As readers know from a recent column of mine, Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross and president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, turned 90 on May 25. He was only half that age, however, when TIME magazine did a cover story on him, Notre Dame, Catholic higher education, and the state of Catholic intellectual life (Feb. 9, 1962).

The first paragraph began with an oft-cited remark attributed to the famous Irish playwright and critic, George Bernard Shaw: "A Catholic university is a contradiction in terms."

In the same opening paragraph, Father Hesburgh acknowledged Shaw's point that religious dogma seems incompatible with the scientific spirit of skeptical, free inquiry, but he insisted that both values need to be cherished.

"There is no conflict between science and theology," Notre Dame's then-young president pointed out, "except where there is bad science or bad theology."

I thought of that remark, which I have quoted many times since, after reading Senator Sam Brownback's recent op-ed piece in The New York Times, "What I Think About Evolution" (May 31). His column, however, is about the broader issue of the relationship between theology and faith.

(To re-fresh readers' memories, Senator Brownback of Kansas is a candidate for next year's Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States. With the assistance of an Opus Dei priest in the nation's capital, the senator converted to Catholicism from a non-denominational evangelical church five years ago.)

Readers should note that, in the last line, two paragraphs above, I used the same word, "theology," that Father Hesburgh had used some 45 years ago.

It would be seriously inaccurate to assume, as Senator Brownback seems to do, that the alleged conflict is between "faith" or "religion," on the one hand, and science or reason, on the other.

"Faith" never exists in a vacuum. It is always an interpreted faith, which is what theology produces. Persons "of faith" understand its object, God, in their own individual ways or in keeping with the formal interpretations provided by their own religious leaders.

The same line of thinking applies to "religion." There is no one religion; there are many religions. Catholics of a pre-Vatican II mind-set might still want to insist that Catholicism is "the one, true religion," but that assertion cannot deny the existence of many other religions in the world, be they "false" or not.

Science, on the other hand, does not, and cannot, base its conclusions on a sacred book or an ecclesiastical teaching authority. Scientists reach their conclusions on the basis of experimentation and the testing of hypotheses.

Unlike Father Hesburgh --- and the many Catholics and non-Catholics who agree with him --- Senator Brownback, notwithstanding his commendable efforts to find common ground, poses the conflict as one between "faith" and scientific reason.

He says that "reason itself cannot answer every question," and that it needs "faith...to purify reason" and to "supplement" the scientific method.

But the senator never acknowledges the same corrective role for science in relation to "faith." If there is a conflict between the two, "faith" wins. It is science that must back off.

While insisting that he opposes "the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion" about evolution vs. creationism (or "intelligent design"), Senator Brownback nonetheless concludes that any explanation of the origins of the universe that excludes God "should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science."

But here the argument becomes slippery. Does the senator mean to imply that some, most or even all scientists explicitly "dismiss the possibility of divine causality"? If there are, in fact, scientists who do that, they are in clear violation of their own scientific methods.

Scientists as scientists can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God, nor should they even try to do so. God is knowable only through faith of some kind. The most that people of any specific faith can hope for is the assurance that their belief in God is not contradicted by reason or science.

The longstanding teaching of the Catholic Church --- Senator Brownback's new religious home --- is the same as Father Hesburgh's. If there appears to be a conflict between our faith and science, we have either bad science or bad theology. The former deals only with empirical data; the latter, with religious belief.

To repeat the point: Scientists who explicitly "dismiss the possibility of divine causality" violate their own scientific methods; but scientists who simply prescind from such belief are only doing their job as scientists. "Faith" has nothing at all to do with it.

On the other hand, religious people cannot use "faith" to trump science whenever it suits them.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.