"... the facts, however, have not yet been sufficiently grasped; if ever they are, then credit must be given rather to observation than to theories, and to theories only if what they affirm agrees with observed facts." - Aristotle, on the life of bees
The Church did not, however, assert that Aristotle’s thoughts was absolutely valid, nor was its faith dependent on Aristotle, nor were any Christians obliged to defend Aristotle.
"That Galileo often treated the motion of the earth as real and not hypothetical" - #3 in a list of "textual points offensive to the Church" in the Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The fixity of the earth was a point of Church doctrine, needless to say, and this was founded in Scriptural interpretation, not in devotion to Aristotle.
But Gallileo perceived the Church’s “Aristotelian-by-default” positions as obstacles to the rapid progress of his science. And so he trained his attack on the institutions of the church itself, using Aristotle as a straw man against the entire notion of preserved knowledge.
Where are you getting this? Galileo never attacked any institution of the Church, but turned himself inside out trying to conform to the Church's requirements, and he thought he was successful in this.
He never attacked Aristotle either, but only slavish devotion to his works. He insisted that Aristotle himself would be interested in and open to his findings.
It should be noted, a doctrine central to Roman Catholic distinctives is Transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Mass.
The teaching that things consist of substance and accidents is purely Aristotelian, and is actually essential to the doctrine of Transubstiation—namely that accidents (sensible appearances) can be different from substance. Hence the bread and wine used in the Mass may look and have all the other measurable characteristics of bread and wine...but their invisible substance is miraculously changed during Communion into the body and blood of Jesus.
Aristotle’s understanding of the nature of things—substance and accidents—is an absolute prerequisite to the central dogma of Transubstantiation. Hence the Roman Catholic Church to this day demands its members to accept Aristotle—at least when it comes to the Mass.
>> Aristotle opposed empiricism; <<
I did misstate myself; Aristotle didn’t oppose empiricism; he did believe that in significant areas of study, rational examination was superior to empiricism, a notion that the Church vigorously supported in matters of revelation. Following Aristotle, many Church thinkers opposed empiricism, but, yes, Aristotle did certainly find empiricism had its uses.
>> “That Galileo often treated the motion of the earth as real and not hypothetical” <<
If the church’s position was what you claim it to be, such a hypothesis would also be offensive. But as strong as the Church’s notion that the Earth was fixed was, the Church was actually so PRO-science, that they (in the person of St. Bellarmine) acknowledged even in the abstract that if such a notion proved true, they would have to confront their presumption.
>> Galileo never attacked any institution of the Church, but turned himself inside out trying to conform to the Church’s requirements, and he thought he was successful in this. <<
Oh, please. Galileo may have been a great scientist, but he was a bald-faced liar. When told not to promote his hypothesis, he did exactly that, and then denied that anything he had written could possibly be preceived as supporting heliocentricity, to the embarrassment of his defenders. “Who are you going to believe,” he essentially told the church, “me, or the plain language of what I’ve written?”