But we tend to do just that! We place the physical, rational, etc. over spiritual. The worst error is when we cloak the physical, rational, with spiritual and present it as absolute truth.
The Fathers have argued that reason is not the way to reach or understand the spiritual, and that only through prayer, when "reason ceases and words fall silent" can we reach God.
If mankind, the Church especially, did not read into the Scripture "scientifically," Galileo's discoveries would have been hailed, as all science should be hailed, for giving us a more glorious idea of God's Creation. Nothing in the Scripture contradicts science when Scripture is read spiritually, and not literalistically or dogmatically, because the physical world and the spiritual world are separate, and mutually exclusive: science makes working models; Scriptures makes virtuous men.
What made Galileo's discoveries subject to "vehement suspicion of heresy" was precisely dogmatic and literalistic interpretation of the center.
But, in all fairness, this is easier said now then it was in Galileo's days, and I wonder how many of us would have sided with the Church, for the Old World Order was not without precedence and its own proofs.
I remember reading some detail about Galileo, and I was convinced at the time that the heresy Galileo was accused of was indeed a theological heresy. The naked assertion that the earth revolves around the sun would not have been considered heretical. Another part of Galileo's guilt was that at least according to his fellow scientists he did not really prove his physics satisfactorily -- he was correct, as we know now, but his proof was not sufficient. I do not remember the particulars.
We often take the popular history of science for granted: the Catholic Church had taught geocentrism and was against science, so it supressed scientific research, and Galileo was a model scientist who got victimized. In fact the Church supported science but insisted on rigor both in theology and in science.