For 37-year-old Matthew Pinson, joining the Jesuits was the perfect way to combine and retain his two greatest passions in life – his Catholic faith and his love of physics.
Now in his ninth year of formation for the priesthood, Matthew is part of a revival of intellectual Jesuits, following in the footsteps of Jesuit scientists such as Fr Christopher Clavius SJ and Fr Angelo Secchi SJ.
Matthew says his love of science developed at a young age and became particularly strong in high school when he took part in international physics competitions. He studied physics at the Australian National University (ANU) before travelling to the United States to complete a PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“My aim at that point was an academic job as a professor of physics,” he says. “But at the end of my PhD, I really felt a call to look at the possibility of becoming a priest. After a bit of discernment, I joined the Jesuits at the beginning of 2016, as a member of the Australian province.”
Now completing the final stage of his formation at Boston College in the US, Matthew says his desire to be of service to the world was the catalyst for both his pursuit of science and his journey to the priesthood.
“As I was getting to the end of my PhD, I was drawn really to serve communities in a deliberate way,” he recalls. “That's what led to my vocation, first, towards looking at becoming a priest in general and ultimately deciding on the Jesuits. I think that came from realising that a call from God is based in who I am, that this intellectual and scientific way of looking at the world was really important to me.
“I really felt that the Jesuits, among all the religious orders, particularly had that kind of focus of making use of the broad range of different intellectual interests that the members have.”
Although Matthew, who hails from Cowra, New South Wales, is the only Australian Jesuit currently working in science, there are many abroad. For almost 100 years, Jesuits have run the Vatican Observatory, and its director, Br Guy Consolmagno, is an esteemed planetary astronomer.
In 2023, Matthew attended the Vatican Observatory’s summer school, where he says he developed his knowledge of astronomy, a discipline he had only previously studied minimally.
“The other really uplifting thing to see was Jesuits working together in a work of science,” he says. “There aren't any major works in Australia that have that scientific focus, so to be part of one for a month, to be working on this together… was really inspiring and something that I really valued from my time there.”
While the Observatory has a clear scientific, rather than faith-based, mission, it contributes greatly to showing that the Church is engaged in science, Matthew says.
“The Observatory is also a way to witness to Catholics that science is something we should be taking seriously,” he adds.
Matthew says his own life, as well as the existence of the Observatory, demonstrate the complementarity of science and faith. But he recognises that for many others, the union of science and faith is incomprehensible.
“This is really a question of deep mystery… and other people have very well-intentioned views of a different kind,” he says.
“In terms of the empirical questions we can ask about our experience, science does an amazing job at answering these questions.
“But I would say there are questions that are very different in nature from these empirical questions, and that the kinds of answers that science gives don't work here. Questions like, why is there existence at all? What is the ultimate cause of existence? Why do I exist?
“The way of answering those questions has to be different from a scientific way… it’s a philosophical kind of question, it's not the same as the scientific questions.”
Within the discipline of physics, Matthew says what’s known as the ‘fine-tuning argument’ is an oft-used defence of faith.
“Looking at the universe, we can see a whole lot of physical constants that have particular values,” he explains. “And if any of those values were slightly different, the universe would look entirely different. It seems there just wouldn't be a way we could form life or anything that looks remotely like life as we know it.
“One of the approaches is to say that suggests there's some kind of purpose behind humans being here, and no one seems to have a more convincing explanation to that purpose than God.”
For Matthew, the world of physics can be a means of evangelisation simply through the deeper questions it can provoke.
“Just seeing the beauty and the complexity of the world raises those kinds of questions that science will explain partly, in terms of how the structures we see form,” he says. “But for there even to be a universe with the capacity for forming these structures is a profound and amazing thing. Once again, we can suggest that being created by God is a way of coming to understand why we live in such a universe.
“These are all searching questions. They lead us towards the encounter with the creator.”
Through conversations with colleagues and students, Matthew says he has come to value the opportunity to ask searching questions, allowing others the opportunity to reflect upon their ideas about life’s meaning and their purpose.
“I really have great trust that God is able to work in every stage of someone's journey of faith, even those that are more based on general questions of life and meaning rather than explicitly on belief in Jesus,” he says.
Images: Supplied
Words: Matthew Biddle