Speculative/Science Fiction and the Catholic Church

Most of the major human characters in a futuristic science fiction piece (will take place somewhere between 2300-2400) I'm working on are of Italian and Latin American descent. And yes, I'm aware that not everyone of these ethnicities are or even were Raised Catholic, but I feel like it would be plausible for this connection to still exist in this setting. No matter where you're traveling in the galaxy you'd still have the fact that your ancestors came from the same country where the Vatican is or had to deal with the evangelism-connected colonialism.

The Catholic Church would probably exist in some capacity this far in the future (it has existed for several hundred years already after all) but I'm curious as to how it may possibly change. There's higher ups now (Pope Francis in particular) who are making attempts to allow the Catholic Church to adapt to the times and possibly bring back former believers who left the church. Obviously there's not all Catholics believe with that sentiment. I still think it would be unrealistic to portray the policies of the Catholic Church staying totally static over the course of a few hundred years.

One plausible outcome I could see would be a split between the "Orthodox" Catholics and "Reform" Catholics (note: if I go in this direction I would definitely call them something different) Reform Catholics would feature many of the core beliefs of Catholicism (such as how sacraments are performed, transubstantiation, emphasis on charity) but could adapt to changing attitudes about LGBT people and women in leadership roles. One thing I'm curious about is if having this group be (adjective) Catholics makes more sense then them effectively being Protestants with practices similar to Catholicism á la Anglicans (although the Orthodox Catholics would probably treat them as such either way)

This isn't a huge part of the plot or what the conflict of the piece is about but I'd like to add some brief details referencing this to make the setting I'm creating more believable. Also I'm kind of annoyed by science fiction and other speculative fiction works that pretend its plausible for literally every single human character to be an atheist, literally never mention or make reference to any real world religion when it would be reasonable to it at least get a brief nod, or portray society as becoming totally secular or practicing some fictional religion but still Ambiguously Christian somehow.

I'd really appreciate if anyone could let me know what in this makes sense and what doesn't or even offer suggestions. Thanks.

Sci-fi writers, at least those who don't buy into Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions, seem to have this peculiar fascination with the Catholic Church in general. There's a deep power to that inspiring mysticism, a young religion that manages to feel truly ancient, that even an unbeliever has to begrudgingly admire. Even if your far future Catholic Church starts accepting LGBT people, letting priests marry, ordaining women, whatever... that stubborn, archaic, monolithic mysticism is the one thing I'd personally say it needs to keep, or it's just not the Catholic Church.

Anyways, in the Hyperion series, where two of the main characters are Catholic priests, the Church made a saint of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Integrating the concept of the Omega Point into their teachings and doctrine. The life and thoughts Teilhard might be worth a look — perhaps more that the cursory glance Wikipedia offers — if that seems an interesting avenue of growth and change. (To say nothing of what happens later on in Endymion, but that's a result of extremely unusual circumstances.)

edited 11th Feb '16 8:27:58 PM by KillerClowns

This is pretty good.

My two cents as a Catholic with some reasonable knowledge of the Church's history and an interest on the future would be against a split like you described. I can see a sort of split like that occuring, but I think the splitting party wouldn't call themselves Catholic and probably change more beliefs than just general 21th century views on certain subjects. That is unless you have some Pope/anti-Pope shit (which basically only happened in one period of the Church's history) which seems both a little too complex for the sort of minor thing this is in your story and a bit far-fetched barring any sort of major upheveal in human society.

I find equally as likely that rather than splitting up the Church would inevitably end up adopting the views of the "Reform" Catholics rather than anything (The Church isn't stupid, it knows that it can't stall forever, this is why guys like Pope Francis and John Paul II came about), Some things I can see staying the same are the male-leader thing (because seriously, reforming that would require a overhaul of gigantic levels), the general doctrines about mass, the cathedrals, the crosses, the clothing, resurrection, the holy host, the emphasis on good work and the like, e.t.c

The celibacy thing I can see it as staying or going, I'm uncertain. I'd lean towards staying, or at least staying in a limited form (like only positions from Bishop and above being celibate but not below Bishop).

The space-faring nature of the setting would probably mean some sort of boost to the missionary movement (converting new worlds and all, something the Catholic Church has actually explicetly commented it'd do if aliens were discovered), with Jesuits in space doing humanitarian work and building churches in foreign worlds and the like. Also a probably added emphasis on social networking (so things like people having mass via holograms and that sort of thing), as it's quite likely most of the Church's hierarchy wouldn't have enough manpower to fully go to space and pray masses for the spacenauts and things like that.

Personally I chose Catholicism because it made sense when you take into account the characters' backgrounds and I was also Raised Catholic so I feel like I know enough about Catholic practices that I could believably alter them and show how they would be performed during day-to-day life. (There are other minor characters that explicitly practice non-Christian real world religion, but fortunately I don't plan on focusing on their practice very hard. I feel like I could much more reasonably create several characters who realistically practice an altered version of Catholicism in varying degrees than the same with Hinduism)

How far in the future do you think this would be likely to happen? I'd say no more than a hundred years or so, but if it probably wouldn't happen until much later, there's a character that is missing (as in very limited access to the world) a little more than a decade and returns at the beginning of the story and I'm wondering if they should make mention of any major doctrine changes.

Also one of the supporting characters in my work who is a practicing Catholic has a daughter who is bisexual and I'm wondering if it would make more sense for him to briefly bring it to attention (he isn't intended to be a bigoted character, he experiences some character development but it isn't related to this topic) or have it be treated as a total non-issue.

Y'know what'd be a cool idea: a story about space missionaries. Though it'd probably turn into a (literally) preachy author tract.

Catholic concepts that I've used:

Baptism, confirmation, confession and penance, Holy Orders, monks, nuns, the Latin Mass, the Holy Roman Empire, and cathedrals.