E.T. Meets Jesus

The top Vatican astronomer says that it’s okay to believe in extraterrestrials, that it’s not contrary to the faith and that we should consider them as our brothers.

Jesuit Father Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, said Christians should consider alien life as an “extraterrestrial brother” and a part of God’s creation.

But wait, it gets better. He says they may not need redemption.

If aliens exist, they may be a different life form that does not need Christ’s redemption, the Vatican’s chief astronomer said.

Asked about implications that the discovery of alien life might pose for Christian redemption, Father Funes cited the Gospel parable of the shepherd who left his flock of 99 sheep in order to search for the one that was lost.

“We who belong to the human race could really be that lost sheep, the sinners who need a pastor,” he said.

“God became man in Jesus in order to save us. So if there are also other intelligent beings, it’s not a given that they need redemption. They might have remained in full friendship with their creator,” he said.

Father Funes went on to say that Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice was a unique and unrepeatable event. But he said he was sure that, if needed, God’s mercy would be offered to aliens, as it was to humans.

That last sentence made my imagination take off like a, well like a rocket.
(cue wiggly “imagination” dissolve)

2012: An alien interstellar spacecraft, not resembling a flying saucer at all but more like an enormous sea urchin on LSD lands in Bellflower, California. Why? Who knows? They’re aliens. Three bizarre machines disembark, each carrying a creature floating in a clear tank of multicolored liquid. The closest thing they resemble is a chambered nautilus but a hundred times weirder. Having monitored our broadcasts for the last 50 light years of their approach to us, they have some ability to translate our language, but it is not very accurate. We are as strange to them as they are to us. People are afraid at first, but after a while they begin to crowd around the creatures in their machine-suits. There seems to be something peaceful and wise about their appearance and their floating, almost dance-like movements. Some people attempt to communicate and the aliens seem to respond at least by turning toward those who are speaking. Understanding is creeping its fragile, tentative way forward when suddenly Ray Comfort breaks through the crowd, introduces himself with a tone of great importance and confronts them with his spiel about sin, salvation and hell fire. (He doesn’t have a banana. Just as well; they have tentacles, not hands.) The aliens’ translation technology struggles to put Ray’s babbling into terms they can comprehend. His name comes out something like “Starlight Pleasure.” With the exception of nouns and a few verbs, most of our words are still incomprehensible to them. When the translation gets to the part about burning in hell the aliens respond to the concept with horror beyond their experience and take it as an immediate threat. Their liquid atmospheres swirl into darker colors. All three turn toward Ray. Black metallic appendages with flat cones come out of the machines and point toward him. The rest of the crowd begins to quietly back away from Ray. The peaceful and wise feeling is gone. Suddenly a staccato blast of extremely loud, extremely low frequency sound pulses turns Ray’s internal organs into mush. He crumples to the ground. The aliens back away from his scrambled body, board their ship and lift off into space. On their way out they mine the solar system with devices that will destroy any of our attempts to go into space beyond orbiting our own planet. They leave this part of the galaxy forever.

Let’s hope any E.T.’s who ever come here are atheists. Imagine them trying to forcibly convert the savages of Earth to their True Faith.