Catholic Radio/TV Misleads on Albert Einstein?

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I have heard on EWTN Radio on Catholic Answers by one or more of the apologists, and also on EWTN TV of Albert Einstein’s fascination of the Holy Eucharist. Was this all fabricated?

I just came across this article where a letter of Einstein is being sold. He described “belief in God as “childish superstition” and said Jews were not the chosen people”.

How would anyone that felt as he did have any fascination with our Holy Sacrament?

The article on this letter to be sold can be found at the below link.

breitbart.com/article.php?id=080513122249.m3ds3b6j&show_article=1
 
To be honest, this has shaken my faith somewhat. Sometimes when doubts entered my head with my beliefs in God, especially with his true presence in the Holy Sacrament, I sometimes considered that if Albert Einstein believed it, why shouldn’t I?

Guess I’ll have to reassure myself some other way now. 🤷
 
I did a search for the words Einstein holy sacrament and it led to the following article that should be of interest:

An Afternoon With Einstein

Based on this it seems the commentators on EWTN were justified in saying that Einstein had a fascination with the Holy Sacraments. However, yes, the letter you linked to does say something completely different. Perhaps he was truly fascinated in the Holy Sacraments for a time but then later that fascination turned to scorn and he reverted back to his atheistic ways.

Einstein for all his great mental powers was not always pointed in the right direction morally or spiritually (as far as i can tell). I have read that he and his wife had an abortion and that he had many affairs. So admire him for his scientific work but my advice is to be careful about anything beyond that.
 
Nice, interesting article. It does sound like Einstein wanted to learn more about Transubstantiation by asking for books of the Mass in German.

Thanks for posting the link, as I am glad I had the chance to read this. 👍
 
This will probably come off as impatient but… when will we ever stop trying to find someone to support our Faith other then Jesus Christ? As a physicist myself, I admire Einstein for his great insights as a scientist but in no way would I give him any special credit for having insight into God or religion. In fact, his gift (from God, btw) was to be a great scientist. This does not mean he has (or lacks) the gifts of insight into religious matters. Having known many good and not so good scientists over my life, I see no direct correlation between being good as a scientist and being good spiritually. Recall that God does not give his gifts only to the rich, powerful, intelligent, famous, etc., etc. He gave them to the simple, the poor, the outcasts as well as, no, perhaps even more than the rich, powerful, intelligent, etc.

On today’s anniversary of the first appearance at Fatima, how could you say that the three seers of Fatima were less gifted than Einstein? You could easily say they were poor, ignorant, and “zeroes” in the eyes of the world while Einstein was already a Nobel prize winner. If Einstein was, in addition to being one of the greatest scientists, a man who could appreciate God and all that He is, then he would have been a much more blessed and complete man than just the fabulous scientist that he was.

Personally, I would prefer to know more of Jesus than relativity or gravitation.
 
I guess I could do the research myself, but I’ll just ask the question…

Comparing the letter in the news and the Eucharist inquiries, what years did both of them happen? If the latter is later than the former, it could show a development of heart of Einstein…
 
I need to rectify my earlier post where i stated i had read that Albert Einstein and his wife had an abortion. I had remembered reading that years ago now but i can’t find any confirmation of it on the Internet. So apparently what i had read either wasn’t accurate or i had misread it.
 
I wouldn’t let Albert Einstein’s views on religion shake my faith, anymore than I let his political and economic views disturb my views on those issues. If memory serves, I think Einstein was a socialist or something. Anyways, Albert Einstein’s views on religion were complicated. He was not an atheist but he was not a theist, either. He was something in between, if that makes sense.
 
Again, nothing new here. Einstein hated organized religion and considered the Bible as its main ‘tool.’ If you read his considerable writings - outside his area of expertise - you will find very mediocre content. As for his remarks about the Bible, remember he had no ability as a textual critic. One must consult the greatest textual expert of the last 500 years - C.S. Lewis. He knew something of ancient writings; what was actual and what was myth.
 
