Posted on 05/18/2009 9:12:37 PM PDT by bdeaner
The film “Angels and Demons” brings up the Catholic Church’s so-called war on science and the church’s treatment of Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. The following analysis sheds much-needed light on the case.
In October 1992, Cardinal Paul Poupard presented to Pope John Paul II the results of the Pontifical Academy study of the famous 1633 trial of Galileo. He reported the study’s conclusion that at the time of the trial, “theologians ... failed to grasp the profound non-literal meaning of the Scriptures” when they condemned Galileo for describing a universe that seemed to contradict Scripture.
The headlines that followed screamed that the church had reversed itself on the 17th century astronomer, and commentators wondered about the impact of the study on papal infallibility and that the church had finally surrendered in its war with science.
Which only proved once again that the trial of Galileo — even more so than the Inquisition — is the granddaddy of all Catholic urban legends. Galileo is the alleged proof that the church is anti-science and anti-modern thought. He is the all-encompassing trump card, played whether the discussion is over science, abortion, gay rights, legalized pornography or simply as a legitimate reason for anti-Catholicism itself. If Galileo had never lived, the anti-Catholic culture would have had to invent him.
Like many urban Catholic legends, we are all infected a bit by the propaganda surrounding Galileo. Here’s a little just-the-facts that might help the next time someone tries to throw this urban legend in your face:
Was the church opposed to scientific study at the time of Galileo?
Most of the early scientific progress, particularly astronomy, was rooted in the church. Galileo would not so much “discover” that the Earth revolved around the sun, but attempt to prove the theories of a Catholic priest who had died 20 years before Galileo was born, Nicholas Copernicus. It was also the church at that time, under the aegis of Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced one of the major achievements of modern astronomy when Galileo was in his teens.
The Western world still marked time by the Julian calendar created in 46 B.C. By Galileo’s day, the calendar was 12 days off, leaving church feasts woefully behind the seasons for which they were intended. It was Pope Gregory XIII who was able to present a more accurate calendar in 1582. Though Protestant Europe fumed at the imposition of “popish time,” the accuracy of Gregory’s calendar led to its acceptance throughout the West.
What did Copernicus discover?
Through mathematical examination Copernicus came to believe that the Earth and the planets in our solar system revolve around it — contrary to popular and scientific understanding at the time, which had a fixed Earth at the center of the entire universe. His manuscript would circulate in scholarly circles, though it would not be formally published until he was on his deathbed in 1543. But Pope Leo X (1513-1521) had been intrigued by his theories and expressed an interest in hearing them advanced. For the most part, the church raised no objections to his revolutionary hypothesis after his death, as long as it was represented as theory, not undisputed fact. The difficulty that the church had with the theory is that it was perceived as contradicting Scripture where it was written that Joshua had made the sun stand still and the Psalmist praised the Earth “set firmly in place.” Most important, the theory could not be proven by current scientific technology.
Galileo is often portrayed as a pure scientist ranting and raging against religious oppression. Is this an accurate picture of the man?
The myth we have of Galileo is that of a faithless renegade attacked by a church afraid of science. It’s false on all counts. Galileo was a traditional believing Catholic — his daughter was a devout nun — who saw no contradiction between his science and his faith. He had begun to study and write on the Copernican theory and was recognized as the leading astronomer of his day. In 1611, he was honored in Rome for his work, receiving a favorable audience with Pope Paul V, and became friends with Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII, who would celebrate the astronomer with a poem.
Sounds good so far. What happened?
Galileo produced his first book — “The Starry Messenger” — detailing his observations in 1610, describing the moons of Jupiter, the location of stars and that the moon was not a perfect sphere. Galileo became a controversial celebrity, while being carved up by fellow scientists.
At the same time, instead of keeping the debate on a theoretical plane involving mathematics, astronomy and observation, Galileo entered the murky post-Reformation waters of theology and Scriptural interpretation. His theory was that nature cannot contradict the Bible, and if it appeared to do so it is because we do not adequately understand the deeper biblical interpretation.
This sounds pretty much like a Catholic understanding of the role of faith and science. How did he get into so much trouble? Essentially, Galileo slipped into trouble on three accounts. First, he was teaching Copernican theory as fact, rather than hypothesis, when there really was no scientific fact to back it up. Second, the popularity of his writings brought an essentially philosophical discussion into the public arena, requiring some sort of church response. Third, by elevating scientific conjecture to a theological level, he was raising the stakes enormously. Instead of merely scientific disputation, Galileo was now lecturing on Scriptural interpretation. Galileo could have avoided trouble if he presented his work as theory and if he had stuck to science rather than elevating the whole issue to a theological dispute over the meaning of Scripture.
