Br. Guy and the Vatican Astronomers:
Re-Reading” the Faith for Alien Belief
Adapted from Daniel O'Connor's book "Only Man Bears his Image" with permission.
Brother Guy Consolmagno is an American physicist and astronomer who Pope Francis named the Director of the Vatican Observatory in 2015—one year after he was awarded the “Carl Sagan Medal.”
Since then, carrying with him the title of “The Pope’s Astronomer,” Consolmagno has become a well-known advocate for belief in extraterrestrials. I hasten to add that his teachings are not as dark as Monsignor Balducci’s—Br. Guy does not believe we have yet been contacted, much less visited, by aliens.
Unfortunately, this only mitigates (not eliminates) the damage of his teachings. Like Monsignor Balducci, Brother Guy enjoys an intimidating sounding office in Rome which has compelled many to falsely regard his opinions as somehow representative of “the Catholic position.” (I do not fault Br. Guy, however; as far as I have seen, he has not misrepresented the implications of his own position.) In order to see how problematic this Jesuit’s views are, we need only consider what he has publicly stated.
First, though, an important note should be included. Consolmagno has been the object of a slanderous conspiracy theory that “went viral,” which accused him of various baldly diabolical and apocalyptic teachings in relation to aliens. In fact, Br. Guy never said those things he is accused of, and on his own official website, he publicly repudiated these views.
Unfortunately, it appears the promoters of this theory have not bothered to even note this repudiation, much less delete, retract, and apologize for their slander. As strongly as I will need to refute Br. Guy in what follows, I would also exhort everyone to never allow a rightful zeal in fighting deceptions to become a willingness to slander anyone.
Consolmagno has not claimed he anticipates the arrival of an alien savior to overturn Christianity.
This said, our present concern is Consolmagno’s telling response to that slander. For he defended himself against his critics only by revealing his own deeply confused approach. As one interviewer recounted:
Viewing aliens as a threat] created a lucrative opening, Consolmagno said, for those who “make their living feeding off the paranoia of others” and who hype the search for supernatural clues. It’s a tendency that, in his view, demonstrates a weak confidence in one’s own religious beliefs. “The main problem is a lack of faith, the fear that our understanding of our religion will not survive radical changes in the way we understand the universe. If you presume that the arrival of an alien will rock your foundations, then you’ve got pretty shaky foundations.”[280]
Although understandably critical of the individuals who slander him, Br. Guy wrongly concludes that any concern about the diabolical amid today’s frenzied ET-contact-expectation is mere “paranoia” from those whose “faith is weak.” Consolmagno seems to have not paused for a moment to observe that the only paranoia being fostered today (in relation to this issue) is that spread by the ET promoters, not those who disbelieve in aliens.
Relatively speaking, extremely few people recognize that “aliens” are in fact demons in disguise. But there are billions alive today who believe aliens are among us—threatening our very existence (according to the “malicious aliens” narrative) or seeking to give us cosmic techno-salvation (according to the “benign, enlightened, evolved aliens” narrative), but being prevented by governments hell bent on keeping their own people enslaved.
For the last 75 years, UFO “religions” have been leading countless souls to hell, inspiring mass suicides and murders, and promoting heresy. ET belief and expectation in general has been replacing—in the hearts of untold hundreds of millions—faith and hope in Christ with sci-fi inspired delusions.
Yet, for this Jesuit, none of that is a concern. On this point, the only real concern—for him and those of his ilk, like Msgr. Balducci—is that we ever dare risk approaching some phenomenon with the care that is due in consideration of the possibility that a demonic deception is latent within it. That, we are patronizingly assured, would be nothing but a “paranoid lack of faith.”
So much for the words of Our Lord in the Gospel and of Scripture in general, or the messages of Our Lady in her many apparitions, or the teachings of more Magisterial documents than can be counted, or the admonitions of innumerable saints all warning us to be on the lookout for the Devil’s deceptive guiles.
Is perhaps all that just outdated “excessive spirituality” which we modern Christians need not bother with, now that we have “The Science”?
“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8).
Although Br. Guy here speaks as if he were unaware of the ET-discussion ongoing within the Church, even the boldest of Catholic ET promoters concede that the existence of aliens would have massive repercussions for the Faith; requiring a complete and ground-level revision of our Christology, Mariology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, etc.
But, as Fr. Spyridon Bailey observed, Br. Guy knows well that aliens would radically shake the Faith—he simply does not recognize that this tension is among the (many) facts ruling out aliens:
Brother Guy Consolmagno, the then president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, was fully behind this position. At [a] conference he declared: ”I believe aliens exist, but I have no evidence. I would be really excited and it would make my understanding of my religion deeper and richer in ways that I can’t even predict yet, which is why it would be exciting.” The message is one of change. One after another of the speakers reinforced the idea that a cultural shift must be manipulated into action in order to make people accept the existence of aliens. This shift, they argued, must be affected in every level of our culture: in entertainment, philosophy, science and, as Brother Guy so enthusiastically expresses, in theology.[281]
Yet Consolmagno dismisses those who recognize this fact; claiming such people simply have “shaky foundations.” In truth, whoever fails to recognize this fact evidently has no foundations at all! Indeed, if one’s Christology, Mariology, etc., has already so thoroughly succumbed to modernism that it has been robbed of all its value, then there is little substance present in the first place to even experience a “shaking” by an ET-inspired pseudo-theology.
