the timboucher experience

What religion do space aliens follow? The question has plagued mankind since time immemorial. Okay, so not really; it’s a much more recent question, and quite possibly a ridiculous one. But that hasn’t stopped certain elements within the Catholic Church - that venerable institution of progressive innovation. Rather than rooting out problems of abuse and worldly corruption, they’ve instead been bending their collective mind-power towards determining whether or not aliens from outer space can be baptized into the Catholic Church.

Good for them.

At least they’ve got their priorities straight. To be fair though, this doesn’t seem to be any kind of official statement out of the Vatican. It comes instead from a group called the Catholic Truth Society out of Glasgow. CTS is the publisher of Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit astronomer (photos, bio). Consolmagno apparently has several books about astronomy, available at Amazon, including Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist. To anyone who perhaps finds the idea of a Vatican scientist a little bit curious, CTS responds:

Those unaware of the involvement of Catholic religious brothers at the cutting edge of modern science may be surprised to learn that Brother Guy has advanced degrees in planetary science from MIT and the University of Arizona. He spends his time observing comets and asteroids, and does experiments with the Vatican’s vast collection of meteorites – one of the largest in the world. Nor is he alone in this: he is one of a dozen Jesuit astronomers doing this work. Indeed, he relates that Jesuits have been engaged in astronomy since before Galileo.

Certainly interesting that the Vatican has one of the largest collections of meteorites in the world. I wonder what else they’ve got locked away. In any event, Brother Guy’s upcoming work explores questions of extraterrestrial life in relation to Catholic theology. According to the CTS press release, his work grapples with such questions as:

Is Original Sin something that affects all intelligent beings? Is Jesus Christ’s redemption valid for intelligent beings throughout the universe? Or would other worlds have their own version of Jesus? Would the Church send missionaries to ET planets? Could you baptize an alien? Or for that matter, could you ordain an alien?

Brother Guy is of course not the first person to ever wonder about such things. A Pop Occulture reader suggested the book, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 by Michael J. Crowe for more information regarding these debates historically. Seems worth checking out. There’s also a fair amount of Catholic theological speculation online over the alien subject. Some choice selections for anyone who’s curious (most of the answers seem to be rather non-commital about the whole thing):

1. Faith Questions: Aliens from Outer Space
2. Can Aliens be Baptized?
3. Catholic aliens: alleged statements from a Vatican monsignor
4. Catholics and Aliens: What To Believe?

I don’t find any of those personally very satisfying. And now that I’ve tracked down some more extensive quotes from Brother Guy on the subject, I’m comfortable saying that he has a somewhat skewed perspective on the whole thing. This comes from a Beliefnet article by Brother Guy, on the subject of whether it would be appropriate for “us” to try and evangelize them:

To withhold from an ET civilization a part of us as fundamental to ourselves as our religions—plural—would be dishonest, and certainly it would show no respect for them as equals. The important message that every Christian missionary has carried to each culture is that all people are equal and all of them are heirs to the knowledge of God that has been given to us. Soldiers might conquer them, secular philosophers might treat them as less than human (or, worse, condescend to them as “noble savages”), but the missionary can only accept them as equals.

Missionaries accepting people as equals! That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard - and shit, the historical record TOTALLY backs him up, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m sure Brother Guy is a very nice “guy”, but I’m just not seeing eye-to-eye with him on that. Maybe a better question though is how do we know that UFO’s and alien abductions aren’t in fact alien attempts to evangelize us? Maybe these are their missionaries, and we understand them as poorly as primitive cultures understood white men with guns, ships, crosses and new diseases…

There’s another point in this article that I find rather theologically confusing. He writes:

Another bit of Biblical evidence is the opening of John’s Gospel, who tells us that The Word (which is to say, the Incarnation of God) was present from the beginning; it is part and parcel of the woof and weave of the universe.

Just how this “Word” might be “spoken” to the rest of the intelligent universe, I don’t know. But it will be in “words” (that is, events) appropriate to those beings. In any event, good extraterrestrials (ETs), just like good humans, do not need to know about Christ for salvation; that’s the tradition of “baptism by desire.”

The point there is that, even though the life of Jesus occurred at a specific space-time point, on a particular world line (to put it in general relativity terms), it also was an event that John’s Gospel describes as occurring in the beginning—the one point that is simultaneous in all world lines, and so present in all time and in all space. Thus, there can only be one Incarnation—though various ET civilizations may or may not have experienced that Incarnation in the same way that Earth did.

