text: It's nice to read your Catholic faith position since it matches my own;  IMO Jesus' 2 greatest commandments are the "need to haves" for humans to have any meaningful relationship with the unfathomable Mystery  underlying  what we percive as Creation.  Doctrines, dogmas, and rituals are "nice to haves" but only to the extent that they help one access the "need to haves".   
  
  Christians have long taught that our universe and earthly existence had a beginning and will have an end, much more compatible with a 13 billion year old universe  expanding at an accelerating velocity than the pre-1900 prevailing scientific view that the universe is eternal.   I find it interesting that some physicists now suggest that the underlying ground of reality may be "information",  which sounds very much like another way of saying  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God".