Extraterrestrial life and Christianity

How would Christianity as a whole deal with extraterrestrial life. Other intelligent being besides us. Would Christianity crumble? How about salvation?

I’ll worry about it if it happens. Not before.

Why would it? Does it violate any of our doctrines? I don’t think so.

The position our Church takes is that truth cannot conflict with truth so if there is then so be it. The Church has never taken a stance on whether or not intelligent life exists elsewhere. It can’t because we don’t know. Not sure why you think this would have something to do with our salvation.

If you search Catholic Answers Forums, you will find many previous threads with many good answers to that question.

The short answer is that Christianity would not crumble, nor would our hope for salvation be destroyed.

There are some interesting questions: Is the extraterrestrial life intelligent? Do they have souls? If they are fallen, as we are by Adam and Eve, has Jesus also redeemed them? If they have not yet heard of Jesus and the Gospel, should we evangelize and welcome them into the church? Would it be possible that they are not fallen and have no sin? If so, what could we learn from them? These are very interesting points of discussion!

As the Vatican has astronomers actively looking for alien life, I doubt very much it would surprise them.

But while the cubic-mileage of Space makes alien-life relatively likely, that same distance makes “finding” of them by us, or us by them, almost impossible.


And in any case, it would have no affect on our salvation or cause Christianity to crumble.

It’s always fun for me to see atheists embracing the extraterrestrial life template.


No surprise, really, though.

Aliens get to replace God at the top of the heap (where we instinctively know human beings are not), yet require no guilt, life-change, repentance, penance, etc.

Whereas to believe in GOD, conversely…!!!


Egg-zactly. :sad_yes:

I don’t think Christianity will crumble, but if the aliens are far more advanced than us and their beliefs about God and the afterlife are different, then the church will have difficulty keeping its membership from falling.without adjusting its beliefs too.

And the big question of course is about Jesus - if he is the Son of Man, is he also is Son of ET?

Not necessarily.

The Gospel is for human beings, as is its teaching on human afterlife.

There would be no need whatsoever to alter the faith based on aliens.

After all, there is no reason why beings of completely different worlds and embodiments would not also have vastly different afterlives (assuming the aliens died at all).


Indeed. Atheists believe in miracles, too. In the movie ‘Expelled’, the super-prophet of Atheism, Richard Dawkins, tried to hide behind an alien theory when he was pressed to give an answer for where matter came from. Ben Stein made him look like an idiot.

It won’t happen!

This is an excerpt from a book. It relates to this discussion.

This is a very credible source. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1962: “THERE EXIST INTELLIGENT BEINGS ELSEWHERE THAN ON THE EARTH” . . . “Intelligent (rational) beings in outer space . . .” As an echo, in some way, of the lively discussion going on in the world at the time, Mercedes Salisachs, a remarkable witness, present these days at Garabandal, had Conchita ask the Blessed Virgin if there were intelligent beings in outer or interstellar space. - “Yes”, was the stunning answer! Days after, Conchita, again in ecstasy, was heard asking her Vision if these mysterious beings are like us, sinners? - “They are like men, tainted alike by sin, but also redeemed by Christ just like men,” was the new astonishing answer! These new revelations made to Conchita were to appear so exceptional to Fr. Lucio Rodrigo, S.J., when he learned about them, that, after an uneasy first impression, and then, after reflection, he went out to write that “it would well be that the Blessed Virgin, and through Her, Our Lord, were lifting the veil of a mystery which broadens in that way the dimensions of the Kingdom of Our Lord (and of the Most Blessed Virgin), so to include other rational creatures, which could, of course, not be angels (. . .)”. (Letter, October 22, 1965, to the Marques de Santa Maria).

True, the above revelations of this December 20, 1962, should they be confirmed by existing new documents not yet available to us, and also by Conchita herself, they would take us to give a new look at the absolute universality of Christ’s redemption, but also to His unfathomable supremacy recapitulating all created realities, visible and invisible, even the mysterious Cosmic powers. So, couldn’t we at least presume that the above-reported revelations were simply recalling, if also “confirming” a true kerygmatic truth, an article of the Church early Creed? Future and larger works on Garabandal, based on numerous authentic original sources, should present it all in a much more detailed way. As for the Scriptural foundation (mainly 1 Cor, Rom, Col, Eph, and Peter I and II), we can do no better for the time being than to indicate among the numerous exegetical works bearing on this still mysterious aspect of Christian faith, the major study of M. Combe, “Puissances celestes” (“Cosmic Powers,”) in the Dictionnaire de la Bible-Supplement–DBS–vol. 9, col 336-381. [From ‘Garabandal’ Book, pages 160-161]

Garabandal is not approved by the Church.

As such, nothing contained in it can be accepted as church teaching (and may, or may not be true).


Even if Garabandal was approved by the Church, nothing contained could be added to the deposit of faith. Given the discussion (extraterrestrial), sometimes private revelation is as good of information as we are going to get.
