The Pope told Stephen Hawking he should not examine the cause of the Big Bang. What short response should RH have given him in return?

Well it does remind me of a Ned Flanders quote:

"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins the movie by telling you how it ends. Well, I say there are some things we don't want to know. Important things."

The same Pope (John-Paul II) cleared and reinstated Galileo in the Catholic Church and supported the sciences. The Hawking quote was a reductionist paraphrase of a long discourse by the Pope. No other scientist present walked away with the impression that Hawking did. That is not what the Pope was saying, and he would have never said that if you knew his position on science and cosmology. Here is what the Pope said:

Cosmogony and cosmology have always aroused great interest among peoples and religions. The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The Sacred Book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven.

Any scientific hypothesis on the origin of the world, such as the hypothesis of a primitive atom from which derived the whole of the physical universe, leaves open the problem concerning the universe's beginning. Science cannot of itself solve this question: there is needed that human knowledge that rises above physics and astrophysics and which is called metaphysics; there is needed above all the knowledge that comes from God's revelation. Thirty years ago, on 22 November 1951, my predecessor Pope Pius XII, speaking about the problem of the origin of the universe at the Study Week on the subject of microseisms organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, expressed himself as follows: "In vain would one expect a reply from the sciences of nature, which on the contrary frankly declare that they find themselves faced by an insoluble enigma. It is equally certain that the human mind versed in philosophical meditation penetrates the problem more deeply. One cannot deny that a mind which is enlightened and enriched by modern scientific knowledge and which calmly considers this problem is led to break the circle of matter which is totally independent and autonomous—as being either uncreated or having created itself—and to rise to a creating Mind. With the same clear and critical gaze with which it examines and judges the facts, it discerns and recognizes there the work of creative Omnipotence, whose strength raised up by the powerful fiat uttered billions of years ago by the creating Mind, has spread through the universe, calling into existence, in a gesture of generous love, matter teeming with energy".

The Pope was saying there are some things about the origin of the universe that science can't answer. That's all.

To discover the cause would be to discover divine intention - this would be, and should be everyone's point of study. This is why the age of the priest to serve as a guide to spiritual development is ending. Be they Priests, Ministers. Monks, High Lamas or Imam's, their time of telling us how to think and find God is outmoded, retrogressive and often leads to fanatical practices that do not include love and what is God if not love?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre