EWTN News portal reports that on April 14, 2026, the Artemis II crew — astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Victor Glover — returned to Earth after a nearly 10-day journey around the moon, traveling approximately 695,000 miles. During their post-mission reflections at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the astronauts shared sentiments of awe, gratitude, and human connection, with Victor Glover explicitly thanking God and Jeremy Hansen emphasizing gratitude, joy, and love. Christina Koch described Earth as “just this lifeboat, hanging undisturbingly in the universe” and declared that “planet Earth, you are a crew.” Reid Wiseman stated, “It’s a special thing to be a human and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth.” While these reflections contain passing invocations of the divine, they reveal a fundamentally naturalistic and humanistic worldview that reduces the cosmos to a backdrop for human experience and omits the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ over all creation — a silence that speaks volumes about the spiritual bankruptcy of modern secular institutions, even when their participants profess personal faith.
The Cosmos as a Mere Backdrop for Human Sentiment
The reflections offered by the Artemis II crew, while emotionally stirring and superficially pious in places, are rooted in a profoundly naturalistic framework that treats the universe as nothing more than a vast, empty stage upon which human beings project their own meaning. Christina Koch’s description of Earth as “just this lifeboat, hanging undisturbingly in the universe” encapsulates this worldview perfectly. The universe, in her telling, is merely “blackness” — an indifferent void — and Earth is a fragile vessel adrift within it. This is not the Catholic understanding of creation. The Church has always taught that the universe is the deliberate handiwork of Almighty God, suffused with His glory, ordered to His purposes, and governed by His providence. As the Psalmist proclaims: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth his handiwork” (Psalm 18:1). The cosmos is not “blackness”; it is a theophany, a manifestation of divine wisdom and power. To reduce it to an empty backdrop for human drama is to commit the sin of practical atheism — acknowledging God in words while denying Him in one’s operative worldview.
Koch’s further declaration — “planet Earth, you are a crew” — reveals the anthropocentric distortion at the heart of these reflections. The Earth is not a “crew.” The Earth is a creature, made by God, sustained by God, and ordered toward God. To personify the planet in this manner, placing humanity at the center of a collective project of mutual support, is to substitute a sentimental humanism for the supernatural order of creation. It is the language of secular environmentalism and New Age spirituality, not of Catholic theology. The Church teaches that man is the summit of visible creation, yes — but only because God elevated him to that dignity, and only in order that man might know, love, and serve his Creator. “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him? You have made him a little less than the angels, you have crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5-6). Man’s dignity is derived from God, not from his own collective solidarity with other humans aboard a “lifeboat.”
The Omission of Christ the King and the Supernatural Order
Perhaps the most glaring deficiency in the astronauts’ reflections is the complete absence of any acknowledgment of the royal dominion of Jesus Christ over all creation — including the moon, the Earth, and the entire cosmos. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secular error that the universe and human society can be understood or governed apart from the authority of the Redeemer. Pius XI taught with unmistakable clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” He further declared that Christ received from the Father “unlimited right over all that is created, so that all is subject to His will.”
The moon around which the Artemis II crew traveled is not a neutral piece of real estate. It is a creature of God, subject to the dominion of Christ the King. Yet nowhere in the astronauts’ reflections is this acknowledged. Victor Glover thanked God, and this is commendable as far as it goes — but his thanksgiving remains at the level of personal piety, never ascending to the recognition of Christ’s cosmic sovereignty. Jeremy Hansen spoke of gratitude, joy, and love — beautiful sentiments, but entirely horizontal, directed toward family, colleagues, and neighbors. There is no vertical dimension, no acknowledgment that the mission itself, the cosmos traversed, and the very capacity to experience gratitude are all gifts ordered toward the supernatural end of union with God through Jesus Christ.
This silence is not accidental. It is the fruit of the modernist revolution that has infected even the language of those who profess faith. When God is mentioned, it is as a personal companion, a source of comfort — never as the Lawgiver, the Judge, the King before whom every knee must bow. Pope St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), condemned the modernist error that “the dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Proposition 26). The astronauts’ faith, as expressed, is precisely this kind of practical functionalism — God is thanked for the experience, invoked for gratitude, but never acknowledged as the absolute Lord of the cosmos whose laws govern all things and to whom all creation owes obedience.
“It’s a Special Thing to Be Human” — But Why?
