Ballacer says "my religious order has a very long history of... scientists, engineers, philosophers, theologians, astronomers.”

Unfortunately the Catholic Church has a MUCH longer history of suppressing, torturing and executing scientists, engineers, philosophers and astronomers.

In 1600, the Roman Catholic Church executed Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher and scientist, for the crime of heresy. Bruno, a promoter of the Copernican model of the solar system, was stripped naked, gagged and burnt alive at the stake in the Piazza dei Fiori,under the watch of Pope Clement VIII.

In 1633 Galileo was ordered imprisoned; his books banned by the Roman Catholic Inquisition under orders of Pope Urban VIII. Forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest. Not vindicated until 1992 by Pope John Paul II.

Many more such cases can be discovered with a little research.

Note that these conflicts were very definitely about science, not theology, despite Church attempts to spin it otherwise in recent years. The original trial articles support that both these men were persecuted for their theories, not their religious beliefs (although either is indefensible).