Friday of the
Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
(Genesis 3:1-8; Mark 7:31-37)
In its Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,
Vatican II expresses ambivalence on the autonomy of the sciences and, indeed,
on other areas of secular knowledge. On
one hand, it recognizes that they follow their own rules which humans should strive
to understand and utilize. On the other,
the council declares that they, like religious knowledge, are derived from God
and should be pursued with attention to God’s universal laws. Today’s first reading is an example of the
human quest for knowledge without due consideration of God.
In the reading the tempter tells the woman to ignore what
God has said about eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It says that the woman would not die after
eating its fruit and that, indeed, she will possess knowledge equivalent to God’s.
Deceived by these empty promises, the
woman and then the man disobey the divine imperative not to eat from the
tree. The result, of course, is
disastrous for them and their descendants.
By not attending to God’s commands scientists jeopardize
the future of humanity. For example, pursuing
research in areas which are forbidden like human cloning, they present humans
as mechanisms to be manipulated and not as mysteries to be revered. The result of this folly may be the wholesale
destruction of at least part of the species.
