Technology in Church History

(photo: Jan Matejko, “Copernicus” (1872))

A common and widely circulated slur against the Catholic Church is that it is against progress. The first example offered as proof would typically be the appallingly misunderstood Galileo affair.[1] In addition to labeling the Church as retrograde in its relationship to scientific progress, there are many who would also make the same accusation about the Church and modern technology, especially human reproductive technology. Does the Church’s historical track record with technology bear this out? Or would a closer examination of Church history demonstrate that the Church is no more against technological progress than it is against heliocentrism?

Technology can be generally defined as the “branch of knowledge which deals with the various industrial arts.”[2] In this broad sense, any creative art, industry, or work can be included as an application of technological science. Therefore, God’s creation of the world itself could be called a supernatural technological feat, and from the beginning man was instructed to imitate this divine industry by tending the Garden of Paradise in his original state of innocence (Gen 2:15). Considering that the founder of the Catholic Church himself was a carpenter for most of his life on earth, it would be absurd indeed if his Church was anti-technology!

Much could be said of the technological innovations of the monasteries and scholastic clergy of the Middle Ages, but for our purposes we will only briefly consider several examples from the period of the Renaissance to the Modern Age. For example, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686) was a priest who laid down the principles of modern geology and is called the father of stratigraphy; he was also highly skilled at animal dissection, and one of his famous discoveries resulted from his work on a 2,800 lb. shark.[3] He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1988. The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) also produced numerous contributions to technology throughout the Renaissance, including the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, and flood control measures for the Po and Adige rivers.[4]

During the Enlightenment period, there were serious concerns about the structural integrity of the dome in St. Peter’s Basilica, with multiple cracks having become visible. Pope Benedict XIV summoned Father Roger Boscovich (1711-1787) to apply his technical expertise to the problem, who proceeded to design an ingenious system of five iron rings to circle the cupola. Father Boscovich’s report on the project has been praised as a classic in architectural statics.[5] Several other notable examples of Catholic contributions during this period were Andre-Marie Ampere (1775–1836), pioneer of electrodynamics; Abbot Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), the father of genetics; and Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), the father of microbiology.

Although there have also been major contributions to science and technology by Catholics during the Modern Era, such as Father Georges Lemaitre (1894–1966) of Big Bang theory fame, it is during this period that the Church became sharply critical of an ever-increasing number of technologies. Similar to its opposition to the crossbow in the 12th century, the Church vocally condemned the use of chemical and atomic weapons during the 20th century, as well as the practice of eugenics and the inhumane treatment of asylum patients in the name of “science.” But even more controversially, the Church has also forbidden contraceptive pills and devices, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, and euthanasia. If Catholics have been such a driving force in technological progress through history, and with the Church’s blessing, why stop here? Are these reproductive and end-of-life technologies not improving peoples’ lives and eliminating suffering?

The Church does not believe in progress for the sake of progress; the criteria for true progress must be clearly established by sound principles. The steps you walk to care for your sick mother are a desirable progression; those same steps taken over the edge of a cliff are not. The first journey keeps your mother out of the grave, the second puts you in one. Technological progress must respect and support human life and creation as God intended it, otherwise it becomes twisted and destructive. But even if one does not agree with the Catholic position on this subject, it would fly in the face of the historical evidence to suggest that the Church is against the progress of technology, as Brian Green convincingly argues:

While the condemnations of weapons and technologies of reproductive control stand out to the modern mind, they also stand out in the history of the relationship between the Catholic Church and technology not because they are the rule, but because they are the exception. The overall history of the Church has been one of collecting (both spatially and temporally), preserving, promoting, producing, and consuming technologies. Very few technologies have been singled out for rejection; the vast majority of technologies, those deemed beneficial and life-affirming, have been enthusiastically accepted.[6]

When the history of the Catholic Church is carefully examined, the impression that it is one of the world’s leading institutions supporting technology’s rapid advancement is inescapable. This precedent indicates it will likely be the same in the future. But will the increasingly antireligious secular world heed her warnings against the increasingly destructive trajectory of certain modern technologies? With more power over human life and death than ever before, and levels of industrial production that could catastrophically strain our planet to the breaking point, will society pause to look for a moral compass? Scholars such as Alan Padgett provide us with somber warnings: “Whether in energy riots or anti-robot revolution, biotechnic warfare or worldwide pollution, or some terrible disaster we cannot now envisage, a totally techno-secular world will eventually destroy itself.”[7] One thing we can do as Catholics is defend the Church’s history as a champion of authentic human progress, providing cohesive arguments and solid evidence that the Christian religion is not a hindrance to technology, quite the contrary. It is our lost world’s last hope.

[1] For a thorough treatment of this controversial subject: Thomas E. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2012), 67-74.

[2] Noah Webster, Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language (New York, World Publishing Co., 1943), 1754.

[3] Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, 96.

[4] Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits: Mission, Myths and Histories (London: HarperCollins, 2004), 189.

[5] Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, 106.

[6] Brian Patrick Green, “The Catholic Church and Technological Progress: Past, Present, and Future,” Religions vol. 8, no. 6 (2017), 6.

[7] Alan Gregory Padgett, “God versus Technology? Science, Secularity, and the Theology of Technology,” Zygon vol. 40, no. 3 (2005), 582.