper-materialist is, Yes, but it's only a matter of time and we will solve this problem. I don't think it is a matter of time. It's a logical thing that you notice that there is something missing. So for me, there should be synergy between the two. I admire scientists. I think the most clever of us are those who actually do not deny this evidence. That's what I think. 

That's really interesting. That's going to give listeners a lot to think about. Jacqueline, is there anything you would add? 

Yes. There's an expression that's used often in this context, which is there are two ways to the truth. That there is what we seek as scientific truth. And then there's the other truth that explains all the things or tries to explain the things that science can't. The problem is if you try to equate them instead of recognising that there are these two completely separate strands. Claudia mentioned in passing the name of Georges Lemaître, who's one of the greatest theoretical cosmologists of the 20th century. He was a Catholic priest. It's very interesting that we're looking into his life as my husband's doing in detail at the moment, about exploring his approach to both being a great mathematical cosmologist who is now known as the father of the Big Bang and the fact that he had a strong and undying faith to the level of being a priest. And of course, the other thing we haven't mentioned here is the Vatican Observatory. The Pope has his own observatory and he staffs it with astronomers and they make lots of good discoveries. So there are plenty of people who see that there are, including the Pope, who could see that science and Christian faith are not incompatible in any sense.  It's all a question of having this open mind to the reality of what God feels like in your life and to recognise that Jesus Christ was the expression of God on earth, how we understand and appreciate God. It's a completely different kind of learning. 

Thank you Jacqueline, that's great. Laura, is there anything you would like to add? We've done all the big science there and then we've left you to try and –

 Yeah. So we did the big name, Georges Lemaître. But in terms of the compatibility of faith and science itself, you also have to bring up Mendel, your monk with his pea plants, figuring out genetics. On the note of the Vatican Observatory, which is amazing. I'm very much a fan of that. There are like 35, I think, craters on the moon named after Jesuits. You might have to check the exact number, but there is no way that you could have all of these things that Catholics have done in the pursuit of science. So it's just sort of baked in. There's just this tradition of centuries of, there is no reason for there to be a distinction or a conflict there. So why would I invent one?

So Catholics belong in science. Good.

One of the problems we have as astronomers is a matter of terminology about the word heaven and heavens. I think this is one of the reasons why people get muddled up, because we talk about heaven in terms of our faith and what that means. Because of how people believed at the time when Jesus was alive, they looked up to the skies to try and find heaven as a place. Jesus ascended into heaven because it was up there. And we still in astronomy use the expression the heavens to mean what's out there, space. I do think sometimes this is one of the reasons why we end up with this conflict because people kind of assume that they remain connected by a word, which has come to mean two completely different things. 

Thank you Jacqueline. I'm glad you've given us a great link there to where I was going to go next in the conversation. And that is we're kind of drawing to a close now. And I thought it'd be really nice for listeners if you just would give us a flavour of when you look up at the sky, when you get to somewhere nice and dark at night, what are you thinking? What are you seeing?  What are you reflecting on? Just to help us if we go out after listening to this episode when it gets dark and see what we can see in the sky and think about what it is you can see, I think that might be quite inspiring. So may we go a different way around this time? May we start with you, Laura? When you look up at the sky when it's dark these days, what are you seeing? What are you reflecting on? What would you encourage us to be thinking about?

If I'm at like a proper dark sky site or - you could see not in the middle of the city - I'm thinking about, Oh, here's the four constellations I can identify. I have an app on my phone that will point me at all the different stars and stuff. In terms of actual reflection, one of the big things that comes up for me is God loves us so much that he made all of this for us to look at and discover. The universe is quite possibly infinite. God loves us an infinite amount to make all of this for us here on Earth to look at and wonder and appreciate and discover. And it's amazing and wonderful.

Good start. Claudia, what about you? You mentioned already that the dark sky really mattered to you in childhood. What about now? 

Yes, well, of course I see it with a different eye. Now that I know what happened and as I mentioned, time scales for me is always a fascination. So the little stars that I can still glimpse, they are surely in the Milky Way. They are as ancient as the universe. And the James Webb Space Telescope is looking at them now. And this to me is very emotional because they are so old. Then I think about very old stars and very old people and the cycle of life and I must think about that. With an eye that everything, as Laura said, started instantaneously in a big act of creation. This is very emotional.

Thank you. And Jacqueline, what are you thinking when you're looking up at the sky when it's nice and dark? 

Probably the first thing that still strikes me is the beauty, the extraordinary beauty of the patterns and so on, just in a really basic way, nothing really to do with science. That still impresses me. I love to be able to recognise patterns of what's happening with the heavenly bodies like, yes, well, we can see Jupiter or where are we with phases of the moon?  In some sense, is it a religious or spiritual experience? I can't say it is overwhelmingly that, but I think that what's even more amazing is that we have the capability now and have over the years to understand what's going on. There are the people who looked up and thought that there must be a physical heaven somehow beyond the stars. Now we know so much about the universe. It's the fact that we have this mental capability to appreciate the universe. We're astronomers, but Laura's also mentioned other aspects of creation that we have this capability to understand and appreciate it. And in some ways it still, it doesn't do away with the need for God. It means we need even more so to try and understand what we're here for and how we should behave and what our  -I’m struggling with finding the right words here. What being human is all about and part of that is the wonder of the world including the skies and the universe out there but the other half of it is the wonder from being people, being human. We know God came as a human being so that's the other sort of part of it. I can't sort of separate these things. 

I think sometimes you know we have a sense of this that is very deep in us, but actually putting it into words can be quite difficult. So often I find guests struggle with just trying to put some language around what we feel very strongly. Listen, I'm so grateful to the three of you for joining the episode today. This has been a joy to talk to you. And I feel very privileged to have had this time with three people who really think about science and faith. You've shared so honestly about your experiences and the things that matter to you. And I think there's something there for listeners to dwell on for a long time and certainly, when we look up at the sky now, we're going to be thinking about the three of you for a little while. Trying to notice better what it is that looking up at the sky can tell us at night. So thank you so much for your time today, the three of you, Jacqueline, Claudia and Laura. It's been wonderful.  

Thank you, Theresa. 

Thanks so much for having us. 

Bye. 

Listeners, I've got three quick notes to add before we finish today's conversation. Firstly, there's a link to the work of Georges Lemaître in the episode notes if you want to follow up. Secondly, if you've enjoyed today's episode, you'll be very pleased to hear that actually there were four Catholic women in astronomy who contacted me about being in today's episode. So the fourth of those Catholic women in astronomy is going to be a guest on next week's episode and is going to respond to today's conversation and talk about her own faith and her own thoughts as well. So I hope you'll look forward to that episode. Back to our usual schedule of being released on Wednesdays. And finally, if you want to hear even more about astrophysics and Catholics in the world of science, the Catholic Union of Great Britain have a webinar and there's a link to that in the episode notes. They have Reverend Dr. Gareth Leyshon speaking. He's another Catholic astrophysicist and also a priest in the Diocese of Cardiff and Menevia, I understand. So a link to the Catholic Union website where you can find out more about that is in the episode notes too. So I wish you all a wonderful Feast of the Epiphany. 

 Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday and you can follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it.  You can also follow us on social media @kindsofCatholic and remember if you connect with us on Substack you can comment on episodes and share your thoughts and be part of the dialogue there.  Until the next time.