Particles of Faith

Ask a young Catholic why they are walking away from the Church and one of the main reasons is usually a perceived conflict between science and Christianity. The student edition of Particles of Faith: A Catholic Guide to Navigating Science aims to help Catholic high school students find real answers to real questions about the interaction of science and faith.

What is the origin of life?

Does the Big Bang prove God?

Can a Christian accept the theory of evolution?

Teacher and scientist Dr. Stacy A. Trasancos—who converted to Catholicism while confronting similar concerns about science and faith—addresses these and many other probing questions in the student edition of Particles of Faith, a book designed for use in a high school theology or science course. At the end of the book, students will be able to not only answer key questions about the faith but also to explain those answers to others.

The Particles of Faith Teacher Resource Guide can be found online in the Classroom Resource section of the Ave Maria Press website and helps teachers adapt the book’s material as a separate unit in regularly-scheduled courses such as morality, social justice, life science, or in in chemistry and physics courses. Lesson plans in the Particles of Faith Teacher Resource Guide include quizzes and tests. Trasancos also has produced videos with related content in conjunction with Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

She employs encyclicals such as Pope Francis’s Laudato Sí, the deep reflections of theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, and the exacting work of Catholic scientists such as Fr. Georges Lemaître—who proposed the game-changing Big Bang theory—to show how science and faith are interwoven lights meant to guide students on the path to truth. Trasancos also explains how the Catholic faith and science work together to reveal the truth of Christ through the beauty of his creation. She leads with the understanding that science awakens the wonders of the foundational statement of the faith: that God is Creator of all, seen and unseen.