EWTN News portal reports that over 130 scientists gathered at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago for the ninth annual Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS) conference, held June 5–7, 2026. The event featured presentations on topics ranging from 17th-century anatomist-turned-bishop St. Nicolas Steno, the “twin problem” in bioethics, artificial intelligence’s place in Aristotle’s “Great Chain of Being,” and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as evidence of God’s infinite truth. Ignasi Rosell, a particle physicist, invoked the vision of John Henry Newman to defend “the unity of knowledge,” while attendees praised the conference as “joyful,” “refreshing,” and “genuinely interdisciplinary.” The article also notes that Pope Leo XIV recently warned that the “main threat common to religion and science is denial of objective truth.” What the article never questions—and what reveals the entire conciliar project’s bankruptcy—is whether this so-called “Society of Catholic Scientists” operates within the framework of the true Catholic faith or merely baptizes the modernist myth that unaided human reason, autonomous science, and the “unity of knowledge” can be harmonized with supernatural revelation without the absolute primacy of the Magisterium, the subordination of all sciences to theology, and the recognition that the post-conciliar structures themselves are the very engine of the rationalism and naturalism condemned by every Pope from Pius IX to Pius XII.
The Myth of “Faith and Science” as Equals: A Condemned Modernist Premise
The foundational premise of the Society of Catholic Scientists—that faith and science are two distinct but complementary domains whose “false characterization as opposed” must be corrected—is itself a heresy condemned in the most unequivocal terms by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. The article states that the SCS “exists to correct the false characterization of faith and science as opposed,” and Ignasi Rosell explicitly invoked John Henry Newman’s vision that “truth is one” and that “the university remains the privileged place where that unity is sought.” This language is not Catholic; it is pure Modernism, the very error that St. Pius X identified as “the synthesis of all errors” in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907).
The Catholic position, defined by the First Vatican Council and reiterated by every subsequent Pope before the conciliar revolution, is not that faith and science are “complementary” equals, but that all human knowledge is radically subordinate to divine revelation, and philosophy itself is the ancilla theologiae (handmaid of theology). The First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius teaches that not only can faith and reason never contradict each other, but that philosophy and the sciences must never arrogate to themselves the right to judge revelation. The Council explicitly condemns the proposition that “the method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of our times” (Proposition 13 of Lamentabili sane exitu)—precisely the attitude that pervades this conference, where Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics is invoked not as the sole philosophical framework for understanding reality, but as one tool among many to be “pulled from” alongside “newest research in molecular developmental biology.”
The very notion that the “university” is the “privileged place” where the “unity of knowledge” is sought is a Newmanite fantasy that the pre-conciliar Church would have recognized as dangerous rationalism. The true “privileged place” where truth is sought and taught is the Church herself—the Ecclesia docens guided by the Holy Ghost—not the secular university, which since the Middle Ages has been the breeding ground of every heresy from Averroism to Modernism. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors condemns the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57 of Lamentabili)—but it equally condemns the proposition that “philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation” (Proposition 14). The SCS, by framing the relationship as one of “unity” between autonomous domains, implicitly denies the subordination of all human knowledge to the supernatural order, which is the essence of the modernist error.
John Henry Newman: The Patron Saint of Conciliar Apostasy
The invocation of John Henry Newman by Ignasi Rosell is not incidental; it is a theological declaration of allegiance. Newman, “canonized” by the antipope Francis, is the intellectual godfather of the entire conciliar revolution. His Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine provided the theoretical framework for the “evolution of dogma” that the conciar sect has used to justify every innovation from religious liberty to ecumenism. St. Pius X’s Lamentabili sane exitu explicitly condemns the proposition that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58)—the very essence of Newman’s theory of doctrinal development.
