On July 28, one of the first scientists to join the Kolbe Center’s advisory council, Dr. Joseph A. Strada, went to his eternal reward. The Kolbe Center has arranged for Gregorian Masses to be offered for Joe, beginning yesterday, August 21, but please remember him and his family in your prayers.
Dr. Joseph A. Strada (1945-2026)
An obituary at legacy.com included the following information about Dr. Joseph Strada:
Joseph Anthony Strada, age 81, of Fairfax, Virginia, passed away peacefully at home, on July 28, 2026, after a long, yet heroic cancer journey. He was a devoted Catholic, a proud American patriot, and a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Joe, born on May 25, 1945, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Antonio and Mary (Palladino) Strada, was a faithful member of St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church where he attended Mass regularly and lived his faith throughout the years.
Joe, known for his deep love of God and his unwavering devotion to his family, is preceded in death by his beloved parents, Antonio and Mary Strada; survived by his wife of 58 years, JoAnne Marie (Leps); and his siblings, John and Diane Strada and Julia (Strada) Harbora. He leaves behind his children: Dominick and Brandi (Bottorff) Strada, Tanya and Kenneth Montgomery, Amy and Rick Storey, Angela and Scott Carter, Joseph and Margaret (Rohan) Strada, and Martin Strada. He is lovingly remembered by his grandchildren: Dominick, Nicholas, Alexander & Augustine Strada; Luke Montgomery; Mary (Storey) and Dominic Carolla, Anthony and Bridget (Schneider) Storey, Michael & Leo Storey; Madeline, Emma, Julia, Stella, Charlotte & Gianna Carter; Sebastian, Beckett, Shiloh & Sienna Strada; as well as his great-grandchildren: Francesa & Vivien Carolla, and Diana & Albert Storey. For more than 58 years, Joe shared a marriage built on commitment, loyalty, sacrifice, and love. Together, he and JoAnne built a beautiful family legacy.
Joe had fierce pride in our nation. He proudly served his country flying for the U.S Navy . . . retiring as a Navy Captain in 1993. He was highly intelligent and had a lifelong love of learning and passing knowledge on to others, especially to his children and grandchildren. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Villanova University in 1967. Later, he obtained a Master of Science, an Engineer’s Degree, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering and Mathematics from the Naval Postgraduate School.
In 1977, Joe served as an original member of the very first test team for the Global Positioning System (GPS), directly bridging military operational needs with tactical navigation technology. A year later, Joe advanced as a highly vetted NASA Astronaut finalist for the Shuttle Challenger program, representing top-tier naval aviation expertise and physical readiness. In 1980, Joe was stationed in England, at the Office of Naval Research in London. Over a multi-decade career rising to the rank of Navy Captain, his deployments transitioned from standard naval pilot operations into specialized joint-command tech roles and aerospace operations. His primary naval milestones reflect a highly decorated career tied to cutting-edge military engineering and aviation technology.
After retiring from the Navy, Joe began work at The Aerospace Corporation. There he served as General Manager of the Electronic Programs Division overseeing low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite launches for defense systems in Northern Virgina. The NRO awarded him the NRO Gold Medal in July 2013, one of very few awards given to an Aerospace employee. Joe retired in 2018.
Throughout his busy life, Joe managed to enjoy several fulfilling hobbies with his children, wife, and many friends. He spent precious time camping with his family throughout the American Southwest, discovering ruins of castles and churches all over the British Isles, exploring Europe with his young family, skiing the famous mountain ranges, being a pet owner of seven German Shepherds, jogging countless miles with co-workers and training for marathons, as well as enjoying the chemistry of his swimming pool, and the wildlife in his pond.
Most importantly, Joe was a devout Catholic. He loved learning about his Faith, sharing his Faith, and teaching his Faith. He was a catechist for many years, helping dozens of catechumens discover the beauty of the One, True Faith. Joe was a man of virtue and honor. A man who kept his word. A man who loved deeply, whose life was defined by hard work, integrity and love of family. For more than 81 years, he lived a life that truly mattered.
Dr. Joseph A. Strada vs. the Mythical Millions and Billions of Years
I met Joe at the very beginning of the Kolbe Center, and he participated in the first major Kolbe Center conference which was held at the Seton School in Manassas, Virginia, in 2001. According to a press release that we published on June 18, 2001:
This Friday through Sunday, June 22-24, at the Seton School in Manassas, Va., Ambassador and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes will meet with a stellar line up of scientists, philosophers, and theologians to discuss the evidence against Darwinian evolution, the molecules-to-man theory. During this meeting, open to the public and the media, the speakers will address the roots of the culture of death in the molecules-to-man theory of origins and the superiority of the theory of special creation in the light of Scripture, Tradition, and modern natural science.
This 1st International Catholic Family Conference on Creation, sponsored by the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, will provide a forum for prominent Catholics to present the evidence from their respective disciplines in favor of special creation and against molecules-to-man evolution. According to the special creation model, God created myriad creatures, including man, by divine fiat and, later, after the Fall, engineered a global Flood that produced most of the “fossil record.”
According to conference organizer Hugh Owen, the convert son of a former Secretary General of International Planned Parenthood, the myth of molecules-to-man evolution was responsible for his father’s loss of faith. Owen’s father embraced secular humanism and the anti-Christian agenda of Planned Parenthood. By exposing the molecules-to-man myth, the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation plans to lead a re-evangelization of the Western world.
