Do Space Aliens have Souls?

A really interesting (but short) news entry at the Catholic News Service:

Do space aliens have souls? Inquiring minds can check Jesuit's book
Galaxy-gazing scientists surely wonder about what kind of impact finding life or intelligent beings on another planet would have on the world.

But what sort of effect would it have on Catholic beliefs? Would Christian theology be rocked to the core if science someday found a distant orb teeming with little green men, women or other intelligent forms of alien life? Would the church send missionaries to spread the Gospel to aliens? Could aliens even be baptized? Or would they have had their own version of Jesus and have already experienced his universal or galactic plan of salvation?

Curious Catholics need not be space buffs to want answers to these questions and others when they pick up a 48-page booklet by a Vatican astronomer.

Through the British-based Catholic Truth Society, U.S. Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno has penned his response to what he says are questions he gets from the public "all the time" when he gives talks on his work with the Vatican Observatory.

Two wonderful breaths of fresh air:

"The Bible is divine science, a work about God. It does not intend to be physical science" and explain the making of planets and solar systems, the Jesuit astronomer wrote.

And:

"There is nothing in Holy Scripture that could confirm or contradict the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe," he wrote.

Brother Consolmagno said that, like scientists, people of faith should not be afraid of saying "I just don't know."

Human understanding "is always incomplete. It is crazy to underestimate God's ability to create in depths of ways that we will never completely understand. It is equally dangerous to think that we understand God completely," he said in his booklet.

I would love to have a glass of wine with Br. Consolmagno and ask him what he thinks about "Intelligent Design"; if only to add some depth to my Latin vocabulary. (grin)