The National Catholic Register reports that over 130 scientists gathered at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago from June 5–7, 2026, for the ninth annual Society of Catholic Scientists conference. The article presents talks on identical twins, artificial intelligence, mathematics, and the supposed unity of faith and science, featuring speakers such as Nuno Castel-Branco, Maureen Condic, Ignasi Rosell, and Gregory F. Johnson. The tone is overwhelmingly positive, portraying the conference as a joyful gathering of devout Catholic scientists who seek to reconcile their faith with modern scientific inquiry. What the article systematically conceals is that this entire enterprise operates within the framework of the post-conciliar apostasy, where the very notion of “dialogue” between faith and science is a modernist Trojan horse designed to subordinate supernatural truth to the ever-shifting conclusions of human reason.
The Myth of “Faith and Science” as a False Dichotomy to Be Overcome
The article’s central premise — that the Society of Catholic Scientists exists “to correct the false characterization of faith and science as opposed” — is itself a modernist construction. The article states: “The Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS) exists to correct the false characterization of faith and science as opposed, and how to combat this myth was a constant topic in both formal presentations and informal conversations.” This framing presupposes that the perennial Catholic understanding, which places divine revelation and the Magisterium as the supreme arbiter of all truth, including truths about the natural world, is itself the “myth” to be dismantled.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, there is no “opposition” between true science and true faith because both originate in God, who is Truth itself. However, the relationship is not one of equal partners in dialogue. As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors, proposition 80 — condemned as heresy — states: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The very project of “reconciling” faith with modern science, as though faith needed to be updated or corrected by scientific discoveries, inverts the proper order. Philosophy and the sciences are the handmaids of theology, not its equals. The Council of Vatican I (1870) defined that “if anyone says that human sciences are to be treated with such liberty that their assertions may be maintained as true even when opposed to divine revelation, and that they may not be condemned by the Holy See: let him be anathema” (Dei Filius, Canon 4.9).
The article’s uncritical promotion of this “unity of truth” narrative echoes the modernist proposition condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (proposition 58): “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” When Ignasi Rosell, a particle physicist, invokes “St. John Henry Newman’s vision of the university” and declares that “Truth is one. Newman was not defending theology against science: He was defending the unity of knowledge,” he is weaponizing a figure whom the conciliar sect has elevated as a patron of precisely this kind of modernist synthesis. Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine was condemned as a corruption of the faith, and his invocation here serves to legitimize the subordination of revealed truth to the autonomous claims of human reason.
The Canonization of St. Nicolas Steno: Hagiography in Service of Modernist Reconciliation
Nuno Castel-Branco’s presentation on St. Nicolas Steno — “a revolutionary scientist who is considered the father of geology and comparative anatomy” who “converted to Catholicism after witnessing a Corpus Christi procession in Italy, going on to become a bishop and then a saint” — is a carefully constructed narrative designed to serve the conference’s ideological purpose. The article emphasizes that “the same research skills Steno used to understand the natural world became his path to heaven as he turned his intellect toward studying the Church fathers and theology.”
This is not merely hagiography; it is hagiography deployed as a weapon of the modernist revolution. The implicit message is that scientific inquiry is not merely compatible with faith but is itself a path to holiness. This directly contradicts the Catholic understanding that holiness consists in the perfection of charity, the practice of the virtues, and fidelity to the commandments of God — not in scientific achievement. The article presents Steno’s scientific work and his sanctity as mutually reinforcing, when in reality, his sanctity, if it be genuine (and the reader should note that his canonization occurred within the conciar structures and is therefore of doubtful validity), consists in his fidelity to the Church and his pastoral labors, not in his geological discoveries.
Moreover, the article’s silence on the nature of the “Corpus Christi procession” that allegedly led to Steno’s conversion is telling. In the post-conciliar context, such processions are often stripped of their Catholic theological content — the public profession of the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament — and reduced to cultural performances. The article does not specify whether this procession was a true Catholic procession with the Traditional rite or a modernist parody.
The “Twin Problem”: When Biology Replaces Metaphysics
Maureen Condic’s presentation on identical twins deserves particular scrutiny. The article describes her as presenting “her solution to the ‘twin problem,'” arguing that “the splitting of an embryo to become identical twins is an act of biological regeneration, comparable to asexual reproduction. Thus an embryo becoming identical twins is not the division of one human person but the spawning of a second individual from a first.”
This is a remarkable example of how the conciliar approach to bioethics operates: by subordinating metaphysical truth to biological observation. The Catholic position is clear — the human soul is created directly by God at the moment of conception (animatio), and every human being possesses inviolable dignity from that moment. The question of identical twins is a legitimate philosophical and theological question, but Condic’s “solution” reduces the mystery of human generation to a biological mechanism, as though the creation of a rational soul by God Almighty were merely a matter of cellular division.
The article presents this as though it were a triumph of “Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics,” but in reality, it is a capitulation to the reductionist methodology of modern biology. True Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics does not need to “solve” the twin problem by making the soul subordinate to observed biological processes. The soul is not generated by the body but created directly by God; the biological process of twinning is simply the material occasion by which God creates a second rational soul. There is no “problem” to solve — only a mystery to contemplate with humility before the Creator.
Artificial Intelligence and the “Great Chain of Being”: Pagan Philosophy Disguised as Catholic Thought
The article reports that “two talks addressed artificial intelligence, one addressing trustworthy scientific inference given the scope of AI and the other attempting to place machine intelligence on Aristotle’s ‘Great Chain of Being.'” The invocation of Aristotle’s Scala Naturae — the hierarchical classification of all beings based on the complexity of their souls — in the context of artificial intelligence is a telling example of how the conciliar intellectual class attempts to baptize secular philosophical frameworks.
