Mount Angel Seminary

The project at Mount Angel Abbey and Seminary, “Science & Faith: Two Wings of the Human Spirit,” engaged in dialogues on Big Bang cosmology, biological evolution, scientific anthropology, biotechnology, and public health.

The seminary hosted the symposium, “Science & Faith in a Brave New World,” which brought to campus discussions across forefront scientific research and areas of high community concern related to medicine, health, and human identity.

Project lead Br. Louis de Montfort Nguyen offered the core course, Science & Theology of Creation: toward an Integral and Contemplative Understanding of Creation, for the first time. This curriculum, offered to seminarians in their third year, examines the historical relationship between Christianity and science, introducing students to scientific development, frameworks and theories, and helping students to contextualize scientific and Biblical accounts of the cosmological context for human life.  Four other faculty took up the call to introduce scientific resources and topics, Dr. Shawn Keough in Christ and Trinity I, Br. David Norstedt in Survey of Mathematics, Dr. Justin Coyle in Theological Anthropology, and Dr. Liam De Los Reyes in Medical Ethics and Healthcare Issues.

This project also presented several faculty with the opportunity to attend the annual meeting the Society of Catholic Scientists. Faculty reflected upon the value of fostering a sense of a common goal around the integration of modern sciences and faith, as well as the importance of developing their students’ capacity to understand and assess basic resources to which they could later refer their congregants’ scientific queries. The meeting theme was Earth & Environmental Stewardship and focused on Pope Francis’ teachings on ecological community presented by the papacy in the 2016 enciclical, Laudato Si.

Mt. Angel is a Catholic seminary in Saint Benedict, Oregon.