Newman’s vision of the university, far from being a Catholic ideal, is a liberal Protestant fantasy in which theology becomes merely one department among many, stripped of its claim to absolute authority. The Catholic understanding, articulated by Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri (1929), is that education is primarily a work of the Church and the family, not the state or the secular university, and that the purpose of all education is to prepare man for his supernatural end—the beatific vision. The university Newman envisioned, where “truth is one” and all disciplines converge in a spirit of free inquiry, is precisely the kind of indifferentist institution that the Church has always condemned. As Pius IX taught in the Syllabus, Proposition 79: “It is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.”
Moreover, Newman’s personal history—his conversion from Anglicanism, his lifelong ambiguity about papal infallibility, his request to be buried in the same grave as his “friend” Father Ambrose St. John—makes him a profoundly unsuitable figure for any Catholic society to invoke as an authority. That the SCS does so without any critical examination of his theology reveals the depth of the conciliar infiltration of Catholic intellectual life.
The “Twin Problem”: When Biology Replaces Metaphysics
Maureen Condic’s presentation on the “twin problem” illustrates the fundamental error of attempting to resolve theological and philosophical questions through empirical science alone. The article reports that Condic “pulled from the newest research in molecular developmental biology and the ancient wisdom of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics” to argue that “the splitting of an embryo to become identical twins is an act of biological regeneration, comparable to asexual reproduction,” and therefore “not the division of one human person but the spawning of a second individual from a first.”
This is a remarkable example of the tail wagging the dog. The question of when the rational soul is infused into the body is not a question that molecular developmental biology can answer; it is a metaphysical question that requires the authority of the Magisterium and the principles of sound philosophy. The Catholic tradition, following Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, holds that the rational soul is created by God and infused at the moment of conception—or, on some interpretations, when the body is sufficiently organized to receive it. The phenomenon of twinning does not pose a genuine “moral dilemma” for Catholic theology; it poses a question about the timing of ensoulment that can only be answered by philosophical reasoning guided by faith, not by “newest research” in biology.
The very framing of the issue as a “problem” that requires a “solution” from contemporary science reveals the naturalistic bias of the SCS. The Catholic approach is not to adjust our understanding of the soul to fit the latest biological data, but to interpret biological data within the framework of an immutable metaphysical anthropology. As St. Pius X taught in Lamentabili, Proposition 3: “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”—a proposition that the SCS, by its very methodology, implicitly endorses.
Artificial Intelligence and the “Great Chain of Being”: Baptizing the Transhumanist Project
The article reports that two talks addressed artificial intelligence, including one that attempted “to place machine intelligence on Aristotle’s ‘Great Chain of Being’ that classified all living and nonliving things into a hierarchical scale based on the complexity of their souls.” This is a breathtaking example of the conciar tendency to baptize secular ideologies with Catholic terminology while stripping them of their theological content.
Aristotle’s Scala Naturae, as received and interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas, is a metaphysical hierarchy of being that culminates in God and descends through angels, human beings (composed of body and rational soul), animals, plants, and inanimate matter. To suggest that “machine intelligence” can be placed on this hierarchy is to fundamentally misunderstand—or deliberately distort—the Catholic doctrine of the soul. A machine, no matter how complex, does not possess a rational soul; it does not have the capacity for intellect and will; it is not made in the image and likeness of God. To place AI on the “Great Chain of Being” is to implicitly deny the unique dignity of the human person as the only creature in the material world endowed with a rational soul—a dignity that the conciliar sect has systematically undermined through its embrace of religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
This is not a peripheral issue. The transhumanist project—the attempt to merge human beings with machines, to create artificial “intelligence,” to blur the line between the human and the non-human—is one of the most dangerous manifestations of the modernist apostasy. It is the logical consequence of the denial of the supernatural order and the reduction of the human person to a purely material being. That the SCS addresses this topic not with the prophetic denunciation it deserves, but with a detached academic exercise in “placing” AI on a metaphysical hierarchy, reveals the spiritual bankruptcy of the entire enterprise.
