ET spiritus sanctus

A highly controversial interview with Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory - the pope's personal skygazers - can be found here.

Quote:
"Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space."

and:

"This is not in contradiction with our faith, because we cannot establish limits to God's creative freedom,"

and:

"Funes even suggested that alien beings might be free of some of the earthly burdens that drag down we poor benighted humans. Not gravity, carnal pleasures or mortgages, of course, but good old original sin. 'In that way, assuming that there would be other intelligent beings, we could not say that they need redemption. They could have remained in full friendship with the Creator.'"

Now let's give some thought about the huge black gaping hole this creates in christian ideology:

God has always existed (father, son and holy spirit). The angels were created first and afterwards some of those beings fell and became what is considered the Devil and its brood. So far so good. Next God decided on crafting creation in 6 days, ending with us humans. Humanity was limited to two happy creatures living in paradise, created for the greater glory of God. In short: We were special. We were God's chosen and most beloved creatures. Now the Devil moved in, kind of corrupted us and thus spoiling God's work. All well and good, we are booted out of paradise and punished as eternal sinners against God and made to work the land, bear babies, fight wars, build cities, sweat, suffer, die and everything. Before Christ, sorry and all, but after death you're going to hell for being a sinner, period. However, God takes pity on poor humanity and eventually His idea, His word, His power becomes flesh, is born as His son from a virgin, preaches, suffers and dies so that the orginal sin can be forgiven -christology in a nutshell-. Thus we have been given a chance to be redeemed and find salvation after death. Woot! thanks a bunch.
Main theme of the story: we are here because we are special, we are God's chosen creatures, most beloved, created in His image. We are here so we can be saved etc. etc.

Oh, and for the record. This is stuff I love to study, but euhm, to me these are really just very powerful mythical stories ;)

Now in comes Funes saying: yeah sure we are all that and stuff but ya know, God was doing some freelance projects besides us. And they were a tiny bit more succesful, no satanic corruption and all, so actually, sure we are special. An especially big burden to be precise. Because these others *they* are perfect. They are actually on the level of angels, they have not fallen into sin, they *tadadum* ... are theologically superior to us (talking about low self-esteem).

So what are we? Are we still anything special? Or are we kind of God's failing project? The bottom of the barrel, as some might call it.
Nice, thought huh?

So... in the end, when we drill down along this catholicism-in-a-nutshell,
the actual question is: when will the big leash Funes is wearing be reigned in? Either by the Pope in person or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Neither will be pleasant and good for your career. But there is just no way that this will become, so to speak, gospeltruth.