Most scientists today have ceased to bother about the famous nineteenth-century ‘conflict with religion’. It is over. They do not think that religion has been defeated; more seriously, they think it has become irrelevant to them. And unfortunately the scientists who do believe in Christianity, even those who are Catholic, contribute to this notion. Their religion is best kept at arm’s length, kept for Sundays. Those who write about the matter have found the perfect formula to ensure that no conflict should be possible; they insist that no point of contact can be found. Science and religion are about quite different realms, they say; science deals with the laws that govern the material universe, while religion is about spiritual truths, ultimately about a remote and immaterial God.

Such a picture is thoroughly false and misleading. But it is true that a lot of popular Catholic teaching does contribute to the existence of a general attitude of this kind in the community at large. It is still far too ‘spiritualist’ in outlook; children are still being taught, often enough, that their bodies are not really necessary, that the great moment to hope for is the escape of their souls from imprisonment in matter, from this wicked world of flesh (and, by implication, from all those nasty people) in order to wing away alone to God. No wonder there is a general impression that matter is not quite nice, and in consequence Catholics leaving school still receive nothing like the same encouragement to take up science as they do to take up arts. Or if they have been allowed to go to the science side at school, this is because of the great openings it offers: science is the gateway to influence and power, to be used naturally enough for the Church’s advancement. That scientific work can in itself be a spiritual activity is mentioned much less often.