One should not be proud of having a faith so vapid that it lacks any substance which can be shaken. True solidity in the Faith is found not in a posture of categorical openness to the claims of scientists, but rather by such an absolute trust in God’s Word that no shaking, no matter how severe, can damage it.
Br. Guy, however—representing the prevailing mood in the Vatican today—proposes that we attain the mere appearance of a solid faith by adopting a false humility which dares not ever restrain science with theological truth.
Thus he would have us assume that we will always manage to find something to cling to in order to pretend we are still Christians, even as we give “The Science” free rein to assert and demand whatever it pleases.
That approach to the relationship between faith and science, however, is nothing but heretical drivel and a diabolical deception of its own. “All faithful Christians are forbidden to defend as the legitimate conclusions of science those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith... they are absolutely bound to hold them to be errors which wear the deceptive appearance of truth.” —Declarations of the First Vatican Council
In a stunning display of self-contradiction (asserted, no less, with successive breaths)—not to mention violation of the Church’s teachings, both noted above and taught elsewhere repeatedly—Br. Guy continues his chastisement of those who believe the demonic is behind “alien” encounters:
In that sense the Vatican’s astronomers believe faith should not impose preconceived notions on the exploration of the universe, as that would involve placing limits on the creative freedom of God. Aliens, if they exist, may have a different relationship with the Creator. “We have to be open to however God actually did create this universe, not the way that we want him to,” Consolmagno observed. And that means astronomy, even Jesuit astronomy, should be looking to expand scientific understanding, not trying to prove some divine plan. Sign seekers, on the other hand, want an interpretive key ... that can unlock all the answers. But that’s not how things work, Consolmagno said. “If I were to see such a sign, I wouldn’t trust it...I know enough about God to know that’s not how God operates. Whoever’s giving me that sign, it’s not God. It’s not just me saying this. ... if you’re looking for that kind of certainty, it’s because you don’t have faith.”[282]
Rejecting as “sign seekers” (i.e., traditional Christians) those who “seek an interpretive key” (i.e., Divine Revelation) to understand God’s creation, Br. Guy suggests that, instead, we must above all ensure we are not “trying to prove some divine plan.”
It is not here Scripture which tells us how God operates (believing Scripture would be “placing limits on the creative freedom of God,” according to Consolmagno’s reasoning), but rather it is Br. Guy himself. He “knows” that God doesn’t give interpretive keys. “That’s not how God operates,” Br. Guy solemnly and repeatedly assures us.
It is quite remarkable that a man can lament those who “limit God,” only to immediately thereafter limit God by claiming He cannot provide a “sign” or give “certainty” or reveal an “interpretive key.”
In fact, Supernatural Faith is by nature certain. Whatever contradicts any of its corollaries is, therefore, certainly false. If this consideration provides any “interpretive keys,” then that is no mark against the veracity of what doors those keys unlock.
God is well within His rights to reveal to us how He went about things in His creation. Any Christian is well advised to be on guard when another reproaches him for seeking certainty, or for “limiting God” (by ruling out whatever is contrary to what God has revealed), or for deferring to the Faith’s “preconceived notions” of the universe. In fact, all of these things are part and parcel to Christianity properly understood.
As one finds throughout Christian ET belief promotion, those who lament alien disbelievers “limiting God” actually have no qualms at all with such limitation so long as it lends credence to their own views. We are presently dealing with the deceptions of certain individual ET promoters only due to their prominence, not their scarcity. We should not, therefore, suppose that we are safe so long as we avoid the sophistry of the men named above.
Br. Guy’s musings are in keeping with the prevailing sentiments of the men who work in the Vatican today. For example, Fr. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti is an astronomer and theologian working in the Vatican. One Catholic periodical summarized his teachings as follows (including a direct quote from the priest):
Once believers will have verified that these alien civilizations come from another planet... They will have to conduct a “rereading of the Gospel in light of the new data.”[283]
Fr. Gabriel Funes, another Vatican astronomer, has said similar things.
Yet, a “rereading of the Gospel in light of new data”—a reformulation of the very fundamental basis of Christianity itself—is exactly what would be most appreciated and promoted by a certain individual who we know will rise to dominance during the end times.
While the various heresies the Church has triumphed over during her 2,000-year history have each, in their own way, perverted some individual doctrine, ET belief proposes to do much more: it proposes to radically reinvent the entire Faith. And many men in the Vatican today are all too eager to sign up for that task.
If anyone has failed to see, thus far, just how diabolical and apocalyptic these developments are, he will not fail to see it in what follows. For we are not only dealing with men publishing their own seductive deceptions based on ET belief. We are dealing with the demons themselves directly “revealing” their plans regarding aliens, all under the guise of “private revelation.” 23.