If we can apply this thinking to other planets, suggesting that maybe aliens have their own version of Jesus, then why can’t that be applied to other non-Christian cultures? If the Word of God is “present in all time and in all space” then that means we ought to be able to follow other avatars of the Word: Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed, etc. Doesn’t it? I’m no expert, but I have to wonder how doctrinally sound Brother Guy is really being here…

Nitpicking aside though, there’s another much more element to this whole thing. Let’s put on our speculation hats for a moment, shall we? Now, even if they have no official stance on the subject, if they have astronomers, collections of meteorites, and whatnot, then obviously the Vatican has some interest in sentient non-human or extraterrestrial life. As one Catholic Apologetics site writes:

We already know for certain that there are non-human rational beings in the universe. They are called angels. So, I see no reason why there couldn’t be non-human, physical rational beings as well, if God felt like making them.

Whether we know for certain that angels do in fact exist is certainly open to debate. What’s not though are the countless myths and accounts from all over the world and throughout all history concerning intelligent non-human entities: fairies, elves, demons, angels, aliens, etc. UFO researcher Jacques Vallee spent many years looking for commonalities among all these so-called “ultraterrestrials”, and he concluded that perhaps these beings are somehow operating a “control system” over humanity.

In The Invisible College (E.P. Dutton, 1975) Vallee posits the idea of a “control system.” UFOs and related phenomena are “the means through which man’s concepts are being rearranged.” Their ultimate source may be unknowable, at least at this stage of human development; what we do know, according to Vallee, is that they are presenting us with continually recurring “absurd” messages and appearances which defy rational analysis but which nonetheless address human beings on the level of myth and imagination.

“When I speak of a control system for planet earth,” he says, ” I do not want my words to be misunderstood: I do not mean that some higher order of beings has locked us inside the constraints of a space-bound jail, closely monitored by psychic entities we might call angels or demons. I do not propose to redefine God. What I do mean is that mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no power….”

Whether or not you buy into that, religious institutions most assuredly do operate as a control-system over human societies. Perhaps if we accept the tentative possibility that ultraterrestrial beings are in fact real, it opens up the possibility of participation between these human and non-human forces. I certainly don’t have anything besides speculation to back this up, but some small paranoid part of me wonders: maybe they have a good reason for wanting to baptize and ordain non-human entities. Perhaps some truly bizarre moment of inter-species integration is on the not-too-distant horizon. If aliens have indeed been in contact with secret cabals as conspiracists claim, then religious organizations would have a huge stake in assuring such contact doesn’t disrupt or topple their institutions of social control. But of course, that’s all just speculation, right?

If you want to speculate some more, here are some other blogs which explore this idea further:

1. ET lives . . . and he’s Christian
2. I Can See It Now: Alien vs. Pope, Starring Bill Murray…
3. Catholics Gone Wild: Baptizing Extra-Terrestrials?
4. christian aliens?
5. To seek out strange, new worlds — and redeem them
6. The Silent Planet
7. Should The Church Baptize Extraterrestrials?
8. Oh please…. This is just TOO much
9. Catholic exotheology
10. But what if they send missionaries here?

PS. I forgot to add one other interesting bit to this whole conversation. I’ve read several reports of UFO abductions where the abductee shouts out the name of Jesus or quotes from scripture and at this, the aliens disappear. But it doesn’t always work. This comes from a UFO Evidence site:

He said several of his “abductees” had stopped their abduction experiences by screaming “Jesus is my savior” when aliens were next seen.

This investigator has since found that this same approach used by some, he knows, has also stopped their unwelcome visitors from returning. One woman told this investigator while standing in the hallway of her home in daylight that she had a haint jump on her back and try to “suffocate her.” In desperation she yelled, “Jesus! Jesus! Save me!” The haint immediately flew off and has not since returned. Another individual while having a lucid dream of a dark, big-eyed, gray screamed, “Jesus is my savior!” as Wes suggested.

So maybe the authority of Jesus really does extend into the universe… Or else they just find excessive religiousness as annoying as everybody else down here.

• Doubting Aliens
• Circus is in, aliens are out
• Notes: Land House Heaven
• Aliens Control The Media
• Gospel of Thomas