Catholics and Aliens (2015)

The Halo Halo! Column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

A question in the Guardian G2’s ‘Notes and Queries’ column (where Guardian readers respond to each other’s queries on anything that happens to be puzzling them) recently asked ‘If  there is intelligent life out there, what are the chances that it might believe in God?’

Following the recent news that exoplanet Kepler 452b appears to be remarkably Earth-like, the Vatican appears to have the answer. The Pope, it seems, is way ahead of the rest of us on this and has been prepared for the possibility for some time. In addition to the squad of exorcists the Vatican keeps on the payroll to deal with earth-bound satanic beings, they apparently also have their own astronomers to keep an eye out for aliens who presumably, if not already Catholics, could be converted.

‘If there was intelligent life (on another planet) I don’t see that as a contradiction with the Christian faith’, said one Vatican astronomer. ‘If God created aliens somewhere out there, then the Vatican is in no position to say Jesus wasn’t for them too’. (Independent 2 August). And another, back in 2010, informed us that ‘aliens who seek baptism should receive it from the church, because any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.’

And according to another 2008 Independent article, Fr Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican priest in charge of the stargazing department announced that ‘Alien life would be part of God’s creation’ and aliens would be ‘our brothers’. So in partial answer the Guardian’squestion of whether they are believers, any aliens planning to visit us can rest assured that they are already being eyed up for baptism into the Catholic Church. No doubt a few can be recruited into the priesthood too. They’ll fit in well.

How the aliens will react to this news though, if it turns out they are already devout Martian Mormons, Moonies or Moslems for example, Saturnalian Salvationists or Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses from Jupiter we’ll have to wait to find out.

To clarify the situation then, let’s visit www.ufointernationalproject.com/latest-news/5th-june-2015. They sound as if they’ve got their finger on the pulse of the latest alien/ufo facts.

‘The Catholic church has been pondering over whether there indeed is a far more technologically and intellectually advanced sentient species elsewhere in the galaxy’. They tell us, ‘Pope Francis, apparently, believes so and according to rumour he will not only announce his intentions to prepare the human race for ET contact, BUT he will (according to many rumours) denounce the international corporate capitalist system, that is currently contaminating the planet with toxic consciousness and greed and making us all slaves to the dollar’.

Well, that sounds interesting. These ‘far more technologically and intellectually advanced’ aliens probably won’t need any lessons from the Pope about capitalism, but once their conversion to Catholicism starts, what will they make of the bible account of creation? Fr Funes, the chief stargazer, doesn’t think that will be a problem though. ‘The bible should not be held to account for its lack of scientific accuracy’. He says.

They’re obviously counting on the aliens being as gullible as they think the rest of us are.

NW