Commentary

Social Science and Natural Science Disciplines of Catholic Cardinals (Part #3)

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Curiously a significant number of cardinals are the product of many-children families. Such considerations reinforce arguments regarding the lack of ability of the Catholic Church to assess the numerical evidence regarding the ever-increasing world population and the ever-diminishing availability of resources: land, food, energy, etc. (Begetting: challenges and responsibilities of overpopulation, 2007). Put bluntly, it would appear that there is an institutionalized inability to count (Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation: challenge incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth, 2008).

With regard to the other natural sciences, the evident lack of formal training is however relevant to the separate argument regarding the value of new insights from chemistry and physics into relationships (Bonding with an "other" articulated through the language of molecular bonding, 2012), especially regarding the nature of that bond (Subtler insights into the "chemistry" of the marriage bond, 2012; Ionic marriage versus Covalent marriage?, 2012).

It is curious to note, in the Wikipedia profiles of the cardinal,s that a degree of emphasis is given to the number of natural languages spoken by each. Clearly this capacity is considered significant to the roles cardinals are expected to perform and their capacity to communicate across cultures. However, disciplines may also be considered as languages. It is striking how few disciplines are represented in what amounts to a table of cognitive competence of those from whom guidance in world governance is expected. With theology as a traditional branch of philosophy, it might be stated that in disciplinary terms the College of Cardinals constitutes an essentially monolingual or unilingual culture.

The difficulty in assessing the competence of the cardinals in any discipline suggests that little value is attached to their capacity to function in the interdisciplinary environment presumably necessary to any adequate response to current and future global crises. Any claim that theology is essentially integrative, through being "transdisciplinary" (and primarily focused on the "transcendent"), would then merit careful examination. This apparent lack of capacity is appropriately echoed by the unfruitful outcomes of the various interfaith initiatives undertaken by the Catholic Church -- and the consequence for faith-based conflicts thereby exacerbated around the world.

As separately argued, the fundamental insights of the natural sciences into relationships and order of every form suggest that many theological preoccupations could be fruitfully informed by those languages through the neglected discipline of mathematical theology (Mathematical Theology: future science of confidence in belief, 2011). This might fruitfully enable interdisciplinary, intercultural and interfaith initiatives for the future.

There are surprisingly unexplored correspondences between mathematics and theology, as suggested by the language used in their framing of their most fundamental insights regarding higher degrees of order: transfinite, transcendental, infinite, aleph, and the like (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007). The issue is how, through their complementarity, collective insight can be used to elicit more integrative approaches, of requisite credibility, to the strategic challenges of governance in this period. Absent, as yet, is a fruitful mapping of the array of disciplines and their relationship to the array of mathematical insights.

It is however very improbable that appreciation of the perspectives of a wider variety of disciplines will be considered of any relevance in the Papal Conclave (Cardinals seek identikit for new pope, Reuters, 17 February 2013)

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