Gödel’s Theorem and the Baptism of Mathematics
Gregory F. Johnson’s presentation on Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem—that “mathematics has sort of infinite realms where we’re being asked to explore more and more deeply”—and his claim that “Gödel thought… that, in a way, God created an abstract realm to go with the material physical realm” is a perfect example of the conciar method of using science and mathematics as a springboard for vague theistic sentiment rather than rigorous theological argument.
Gödel’s theorem is a mathematical result about the limitations of formal axiomatic systems. To leap from this to the conclusion that “God created an abstract realm” is not theology; it is natural theology of the most superficial kind—the kind that the First Vatican Council condemned when it taught that while God’s existence can be known by the natural light of reason, the mysteries of faith (the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption) can only be known through divine revelation. The Catholic approach to mathematics is not to use it as evidence for God’s existence in some vague, deistic sense, but to recognize that the order and beauty of creation reflect the divine wisdom—a truth that requires no mathematical theorem to establish and that no mathematical theorem can prove.
The article’s claim that “religious faith brings new understanding to every field of scientific inquiry” is, in this context, a euphemism for the subordination of faith to science—the very error that the pre-conciliar Magisterium consistently condemned. Faith does not “bring new understanding” to science by providing vague inspiration or a sense of wonder; it brings understanding by providing the correct metaphysical framework within which all scientific data must be interpreted. Without this framework, science becomes rationalism—the “absolute rationalism” condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus, Proposition 1: “There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe, and God is identical with the nature of things.”
The “Joyful” Atmosphere: A Symptom of Spiritual Blindness
The article quotes attendees describing the conference as “joyful,” “refreshing,” and “genuinely interdisciplinary.” Alexander Webber said: “It’s just a joyful sharing of the intersection of faith and science… Nobody here is really putting on any pretenses.” Robert Scherrer said: “It reminds me of when I was a kid and was interested in science. I didn’t just do physics; I was interested in all science. It feels like a chance to get back to that.”
This language of “joy,” “refreshing” experiences, and childlike wonder is the characteristic vocabulary of the conciar sect, which has replaced the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity with the naturalistic substitutes of community, experience, and personal fulfillment. The true Catholic scientist does not seek “joy” in the “intersection of faith and science”; he seeks truth—the truth that is God Himself—and he submits his intellect unconditionally to the teaching authority of the Church. The “joy” described by these attendees is not the joy of the Holy Ghost; it is the natural satisfaction of intellectual curiosity, baptized with Catholic terminology but devoid of supernatural content.
The article’s description of the conference as “unlike other conferences” where “nobody is really putting on any pretenses” is particularly revealing. In the true Church, there is no need for “pretenses” because there is objective truth, taught infallibly by the Magisterium, to which all must submit. In the conciar sect, where truth is replaced by “dialogue” and “interdisciplinary conversation,” the absence of “pretenses” is simply the absence of conviction—the hallmark of the modernist who, as St. Pius X taught, “is always seeking and never arrives at truth” (Pascendi Dominici gregis).
Mundelein Seminary: The Abomination of Desolation in a House of Formation
The fact that this conference was held at Mundelein Seminary—a major seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago, operated by the conciliar structures—is itself a damning indictment of the state of Catholic formation in the post-conciliar world. Mundelein Seminary, like virtually all conciar seminaries, is a factory for the production of modernist “priests” who are trained not in the scholastic theology of St. Thomas Aquinas but in the historical-critical method, the hermeneutics of continuity, and the “spirit of Vatican II” that has destroyed the faith of millions.
The article does not mention—because it cannot mention without exposing the fraud—that the “Catholic University of America,” where Maureen Condic teaches, is a conciar institution that has been a hotbed of dissent from Catholic teaching for decades. Nor does it mention that the “Science & Religion Initiative of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame” is a conciar project that uses the language of “faith and science” to promote the very modernist agenda that the pre-conciliar Church condemned. The “Faith, Science, and Reason” high school textbook written by Chris Baglow is not a Catholic textbook; it is a conciar textbook that baptizes the myth of the autonomy of science with Catholic terminology.
