Looking at history, at one point the church was one of the most into science. Backing other’s discoveries and a lot of monks and priests even being considered scientists. But then at one point science became heresy and some of the scientists we know of today ended up in arguments with the church and I’m honestly intrigued at how it all happened.
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It began with voluntarism and nominalism in the 14th century. Up until that time scholasticism focused on God’s intellect. Theologian philosopher Thomas Aquinas proposed that God’s intellect was central and rational. Because of this the creation reflected its creator. The universe was rational and as such comprehensible like its creator. This is really the wellspring of science. One of the basic assumptions of science is that the universe is comprehensible, and all one had to do was to apply rational thought to understand it.
Starting in the 14th century Don Scotus proposed the idea of voluntarism. Voluntarism focused on God‘s will rather than his intellect. Scotus suggested that God could will anything at any time and as such the rational nature of the universe was not necessarily solid. Nature like God would be unpredictable. The sundering of rationality as central to God’s nature was the beginning of the wedge between science and religion.
Keep in mind that scholasticism still existed and was the basis and focus of much of catholic understanding and doctrine. To this day Catholicism and science are not at odds with one another.
Monks and priests were basically the only literate members of society so they could write down their ideas or copy previous ones. A tiny minority of those people like Gregor Mendel actually did science, once literacy became a more widely available skill scientific knowledge exploded. The church didn’t back science, they backed the preservation of existing knowledge and supported people who weren’t going to question the existence of god or disrupt previous known science.
The apparent separation has more to do with political forces and power plays than either science or religion. As you observed, monks and priests made notable contributions to science, such as Mendel (Genetics), Lemaître (Big Bang Theory), or notable scientists having strong devotion to their faith (Pasteur).
One of the narratives that gets brought up a lot is Galileo. The story is retold how Galileo was charged with heresy in a sham trial, and is shared this way to highlight a rift between science and religion. Facts that are often left out of the story is that Pope Urban VIII was a patron of Galileo, and Galileo had published things mocking the pope, and that Galileo was in fact incorrect (he argued that the sun was the center of the whole universe). However, given the strong personalities, political forces (including the Inquisition in Spain placing pressure on the pope), and in general political mess, the entire affair was unjustly conducted. Pope John Paul II, officially expressed regret on behalf of the Catholic Church over what transpired.
Today, you will find the science vs religion charge to be very political, fueled by fundamentalism (strict adherence to a chosen subset of a religious belief), inflexibility, ignorance, and a desire to have one’s own side “win.” But while that dominates news headlines and debate, it cannot be said that religion and science are separate. You will always find individuals that want to over simplify things to make their argument.
This response is very limited to Christian/Catholic perspective. I am aware there is even stronger narrative for the coexistence of Science and Religion in Islamic history, but I cannot speak to that well.
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