ChristIsTheWay said:
I wouldn’t let Albert Einstein’s views on religion shake my faith…
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No, I won’t allow it to do that. The article that Bridge posted supported what I had earlier heard on EWTN radio & TV. So the new found letter doesn’t bother me.

I never thought that Einstein had converted. But the letter and the article about the letter never mentioned that he was interested & researched the Mass and Transubstantiation. so I thought maybe I had been misinformed. Turns out it was exactly as described.
 
tzarno1 said:
One must consult the greatest textual expert of the last 500 years - C.S. Lewis. He knew something of ancient writings; what was actual and what was myth.
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I have all (or most) of C.S. Lewis’ books. I love his work!
 
Harsalter said:
I have all (or most) of C.S. Lewis’ books. I love his work!
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Love C.S. Lewis, and have read most of his works…Latest was a book on C.S. Lewis titled C,S. Lewis and the Catholic church ( gave away as gift, and forgot the Author’s name). Reading his books has endeared me more to the Catholic church, and I have read that he brought many converts to the church. It seems that he believed all our church teaches but was unable to cross the Tiber, himself. Having read the book listed above, I took from the author that it was because of his early childhood prejudice instilled @ that time. I do believe that this man knew our Lord in a special way. Thanks for the post.
 
Fr. Benedict Groeschel is great except that he likes to bring up Einstein on his Sunday Night Live show as an example of a person of faith or something. I guess he thinks Einstein is big and his faith will impress people. Fr. Groeschel should stick with the Saints. I admire Mother Angelica for saying this: “I don’t care about the letters at the end of someones name (as in PH.D.). I care about the St. in front of their name.”

Einstein didn’t listen to what God says and apply it to his own life, and so, to be consistent, he also didn’t believe in God. Why believe in God if you don’t believe in what God says. Einstein was consistent.

Also, he was good at day dreaming about physics but not very good at math, which is why he needed help with the math to flesh out his day dreams.
 
mdzialo said:
Also, he was good at day dreaming about physics but not very good at math, which is why he needed help with the math to flesh out his day dreams.
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Are you sure about that? A recent biographer of his stated that that was a common myth about Einstein and that Einstein was so good at math that he was mastering advanced calculus at age 15 or something.
 
ChristIsTheWay said:
Are you sure about that? A recent biographer of his stated that that was a common myth about Einstein and that Einstein was so good at math that he was mastering advanced calculus at age 15 or something.
Click to expand...
Just came across a Quote from Albert Einstein that was in a picture book given to me by my children for Mother’s day present: “Imagination is more important than Intelligence.” Dr. Frankl ( psychiatrist that survived the Nazi prison camp) stated that we relate to God Intuitively…that it was a higher way of knowing than the Intellect, although the intellect played it’s part. None of us know for sure how Einstein related to his Maker. COME HOLY SPIRIT!
 
I’m not saying Einstein couldn’t do math when he was a kid, which is/was a silly rumour. I’m saying this: Einstein’s first job out of University was that of a patent clerk at the Swiss Federal Office in Bern. That was his job for seven years, patent clerk. Einstein later fondly remembered the patent office as the place where he “hatched [his] most beautiful ideas.”

Why didn’t Einstein have a job in physics out of college? It was because he wasn’t technically elite and didn’t get the needed recommendation from his Professor. So he worked in a patent office.

Physic interested him mightily and he day dreamed about. You may call it a thought experiment if you wish. And his thought experiments were right on, so he eventually went back to his really big shot Professor and told him what he thought out and asked for help with the math. The Professor looked at the theories and said: “Do you know what? You are a genius.”

And Einstein got the help with the math.
 
If you actually read Einstein’s philosophy, it is not that far off from Catholic philosophy. Just a few terms need to be tweaked. I bet he never read Aquinas.
 
If you want to know what Einstein thought about “God,” read the Ethics of the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza. Einstein was a serious Spinozist pantheist.
 
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