Bruce writes:

> The Vatican maintains a very well-equipped astronomical observatory here
>  in Arizona, on Mt. Graham -- the same location at which the Large
>  Binocular Telescope (<http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbtwww/lbt.html>) is
>  being built. They do some excellent research there (see
>  <http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/>); scientists from the Vatican
>  Observatory are fairly frequent speakers at Arizona Science Center
>  events. Apparently, after being one-upped by a lay person 400 or so years
>  ago, they don't want it to happen again. Like Barry Lake's Macintosh, the
>  Vatican hates to admit it's wrong :-).

Just to extend Bruce's thoughts a bit, the Catholic Church (at least for most
religious orders) has learned its lesson and imposed no limits of any sort
for the last one or two hundred years on any form of scientific investigation
that its members or employees might engage in. For example, within the
Jesuit-run Loyola University system, the professional staff may or may not be
Catholic. Indeed, they may be Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddist,
a believer or non-believer. Belief in Catholic doctrine is not only not a
requirement for employment at these universities, it is considered wholly
inappropriate that the Order impose any form of stricture on the academic
freedoms of its faculty. You can get some sense of that intellectual freedom
from just one faculty member's web page:

     http://www.loyno.edu/~chood/index.html

however, this page is only representative. You could go to a thousand other
similar pages and see essentially the same.

Wirt Atmar