In addition to Ambassador Alan Keyes, speakers include Prof. Josef Seifert, rector of the International Academy of Philosophy at Liechtenstein; Prof. Maciej Giertych of the Polish Institute of Dendrology; Dr. Robert Bennett, retired research physicist for Bell Labs; Fr. Brian Harrison, editor of Living Tradition; Dr. Robin Bernhoft, surgeon and pro-life leader; Dr. Joseph Strada, aerospace engineer; pioneering French geologist Guy Berthault; Gerard Keane, author of Creation Rediscovered; and Robert Sungenis, president of Catholic Apologetics International.
Dr. Strada participated in many conferences and seminars with me in the early years of the Kolbe Center, and his participation meant a great deal to me because in those days we were continually advised to stick to arguments for intelligent design and avoid the topic of the age of the universe—lest we be dismissed as “ignorant fundamentalists.” That certainly had something to do with the fact that the press release cited above included the following footnote:
Please note that the Seton School does not necessarily endorse the views of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation or of the speakers at the International Catholic Family Conference on Creation.
I am eternally grateful for Joe’s willingness to risk scorn and ridicule for his conviction that the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, rightly interpreted, actually harmonized much better with the traditional Creation/Providence/Flood Framework than with the mythological framework of Molecules-to-Man Evolution. I remember one occasion when a priest friend invited Joe and me to give a presentation at a Catholic school in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. After doing our best to give the middle school-aged children a totally different perspective on origins than the one that most of them had received during their entire lives up to that point, an irate parent accosted us in the parking lot.
Joe had been a fighter pilot and was not easily intimidated, but it was amazing to see how enraged this particular father was that his child’s faith in the central myth of secular academia had been challenged. It was not the first or the last time that I witnessed this kind of reaction from parents—a reaction that reflected the parents’ very reasonable fear that a rejection of evolution would seriously compromise their children’s chances of academic and professional success. I told Joe later that I was quite sure that the irate parent would not have been nearly so upset if we had denied the Divinity of Christ! Thanks in large part to Joe’s cheerful perseverance in defense of the Divinely Revealed Age of the Universe, more and more Catholic scientists came forward, willing to admit that the Emperor of Evolution’s Billions of Years-Old Clothes existed only in the minds of the high priests of Scientism. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace! Amen.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux vs. Peter Abelard : A Type of the Creation-Evolution Debate
Two days ago, on August 20, we celebrated the Feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church. One of the most remarkable foreshadowings of the modernist revolt against the true doctrine of creation took place almost one thousand years ago when St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached against several heresies which bore many similarities to modern errors.
One of the plays produced at a Kolbe leadership retreat focused on the confrontation between St. Bernard and Abbot Peter Abelard which anticipated the ongoing struggle between a humanist worldview whose starting point is skepticism and human science and the Catholic worldview whose starting point is the certitude of Faith and theological science.
Abbot Abelard anticipated the theistic evolutionist mentality by denying the original holiness of Adam, the effects of Original Sin, and the necessity of Our Lord’s work of Redemption to restore human nature.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
Peter Abelard: Striving by Reason to go Beyond Reason
When Abbot Abelard was called to appear before the King of France, several Bishops, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bernard confronted him with a number of heretical propositions that had been extracted from his writings. St. Bernard invited Abelard to defend, clarify, or renounce the propositions, but Abelard announced his intention to appeal to Rome and refused to respond. This prompted St. Bernard to write a letter to Pope Innocent II identifying the principal disorder at the root of all of Abelard’s errors. He wrote:
The Abbot Abelard lifts his head to heaven, examines the lofty things of God, and returns to report to us the ineffable words which it were not lawful for a man to utter; and while he is ready to render a reason for all things, even for those which are above reason, he is presuming against both reason and faith; since what can be more contrary to reason than to strive by reason to go beyond reason? And what could be more contrary to faith than to refuse our belief to that which we cannot attain by reason?
Peter Abelard
Faith: Not an Opinion but a Certitude
Abelard stood near the head of a long line of Catholic intellectuals who would seek to render a natural explanation for things that have no natural explanation – most especially for the origins of man and the universe. But St. Bernard of Clairvaux saw clearly what we nowadays often forget – that it is impossible to defend a supernatural reality, like fiat creation or the Virgin birth, by offering a natural explanation. Indeed, he saw that to attempt to defend the revealed truths of our faith like the fiat creation of all things at the beginning of time with reason alone is to call into question the unshakable firmness of our faith:
Far be it from us to think, as this man does, that anything in our faith or hope is left suspended on a doubtful opinion, and is not rather founded altogether on the certain and solid truth, divinely attested by oracles and miracles, established and consecrated by the childbirth of the Virgin, by the Blood of the Redeemer, by the splendor of His Resurrection. These testimonies are too credible for doubt. But if even they were at all less certain, the Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the sons of God. How, then, can anyone dare to say that faith is opinion; unless he is one who has not yet received the Spirit, or who ignores the Gospel, or thinks it a fable? . . . For faith is not an opinion; it is a certitude.
Just a little over a hundred years ago, in the same land of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard, the young Carmelite nun who was called “the greatest saint of modern times” by Pope St. Pius X, St. Therese of Lisieux, experienced the worst temptation of her life as she lay dying. It was the temptation to which Abbot Peter Abelard had yielded and to which all modernists succumb, to one degree or another:
St. Therese of Lisieux
If you only knew what frightful thoughts obsess me. Pray very much for me so that I do not listen to the Devil who wants to persuade me about so many lies. It is the reasoning of the worst materialists that is imposed upon my mind. Later, unceasingly making new advances, science will explain everything naturally. We shall have the absolute reason for everything that exists …(emphasis added)
Through the prayers of the Mother of God, may the Holy Ghost deliver us from all evil and error, and lead us into all the Truth!
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. In honor of our dear friend Dr. Joseph Strada, we have made his talk on the age of the universe available for no suggested donation at all.