Pope Leo XIV and the “Denial of Objective Truth”
The article’s closing reference to “Pope” Leo XIV’s warning that the “main threat common to religion and science is denial of objective truth” is a masterclass in conciar doublespeak. The denial of objective truth is indeed a grave error—but the conciar sect, which Leo XIV embodies and leads, is itself the primary engine of that denial in the modern world. It was the conciar “Council” that introduced the “Declaration on Religious Freedom” (Dignitatis Humanae), which implicitly denies the Church’s teaching that the Catholic religion is the only true religion and that the state has a duty to profess and protect it. It was the conciar sect that embraced the “evolution of dogma” that St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili, Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.”
The “Pope” who warns against the “denial of objective truth” while occupying the See of Peter as a usurper—who was elected by a conclave of cardinals appointed by antipopes, under rules established by antipopes, in a process whose validity is at best doubtful—is in no position to speak about objective truth. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches in De Romano Pontifice, a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope by that very fact, since “a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member; now, he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian.” The conciar “popes” from John XXIII onward have taught and approved doctrines that are manifestly heretical—religious liberty, ecumenism, the evolution of dogma—and have therefore forfeited any claim to the Chair of Peter.
The Society of Catholic Scientists: A Conciliar Front Organization
The Society of Catholic Scientists, far from being a genuine Catholic organization, is a front for the conciar agenda of baptizing the autonomy of science and the “unity of knowledge” with Catholic terminology. Its very existence is premised on the modernist myth that faith and science are two separate domains that need to be “reconciled”—a myth that the pre-conciliar Church consistently rejected. The Catholic position is not that faith and science need to be “reconciled,” but that all human knowledge must be subordinated to divine revelation and the teaching authority of the Church.
The SCS’s international expansion—with a “Spain chapter” that is “the second-largest chapter after the U.S.”—mirrors the conciar sect’s globalist ambitions. Just as the conciar “Church” has replaced the universal Catholic Church, so the SCS seeks to replace the genuine Catholic intellectual tradition with a modernist counterfeit that uses the language of faith to promote the autonomy of human reason.
The true Catholic scientist does not need a “Society of Catholic Scientists” to tell him that faith and science are compatible; he knows this because he submits his intellect to the teaching of the Church and recognizes that all truth is God’s truth. What he needs is the restoration of the true Mass, the true sacraments, and the true Magisterium—all of which have been destroyed by the conciar revolution that the SCS, by its very existence, legitimizes and perpetuates.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of Conciliar “Catholicism”
The Society of Catholic Scientists conference at Mundelein Seminary is a microcosm of the entire conciar project: it uses the language of Catholic faith to promote the autonomy of human reason, the “unity of knowledge,” and the “compatibility” of faith and science—all of which are modernist errors condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. It invokes John Henry Newman, the intellectual godfather of the conciliar revolution, as an authority. It addresses artificial intelligence and transhumanism not with prophetic denunciation but with detached academic analysis. It produces “joyful” experiences and “refreshing” conversations that substitute natural satisfaction for supernatural virtue. And it does all of this under the auspices of conciar institutions—Mundelein Seminary, the Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame—that are themselves the products of the apostasy they serve.
The true Catholic response to the “faith and science” question is not to organize conferences and write textbooks that baptize the autonomy of science with Catholic terminology. It is to restore the integral Catholic faith—the faith of the Fathers, the Councils, and the Popes before 1958—in which all human knowledge is subordinated to divine revelation, in which philosophy is the handmaid of theology, in which the Church alone has the authority to teach, govern, and sanctify, and in which the scientist, like every other Catholic, submits his intellect unconditionally to the teaching of Christ’s Church. Until that restoration comes, organizations like the Society of Catholic Scientists will continue to serve not the cause of Christ the King, but the cause of the conciar Antichrist—the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” (Matt. 24:15).
Source:
Catholic scientists meet to discuss identical twins, AI, and the unity of truth (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 09.06.2026