Reid Wiseman’s statement — “It’s a special thing to be a human and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth” — is perhaps the most revealing utterance of the entire post-mission event. On its surface, it is an innocuous expression of wonder. But examined in light of Catholic doctrine, it is profoundly deficient. What makes man “special”? What makes Earth “special”? For the Catholic, the answer is clear: man is special because he is made in the image and likeness of God, endowed with an immortal soul, created for the beatific vision, and redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. Earth is special because it is the theater of the Incarnation, the place where God became man, where the Redemption was accomplished, and where the Church — the Kingdom of Christ on earth — carries forward the work of salvation.
But Wiseman’s statement contains none of this. His wonder is purely naturalistic — the wonder of a creature contemplating its own existence and its fragile home in the void. It is the wonder of existentialism, not of faith. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the rationalist proposition that “human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations” (Proposition 3). The astronauts’ reflections, for all their emotional warmth, operate entirely within this condemned framework. Human experience is the measure. Human wonder is the standard. Human solidarity is the goal. God is invoked as a pleasant addition, not as the foundation and end of all things.
The Reduction of Mission to “Human Experience”
Jeremy Hansen explicitly acknowledged that the crew had not spoken much about the science of the mission, stating: “You haven’t heard us talk a lot about the science, the things we’ve learned, and that’s because they’re there and they’re incredible but it’s the human experience that is extraordinary for us.” This admission is telling. A mission that traveled 695,000 miles around the moon — a feat of extraordinary scientific and engineering achievement — is reduced, in the crew’s own telling, to a “human experience.” The cosmos is not understood in terms of the wisdom and power of God displayed in creation; it is understood in terms of what it made the astronauts feel.
This is the cult of man that the Church has consistently condemned. Pope Pius XI warned in Quas Primas that the modern world’s defection from Christ produces “unbridled desires, often cloaked in the guise of public good and love of country, from which arises division among citizens and blind and immeasurable egoism, attentive to nothing else but its own advantage and its own good and measuring everything else by this standard alone.” The astronauts’ ego is not malicious, but it is operative. The mission is about them — their experience, their wonder, their gratitude, their love. God is a footnote. Creation is a backdrop. The supernatural order is entirely absent.
Victor Glover’s exhortation to his neighbors — “God told us to love him with all that we are, and love our neighbors as ourselves” — is the closest any crew member came to expressing a substantive theological truth. And indeed, the Great Commandment is the summary of the moral law. But even this remains at the level of interpersonal ethics, never ascending to the recognition that the love of God demands the submission of the entire created order — including space exploration, including science, including every human endeavor — to the kingship of Christ. Pius XI taught that “Christ possesses dominion over all creatures, not by force but by essence and nature,” and that through the hypostatic union, “Christ has authority over all creatures.” No human achievement — not even traveling to the moon — exists outside this authority.
The Silence About the Final End
The most damning omission in the astronauts’ reflections is the complete silence about the final end of man: the salvation of his soul, the attainment of the beatific vision, the reality of judgment, heaven, and hell. These astronauts traveled to the edge of the cosmos and returned speaking of “crew,” “neighbors,” “gratitude,” and “love” — but not a word about the eternal destiny of the human soul. Not a word about the necessity of the true faith, the sacraments, and the Church for salvation. Not a word about the reality that every human being, including every astronaut, will one day stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
This silence is the hallmark of the modernist mentality that Pope St. Pius X identified and condemned in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907). The modernist, Pius X taught, reduces religion to experience, feeling, and sentiment — stripping it of its dogmatic content, its supernatural claims, and its binding authority. The Artemis II reflections are a textbook example of this reduction. God is present as a feeling, an attitude, a source of gratitude — but not as the sovereign Lord who commands, judges, and saves. The astronauts’ faith is a faith without dogma, without authority, without the Cross. It is, in the final analysis, a faith in humanity itself — dressed up in the language of wonder and gratitude, but devoid of the supernatural content that alone makes faith salvific.
“The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (St. Augustine, quoted by Pius XI in Quas Primas). If even the secular state is nothing more than an association of men, how much more must every human endeavor — including the exploration of the cosmos — be ordered toward the supernatural end for which man was created? The Artemis II crew looked upon the Earth from the void and saw a “lifeboat.” The Catholic looks upon the Earth from the same void and sees the foot of Calvary, the garden of the Resurrection, the field of the Church — and knows that every star in the blackness above is a creature of the God who became man to save souls from eternal perdition. That is the vision that was missing. That is the faith that was absent. And that absence is the measure of how far the modern world has fallen from the kingship of Christ.
Source:
‘It’s a special thing to be human’: Artemis II crew returns with awe, gratitude, and faith (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 14.04.2026