R.I.P., Copernicus-Until We Meet Again

Today I read in the newspaper that Nicolaus Copernicus, who was once condemned as a heretic for his theory of heliocentricity, has now been buried with all honor and blessing by the Catholic Church in the church where he once served as canon and doctor. The remains were cross-referenced and identified using DNA samples of bones taken from an ignominious unmarked grave and some hairs found in an ancient book once belonging to the 16th century astronomer.

If the idea of a great thinker whose genius mathematical calculations and painstaking pre-telescopic observation of the heavens is finally being recognized isn't fuel for a sermon in the days of dwindling resources, the threat of economic collapse of the European economy, and nuclear war at the hands of Iran and North Korea, tell me what is.

I am reminded of a time when our youth program was criticized because the group leaders and young people talked about the compatibility of the Creation Story in Genesis with what science teaches us about the development of species and the evolution of life forms, specifically as they lead to the appearance of humankind. We would be appalled at the very idea of mobbing a youth room and condemning free conversation among young folks trying to interpret the holy teachings in light of what we have learned from centuries of scientific exploration and discovery.

Copernicus, unlike his intellectual successor Galileo Lalilei of Italy, worked in relative obscurity without a great deal of confrontation and certainly without the persecution of the Inquisition, having preceded that lovely interlude in history. Still, working as he did as a canon, a position similar to a lay pastor or a deacon today, he was sufficiently visible that his work attracted attention of the most negative sort. In fact, it was enough to ensure that his body was laid to rest in an unmarked grave under the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, on Poland's Baltic Coast, lost until further advances in science gave us the means to search him out and give him the decent burial and observances the church should have rendered to him in 1543.

Please understand, this story didn't make the front page of any newspaper I can name. Perhaps a reason why we should care today about this story, however, is that we would do well to be reminded that those of us who blindly assert that scripture is infallible keep us from seeing that history, context, and progress shine a new light on what we learn in the Bible. Perhaps a reason why we should care today about this story is that we would do well to remember that humankind has always been on a path of becoming more and more aware that God, not ourselves, is the center of the universe.

A reason why we should care about this story is that today, as in the time of Copernicus, Earth and humankind are not the center around which all else revolves. On a personal level, what this might mean to each of us is that we could pause and question, as Copernicus did all those centuries ago, how God might be at work in the universe if indeed he is not working in the manner we would like to ascribe to him.

God is constantly moving, working, ordering the universe and its mysteries. One does not need to be able to explain the answer to every question. Yet, it is in our nature to question, observe, experiment, measure, and calculate just as Copernicus did. In his daily life working in the cathedral, and in his spare time wondering about and positing the theory of a solar system centered on the sun instead of the earth, Copernicus demonstrated that it is not inconsistent for a person of science also to be a person of faith. We may question what the seven days of Genesis mean. We may question how Adam and Eve came to breathe and walk in the world.

As Jacek Jezierski, one of the Polish church bishops who encouraged the search for Copernicus said, "Science and faith can be reconciled."

It leaves the question open for us to explore: Will we be open to the limitless possibilities of a God whose nature is so grand and so universal that that God is unthreatened by our minuscule
explorations using complicated formulas and calculations? Better still, will we as people of faith be able to let go of the need to make a choice between the mystical and the empirical?

Maybe some day we'll get to talk to Copernicus about that one.