At the same time, Galileo was making few friends with the scientific establishment of his day. It is forgotten that when Galileo is portrayed as the hero of science over religion, most of his real enemies were fellow scientists.
Why did science at the time oppose his views?
Throughout his career Galileo was opposed by the vast majority of astronomers who still supported the Ptolemaic view of the universe, called geocentrism. The Ptolemaic system, named after the second century A.D. astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus, placed the Earth at the center of the universe, a view accepted as fact since the time of the ancient Greeks and that remained unchallenged until the 17th century.
Even after Copernicus raised serious questions regarding geocentrism, most astronomers obdurately clung to the Ptolemaic system. One of them was famed scientist Tycho Brahe, who constructed the so-called Tychonic system that still placed the Earth at the center of the universe with the sun revolving around it, but then suggested all of the other planets revolved around the sun in a complex set of epicycles. The invention of telescopes from 1609 brought advances in astronomy, but decades passed before Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and Newton’s laws of gravitation were widely embraced.
How did the church respond to all this?
Actually, the church responded lightly. In February 1616, a council of theological advisers to the pope ruled that it was quite possibly heresy to teach as fact that the sun, rather than the Earth, was at the center of the universe, and that the Earth rotates on its axis. Galileo was not condemned, but Cardinal Robert Bellarmine was asked to convey the news to Galileo, advise him of the panel’s ruling, and order him to cease defending his theories as fact. He also asked him to avoid any further inroads into discussion of Scriptural interpretation. Galileo agreed.
Did he break his word?
In 1623, Cardinal Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII. With the election of his friend and supporter, Galileo assumed that the atmosphere could be ripe for a reversal of the 1616 edict. In 1624, he headed off to Rome again to meet the new pope. Pope Urban had intimated that the 1616 edict would not have been published had he been pope at the time, and took credit for the word “heresy” not appearing in the formal edict.
Yet, Pope Urban also believed that the Copernican theory could never be proven and he was only willing to allow Galileo the right to discuss it as hypothesis. Galileo was encouraged, however, and proceeded over the next six years to write a “dialogue” on the Copernican theory. Galileo published his “Dialogue” in February 1632. The book was received with massive protest.
Why was the “Dialogue” so upsetting?
Galileo had so weighted his argument in favor of Copernican theory as truth — and managed to insult the pope’s own expressed view that complex matters observed in nature were to be simply attributed to the mysterious power of God — that a firestorm was inevitable. His scientific enemies were infuriated with Galileo’s often snide and ridiculing dismissal of their views. The “Dialogue” was also seen within the church as a direct public challenge to the 1616 edict.
The difficulty that Galileo encountered with church authorities was that he appeared to attack the veracity of Scripture with no acceptable proof for his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun. He had attempted to make such proofs through an argument based on the Earth’s tides (a scientifically incorrect one), but 17th century science simply was incapable of establishing that the Earth did, in fact, orbit the sun. And, finally, he appeared to be openly challenging a church edict to which he had earlier agreed.
What happened at Galileo’s trial?
Galileo’s trial did not take place before 10 cardinals as it is often pictured. Participants were Galileo, two officials and a secretary. The 10 cardinals would only review the testimony to render judgment. Galileo’s defense was that he had understood from Cardinal Bellarmine that he had not been condemned in 1616 and that the “Dialogue” did not, in fact, support the Copernican theory as fact. His first defense was probable. He was certainly not aware of a more restrictive notice that had been placed in the 1616 file specifically targeting him, which was revealed at the 1633 trial. His second defense, however, does not stand much scrutiny. The “Dialogue” was clearly a presentation and defense of the Copernican hypothesis as truth.
Seven of the 10 tribunal cardinals signed a condemnation of Galileo (the three remaining never signed it). The condemnation found Galileo “vehemently suspected of heresy” in teaching as truth that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world. He was found guilty in persisting in such teaching when he had been formally warned not to do so in 1616. His book was prohibited, he was ordered confined to formal imprisonment, to publicly renounce his beliefs and to perform proper penance.
Was the trial a battle between faith and science?
The trial of Galileo is most often portrayed in terms that it clearly was not: Galileo the scientist arguing the supremacy of reason and science over faith; the tribunal judges demanding that reason abjure to faith. The trial was neither. Galileo and the tribunal judges shared a common view that science and the Bible could not stand in contradiction. If there appeared to be a contradiction, such a contradiction resulted from either weak science or poor interpretation of Scripture. This was clearly understood by Cardinal Bellarmine, for example, who had argued just that point in 1615. Cardinal Bellarmine had written that if the “orbiting of the Earth around the sun were ever to be demonstrated to be certain, then theologians ... would have to review biblical passages apparently opposed to the Copernican theories so as to avoid asserting the error of opinions proven to be true.”