The “Great Chain of Being” is a concept that, while having roots in Aristotle and being developed by medieval Christian thinkers, has been thoroughly co-opted by modern evolutionary and materialist thought. To place artificial intelligence on this chain is to implicitly accept the materialist premise that intelligence is merely a function of complexity — a premise that directly contradicts the Catholic teaching that the rational soul is a spiritual substance created directly by God and not reducible to material processes.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned proposition 58: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure.” The attempt to classify artificial intelligence within a metaphysical hierarchy, while ignoring the absolute ontological gulf between a rational soul created by God and a machine constructed by human hands, is precisely the kind of materialist reductionism that the Church has always condemned.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem: Mathematics as Natural Theology
Gregory F. Johnson’s presentation on Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem is perhaps the most revealing example of the conference’s underlying modernist methodology. The article quotes Johnson: “Gödel thought — he was a man of faith, a man of religious belief — that, in a way, God created an abstract realm to go with the material physical realm, where he was just opening doors for us to explore more and more deeply into his truth and his presence.”
This is natural theology masquerading as Catholic doctrine. The idea that mathematical truths constitute an “abstract realm” created by God, which we explore to find “his truth and his presence,” is a form of the very rationalism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 4): “All the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason; hence reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at the knowledge of all truths of every kind.”
The Catholic position is that we know God through divine revelation, received through faith and illuminated by the teaching authority of the Church — not through mathematical exploration. While it is true that the order and beauty of creation reflect the wisdom of God, and that mathematics can lead to a natural knowledge of the Creator, this is a far cry from claiming that Gödel’s theorem reveals “God’s truth and presence.” Such claims belong to the tradition of liberal Protestantism and modernist Catholicism, not to the integral Catholic faith.
The Conciliar Context: Mundelein Seminary and the Society of Catholic Scientists
The article’s setting — Mundelein Seminary — is itself significant. Mundelein is a conciliar seminary, part of the Archdiocese of Chicago, which has been under the governance of the conciliar sect since the death of Cardinal Meyer in 1965. The fact that the Society of Catholic Scientists chose this venue, and that the article presents it without any critical commentary, reveals the fundamental alignment of this organization with the post-conciliar establishment.
The Society of Catholic Scientists, despite its name, is not a Catholic organization in the true sense of the term. It operates within the framework of the conciar sect, accepts the legitimacy of the post-conciliar “popes,” and promotes the very “unity of faith and science” narrative that is a hallmark of modernism. Its members may be individually sincere Catholics, but the organization itself serves to legitimize the conciliar revolution by presenting it as compatible with serious intellectual work.
The article’s description of the conference as “joyful,” “refreshing,” and “genuinely interdisciplinary” — with participants praising it as “an incredible experience every year, gathering with highly qualified scientists who are also believers” — reveals the emotional and social dynamics of the conciliar sect. The emphasis on “joy,” “community,” and “shared understanding” is characteristic of the post-conciliar emphasis on experience over doctrine, feelings over truth, and community over authority.
The Omission of the Supernatural: The Gravest Silence
What is most conspicuously absent from this article — and from the conference it describes — is any mention of the supernatural order as the primary reality. There is no discussion of the state of grace, the necessity of the sacraments, the reality of sin and its eternal consequences, the authority of the true Church, or the duty of submission to the Magisterium. The “faith” that these scientists profess is a naturalistic faith — a faith in the compatibility of Catholic culture with modern science, not a faith in the supernatural truths revealed by God and preserved by His Church.
Pope St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907), identified the fundamental error of modernism as the denial of the supernatural: “The supernatural is not merely unknown, but impossible… The modernist theologian… makes of religion a mere sentiment, a mere experience, a mere vital immanence.” The Society of Catholic Scientists, by reducing the faith-science dialogue to a question of intellectual compatibility and personal experience, falls precisely into this modernist trap.
The article’s silence about the true state of the Church — the apostasy of the conciliar structures, the invalidity of the post-conciliar “Mass,” the loss of faith among the baptized — is not merely an omission; it is a deliberate concealment. These scientists may be “highly qualified” in their respective fields, but if they do not recognize the abomination of desolation that has taken possession of the Vatican and the conciliar structures worldwide, their “faith” is a faith without object — a sentiment, not a virtue.
Conclusion: The Illusion of Catholic Science in the Church of the New Advent
The Society of Catholic Scientists conference, as presented in this article, is a microcosm of the post-conciliar apostasy. It promotes a vision of Catholicism that is compatible with modern science, modern philosophy, and modern culture — but only by abandoning the supernatural claims of the faith. It invokes saints and theologians who have been co-opted by the modernist project. It reduces metaphysical questions to biological mechanisms. It baptizes secular philosophical frameworks as Catholic thought. And it does all of this while maintaining a veneer of orthodoxy that deceives the unwary.
The true Catholic position is not that faith and science are “reconciled” through dialogue, but that all truth is God’s truth, and the Church, as the divinely appointed guardian of revelation, has the authority to judge all human knowledge in light of divine truth. The Society of Catholic Scientists, by placing faith and science on equal footing and seeking their “unity,” implicitly denies the supremacy of divine revelation and the authority of the Magisterium. It is, in the words of Pope Pius IX, an attempt to “reconcile” the Church “with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — an attempt that has been condemned as heresy.
Let the faithful beware of such gatherings, however “joyful” and “refreshing” they may appear. The path to truth does not lie in the reconciliation of faith with the spirit of the age, but in the uncompromising profession of the integral Catholic faith — the faith of the Apostles, the faith of the martyrs, the faith that has been handed down unchanged from the beginning and will endure until the end of time.
Source:
Catholic Scientists Meet to Discuss Identical Twins, AI, and the Unity of Truth (ncregister.com)
Date: 10.06.2026