I kinda wish I could’ve been alive for the last couple of thousand years so I was able to watch Catholicism (and other religions) try rooly, rooly hard to marry their beliefs with human kind’s developing body of scientific knowledge and our growing awareness of the universe in which we live. I mean, listening to the Vatican’s “chief astronomer” try to grapple with life, the universe and everything and not make his religion look like a pile of pants is bloody hilarious.

“As an astronomer I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe,” Jose Gabriel Funes said in an interview with the Vatican mouthpiece, the Osservatore Romano.

Even if “we don’t currently have any proof … the hypothesis” of extraterrestrial life cannot be ruled out, said Mr Funes, a Jesuit priest who directs the Vatican’s observatory at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.

“Just as there are a plethora of creatures on Earth, there could be others, equally intelligent, created by God,” he said.

So far, so good. Nothing too weird there. But…

Original sin, which by Christian tradition occurred in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of a particular tree, refers to the fallen state from which humans can be saved only by God’s grace.

Asked about the difficult theological question, Mr Funes said: “If other intelligent beings exist, it’s not certain that they need redemption.”

They could “have remained in full friendship with their creator” without committing the original sin, he said.

Oh dear.

If not, extraterrestrials would benefit equally from the “incarnation,” in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, assumed earthlings’ flesh, body and soul in order to redeem them, which Mr Funes called “a unique event that cannot be repeated”.

* smacks forehead into hand *

But all of this begs the really obvious question: what would Jesus Christ look like on ET’s planet?

JC phone home