The mistakes that were made came from Galileo’s own personality and style, the Holy Father’s anger in believing that Galileo had personally deceived him, jealous competitive scientists out to get the acerbic Galileo and, frankly, tribunal judges who erroneously believed it was scientific fact that the universe revolved around a motionless Earth and that the Bible confirmed such a belief.
In his 1991 report, Cardinal Poupard briefly summarized the findings. The difficulty in 1616 — and 1633 — was that “Galileo had not succeeded in proving irrefutably the double motion of the Earth. ... More than 150 years still had to pass before” such proofs were scientifically established. At the same time, “(T)heologians ... failed to grasp the profound, non-literal meaning of the Scriptures when they describe the physical structure of the created universe. This led them unduly to transpose a question of factual observation into the realm of faith.”
Was it only in 1992 that the church reversed itself on Galileo?
Galileo died in 1642. In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV granted an imprimatur to the first edition of the complete works of Galileo. In 1757, a new edition of the Index of Forbidden Books allowed works that supported the Copernican theory, as science had moved to the point where the theory could be proven.
The story of Galileo had nothing to do with the church being opposed to science. Galileo was condemned because he could not scientifically prove his theory to be fact, because he was undermined by many of his fellow scientists, and because he had purposefully blurred the lines between science and theology.
Ok,, you are way out of the mainstream of Christianity now, so its silly to continue. But Jesus didnt come to set up an earthly kingdom and clearly rejected such suggestions.
You would clearly be happy in a full theocracy. Your choice, but not christian, american, or conservative in any way.
BTW, it might be 2am where you are,, but theres this thing called time zones. Try that out sport.
Again, to command that the very professors of astronomy themselves see to the refutation of their own observations and proofs as mere fallacies and sophisms is to enjoin something that lies beyond any possibility of accomplishment. For this would amount to commanding that they must not see what they see and must not understand what they know, and that in searching they must find the opposite of what they actually encounter.
- Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
So in your world,, monarchs ruled by divine right?? Wow, thats nutty. You might want to read a book called “Common Sense”. It pretty much annihilates the idea that Monarchy comes from God.
The only divinely inspired government in human history was crafted by Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, etc,,,
Once you look at the moon through a telescope, there’s no going back. Have you read Galileo’s writings?
Ah, if only the Enlightenment had come in 32 A. D.
Anachronistic.
You wrote:
“They were deathly afraid of anything that might threaten their theology, and thereby, their temporal power.”
That’s nothing but psychobabble. What evidence do you have? You are expressing a marxist view of religion and don’t even have the sense to know it. It is absoultely illogical - in fact it is IRRATIONAL - to believe one tribunal either sums up the Church’s official views, or its “fears” seen from some marxist armchair 300 years later.
Give up the marxist view of religion as a quest for power and you might actually begin to understand what motivates genuinely religious people. Don’t be suckered!
You wrote:
“Who in the hell is the Pope to have anybody ARRESTED?”
He was the governing authority. Did that not occur to you?
If a common citizen - a complete nobody - can execute a citizen’s arrest in our country would it really surprise you that the most important ruler in Italy could execute an arrest in the 17th century?
You wrote:
“The medieval papacy is about as far from the teachings of Christ as you can get.”
No, actually it’s much closer than you realize. It still recognized Christ as king. It still considered its job to teach, preach and aid souls in getting to heaven.
You wrote to campaignPete R-CT,
“But Jesus didnt come to set up an earthly kingdom and clearly rejected such suggestions.”
He didn’t set up a kingdom as people expected Him to do. He set up a Church instead. He gave it authority (that is, if you believe scripture). The problem is, when the Church has authority over all Christian souls on earth - and that’s clearly how Christ wanted it - then how does that avoid entanglements with secular powers? That’s always been an issue. Those who want the Church to exercise her God-given authority are not anti-science nor are they clamoring for a theocracy. They are merely denying the propriety of an all out secular society. The Church has a place in society - and if you look at the Bible - it’s a pretty big one.
You wrote:
“Have you read Galileo’s writings?”
Some, but not all. And once you have read his writings, you realize why he got into trouble with the tribunal. He sought to interpret scripture in a way that suited him and his theories. As someone who claimed to be Catholic, that was bound to get him in trouble sooner or later.
Bump for later reference
It’s not really a mathematical leap. It’s a conceptual leap. Same with Tycho. In Ptolemy you have a system which tries to explain what things look like with the assumptions of earth at the center and “regular [constant velocity] circular motion.” Appearances differ so much that epicycles and equants (centers which are not the earth but around which the planets maintain regular angular velocity.) Then if you look at the resulting account, you see that a lot could be simplified if you stopped assuming the earth at the center.
