When someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment of the law was, he replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). So the act of faith, which is the gift of knowing and loving God the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, involves the whole of our human nature, soul and body, including our understanding. Our faith makes sense to our minds. We do not have to deny our human reason or our modern scientific knowledge to believe in God (see Romans 1:19). Indeed, the God whom we know through the Catholic faith is also the Author of the patterns we find in the natural world, and all of God’s words and works are in perfect harmony with each other. There can be no contradictions. The more we discover about the amazing world we live in, the more we come to know about the even more amazing God who created it (see Wisdom 13:3-5).

However, this runs contrary to much popular opinion on the matter. It is commonly assumed, although quite incorrectly, that the act of faith is not a reasonable act, and that science contradicts religion – even that science has disproved the existence of God – and the discoveries of Galileo and Darwin amongst others are often held up as proofs of this.

In this “Knowledge” section we hope to show how the faith revealed through the Catholic Church is in harmony with what we know about the world we live in. There is a deep and beautiful harmony between the truths of revelation and the truths of the natural world.