Steven Spielberg thinks proof of alien life would “mess up” a lot of Christians. Catholics have a response: Try us.
Maybe you’ve heard about Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s newest film, a sci-fi thriller that returns to the alien genre that made him famous.
While the film itself is getting fairly positive reviews since its release June 12, generating similar buzz are Spielberg’s comments claiming that the discovery of extraterrestrial life would shake the faith of many Christians.
A character in the film is a former Catholic novice in religious life who struggles to reconcile her faith with the idea that aliens might be real. In an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Spielberg said:
There’s a faction in the film that represents a pretty good position of why — possibly because of ontological shock, social dislocation — if this truth ... were just known overnight, if the government announced, “Yes, we have been keeping this from you since 1947,” that would mess up a lot of people.
But is it true that proof of aliens would “mess up” Christians’ belief systems?
We can’t speak to other faith traditions, but for Catholics, the answer is easy: No.
“Any entity, no matter how many tentacles it has, has a soul,” said Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, in a 2010 interview, saying he would be “delighted” if intelligent aliens were found. Would he baptize an alien? “Only if they asked,” since the sacrament must be freely given and received.
We’ve had this conversation before
It turns out the idea that aliens would threaten faith is a tired one.
The suggestion is so overdone that it’s a permanent feature in the “Common Questions” section on the Society of Catholic Scientists’ website and the subject of a recent book, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-box at the Vatican Observatory.
That book, by the way? Its authors are Brother Consolmagno and Father Paul Mueller, scientists at the Vatican Observatory — the official astronomical research institute of the Catholic Church that’s been in business for centuries. While you could read the whole book to understand why Catholics are unfazed by the idea that aliens might be out there, here’s the quick version.
Dr. Christopher Baglow, the director of the Science and Religion Initiative of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, addressed this question in a 2021 lecture for the Society of Catholic Scientists Annual Conference. He said that humans and extraterrestrials would share God as their creator, so aliens, like humans, have the “capacity for a special relationship with God in which they can know God and respond to him with freedom and love… God would love them, and want to share his life with them.”
Of course, there’s more to it all than that. Would Catholics simply act as missionaries to alien life forms — assuming they are creatures with a reason, will, and immortal soul like ours — just waiting across the distance to hear the news of the Gospel? Or would they need their own separate form of salvation?
In response to the question, “Would the existence of intelligent Extraterrestrials be consistent with Catholic belief?” the Society of Catholic Scientists explains that Catholic theology holds that any embodied beings with reason and free will would have immortal souls and be loved by God, although how salvation would work for them remains an open question. In other words, a lot would depend on what kind of alien life we found.
While certainly there are many unknowns, one thing is certain. Whatever form potential extraterrestrials might take, you can be sure that “The Catholic intellectual tradition stands ready to help humanity interpret and process the fact that we are not alone in the universe.”
Ironically, this question is actually answered in the film. Disclosure Day includes a Catholic nun character who says the existence of aliens does not threaten her belief in God.
It seems Spielberg made the Catholic case better than he intended.