Copernicus still assumed regular circular motion. The world had to wait for Kepler for ellipses and a system which realy “saved the appearances.”
The REAL problem, and the reason Tycho was attractive, was parallax. If the earth moved, the “fixed stars” should have apparent motion. And they do, but the instruments at the time (I’m told) weren’t precise enough to detect it. And it didn’t seem to occur to folks that the fixed stars were far enough away to make the motion so small, so the absence of apparent motion was considered, as it should have been, a powerful refutation of the moving earth theory.
(We did Ptolemy, that is the general system and then the details of one “inner planet” - between us and the sun, and one “outer planet” at my college.)
Some of 'em, and when I read the Dialogue the impression that I got was that he was baiting the Church, and I got that impression when I was not only not Catholic but pretty anti-Catholic.
AND I've read the Timaeus, and some Copernicus and some Tycho Brahe -- and some Newton and some Einstein.
So?
Without measurable parallax, the heliocentric system had a problem. It could be no more than hypothesis -- though to my mind an elegant one -- until it coped with that problem.
Let's remember the honors heaped on Galileo before his condemnation. The idea that the Church was anti-science is attractive to some, but no more "saves the appearances" than an equant does.
How did Protestants respond to heliocentric theories? Is there any data?
That’s funny, because I could have sword I read in the article precisely that. Hmm. Go figure.
I think the record of his condemnation that I cited should be enough to give anyone pause.
Okay. I paused.
Then I noticed the straw man. This article does NOT promote or state or imply that the actions of the Church were consistent with a scientifically "enlightened" point of view. It DOES argue that the Church did not have on the science faculty the bunch of evil, mindless, superstitious paranoids that the "enlightened" like to think she had.
Then I went back to the record. And the record is that in 1624 Urban VIII gave Galileo gifts and honors and urged him to continue his researches. In 1612 Galileo's Letters on the Sunspots espoused the Copernican hypothesis and Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (later Urban VIII) wrote him to congratulate him.
Without measurements of parallax, heliocentrism must remain a hypothesis. Galileo was urged to write about it as a hypothesis. To this day, astronomers treat the Copernican system as a hypothesis, a discredited hypothesis at that.
Reviewing the data, data acquired with the use of sensitive instruments discredits geocentrism. Data available at the time discredited regular circular motion of the planets around either the earth or the sun.
So NO data confirmed or could confirm the Copernican System or even heliocentrism without regular circular motion. Available data pointed out flaws in Copernicus. But the comparative elegance of heliocentrism meant that despite Galileo's condemnation other religious scientists, e.g. Fr. Boscovic (100 years later), continued to use the hypothesis of a moving earth in their work and continued to look for data to support the hypothesis.
When what somebody says is false, revisionism is a good thing. Kepler revised Copernicus. Newton revised Kepler. Einstein revised Newton. Lobachevsky revised Euclid. Descartes revised Apollonius. I LIKE revisionism
The next time you want to go on a Catholics vs. Science field trip, check out the Jesuits and seismology or Nicolaus Steno (a convert from Lutheranism) and geology.
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There's a big difference however. Charles and his mother Queen E. do not claim any sort of infallibility, (be it ex cathedra or whatever) or lack of change in their powers, or the powers of the English monarchy, from ol' Henry VIII. There's been a revolution (and restoration--and then moderation) of change of the English crown since then which is huge--and is there for anyone to see. No one worries about the "divine right of kings" anymore, as even the most loyal English subject to the monarchy does not believe it.... However, not so with Rome. The same sorts of claims about papal authority are made today--by many on this thread, as were made 400 years ago about, and by, despotic popes. It would be as if folks in Parliment today were taking very seriously Charles' divine "right" to behead whomever he wants... Conservative Roman Catholics still say the Council of Trent degrees (which actually formally curse to hell all conservative Protestants) are in effect, as the Church, supposedly in council, cannot make mistakes. Oddly, when Vatican II says Muslims may go to Heaven... (and also retracts the condemnation of Protestants) nobody goes to the mat defending THAT particular infallible decree. Gallileo WAS condemned for his scientific work, precisely because the Church mistakenly believed certain things about the nature of the universe from scripture and tradition. The pope and the Church (shock of SHOCKS!) erred...and to do so is human. All Christians should be more concerned about the one human Being who does not err, namely our God Jesus Christ, Lord of the Church--knowing it is He alone who saves, while yes, still using a poor weak, and often erring, Mother Church to bring people into His mercy.
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