Here is a short excerpt from: a book by Stuhlinger and Ordway on Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space
 
Dr. Wernher von Braun's family tree can be traced back to the year 1285.  He was a 'great man' that did not deny Our Lord or his adopted country as so many of the college reprobate leaders in our country are doing today.



"Dr. von Braun, do you believe in God?" As von Braun's publicity grew, there were more and more occasions when he was asked this age-old question. His answer was always prompt and to the point: "Yes, absolutely!" And then, he would begin to talk in his characteristic von Braun style, with perfect grammar and syntax, letting his carefully chosen words flow like a sparkling mountain stream, while he described his religious convictions with an almost disarming simplicity

He was neither embarrassed nor annoyed by this question. He even seemed grateful for the opportunity to formulate and describe the elements of his religious belief. In essence, he said what Goethe had his Faust say to Gretchen: "Who may say, I believe in him, or I do not believe in him? Does he not embrace and sustain you, me, himself?"

"It seems to me that your question is irrelevant," von Braun would say. "It is so obvious that we live in a world in which a fantastic amount of logic, of rational lawfulness, is at work. We are aware of a large number of laws of physics and chemistry and biology which, by their mutual interdependence, make nature work as if it were following a grandiose plan from its earliest beginnings to the farthest reaches of its future destiny. To me, it would be incomprehensible that there should be such a gigantic master plan without a master planner behind it. This master planner is He whom we call the Creator of the Universe . . . One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be a Divine intent behind it all."

"For me," he would continue, "there is no real contradiction between the world of science and the world of religion. The two are dealing with two different things, but they are not in conflict with each other. Theologians are trying to describe the Creator; scientists are trying to describe His creation. Science and religion are not antagonists; on the contrary, they are sisters . . . While, through science, man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, through religion he tries to harness the forces of nature within him . . ."

Riccardo Giacconi, scientific director of the great Hubble Space Telescope project, expressed his own feelings--but they are certainly shared by thousands of those who had known Wernher von Braun:

"He had a nobility around him that set him apart from all other people in the space program . . . He believed in the decency of man . . ."

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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.