By St. Nikolai Velimirovich
By its interference, religion can inspire science, and again science by its interference can purify religion. The most beautiful spectacle in human society is a priest contributing to science and a scientist contributing to religion. The one-sided man is always an imperfect man; and an imperfect man as a teacher of perfection is a dangerous teacher for young generations.
Two Slavs, Nicolaus Copernicus, from Thorn, and Ruggiero Boscovich, from Ragusa, both Roman Catholic priests, were at the same time both ardent scientists. Copernicus postulated the heliocentric planetary system instead of the geocentric. This happened soon after Columbus made a great revolution in geographical science by discovering America. Some people thought the end of the Church had come after Copernicus' discovery that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the world. But Copernicus not only did not think so, but continued quietly in his vocation as a priest and dedicated his famous work to Pope Paul III.
Ruggiero Boscovich was not such a great discoverer as Copernicus; still he was one of the most distinguished scientific and philosophic minds in the eighteenth century. In his "Theoria philosophiæ naturalis," he tried to prove that bodies are composed not of a continuous material substance but rather of innumerable point-like structures or particles which are without any extension or divisibility. These elements are endowed with a repulsive force which can, under special circumstances (of distance), become attractive. Boscovich's philosophical system can be called a dynamistic atomismus.
Men with much smaller scientific successes sometimes consider it their duty to separate themselves from the Christian Church. But great men like Copernicus and Boscovich possessed in a high degree the noble catholicity which should always exist between religion and science. For every great revolution in science meant also a great revolution in religion. A scientific revolution could never shake the realities of religion, but only the illusions of religion.
From THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT OF THE SLAVS.
