In De vierde man (The Fourth Man, 1983), directed by Paul Verhoeven, a puzzled questioner asks Gerard Reve (Jeroen Krabbé) how he can still be Catholic in the face of modern science. Gerard, a gay and alcoholic Catholic poet, shouts that “Being Catholic means having imagination!”
Imagination is a powerful force linked with creativity and vision. It allows us to picture something to ourselves, making sense of the world, reinventing it. Catholics have a long history of intellectual, and therefore creative, engagement with ideas and images that are not tied up with what is present to the senses. Perhaps we can turn the question on its head and ask how can you be a scientist without imagination. Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), the Belgian Catholic priest and professor of physics and astronomy at the Catholic University of Leuven who developed the theory of the origin of the Universe (known as the Big Bang theory), did not lack this faculty.
