"In vain would one expect an answer from natural science, which indeed loyally declares that it is faced with an insoluble enigma. It is very true that one would demand too much from natural science as such; but it I salso certain that more deeply penetrates the problem the human spirit poured into philosophical meditation." The problem of the radical origin of the universe, then, is a philosophical problem, not a scientific one. The discourse now proceeds with a passage that is of close interest to us. The Pope argues that a personal subject, a mind enriched today by scientific knowledge, would judge compatible with the present view of the cosmos the idea of a creation of the universe from nothing, by a Creator God. The subject of this recognition - it is worth emphasizing - is not science or the scientific method, but man enriched by scientific knowledge, together with his philosophical and existential reflection. Here are the words of Pius XII: "A mind enlightened and enriched by modern scientific knowledge, which serenely evaluates this problem, is led to break the circle of an entirely independent and autochthonous matter, either because it is uncreated, or because it is self-created, and to trace it back to a Creator Spirit. With the same clear and critical gaze with which it examines and judges facts, it glimpses and recognizes therein the work of creative omnipotence, whose virtue, stirred by the powerful “fiat” uttered billions of years ago by the Creator Spirit, unfolded in the universe, calling into existence with a generous gesture of love matter exuberant with energy. It really seems that today's science, suddenly going back millions of centuries, has succeeded in witnessing that primordial “Fiat lux,” when out of nothingness burst with matter a sea of light and radiation, as the particles of the chemical elements split off and came together in millions of galaxies."
January 1, 1970