Pope's Astronomer Would Love To Baptize an Alien

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Guardian reports that Guy Consolmagno, curator of the pope's meteorite collection and a trained astronomer and planetary scientist, says he would be 'delighted' if intelligent life was found among the stars. 'But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it — when you add them up it's probably not a practical question.' Consolmagno adds that the traditional definition of a soul was to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions. 'Any entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul.' Would he baptize an alien? 'Only if they asked.' Consolmagno dismisses the ideas of intelligent design as a pseudo-scientific version of creationism. 'The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all. It's another form of the God of the gaps. It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning.'"

It'll make great TV

[grub]

I can see it now... the ships land at the UN and...

Alien: Greetings. We come in peace.
UN: Where do you come from?
Alien: A distant galaxy nearly 10 billion light years away. Our world has no crime, no disease, no wars; we value learning as the pinnacle of achievement. We have been waiting 2,000 of your years for the moment when Humanity is ready for contact. We feel the time is right.
UN: Why are you here?
Alien: We came to be baptized. Praise Jesus!

or not...

Definitely discuss beforehand

[starfishsystems]

Water could be extremely toxic to some life forms. You don't want to start out a first encounter on the wrong foot.

Christian: Welcome to Earth. Hey, you want to be baptized?
Alien: Sure!
Christian: Lean way back. Okay, here we go.
Alien: [tszzz]

Any entity

[DevConcepts]

— no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul. Ummm... The Flying Spaghetti Monster??

Based on past performance...

[hyades1]

...the aliens should lock up their young. If they don't, the priests will be at 'em sure as the pope dresses like a Fairy Godmother.

Equally likely...

[macraig]

... is that the alien would like to know how the Pope's astronomer tastes with a little alfredo sauce.

Re:I guess the trick is you have to ask?

[A nonymous Coward]

How would you baptise an octopus? Raise it out of the water? Sprinkle holy air on it?