Galileo: The Trump Card of Catholic Urban Legends

Pittsburgh Catholic ^ | 5/15/09 | Robert P. Lockwood

[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.

[AnalogReigns]

(actually in 1600 the University of Wittenberg, as well as that of the University of Geneva, probably a couple other continental universities in northern Europe, and of course, Oxford and Cambridge too, were free of papal domination.)

Of course your point stands, as I’m sure you meant universities within Roman Catholic principalities at that time.

[netmilsmom]

You need to read this book

A whole lot of Science came from the Catholics. It shows how they were far from closed minded.

[bdeaner]

Galileo certainly didn't think it was, but how do you explain the words of his condemnation?

The problem with Galileo is that he was not living up to the ideals of a good scientist -- contrary to the myth we have been told about him. He was a great man, and his contributions to science are immeasurable, but he lacked the virtues of patience and humility that are necessary for truly great scientists. He wanted to rush forward with his findings -- outstanding findings, and many of his conclusions would turn out to be true, but not competely accurate either -- and apply them to fields in which he did not have authority or expertise, into the realm of theology and biblical studies. The latter situation was his major mistake.

If Galileo had not been so adamant about exactly what the implications of his findings should be for biblical studies and theology, he would not have raised the ire of the theologians and biblical scholars--an especially insensitive thing to do politically when Protestant reformers were making the Church feel vulnerable to attack on biblical grounds. He did not yet have the empirical evidence to draw such conclusions, and he did not have the expertise in scripture in order to properly engage in a hermeneutic procedure to integrate what he was finding with biblical truth. That is something that takes lifetimes to accomplish, and we are STILL attempting to understand these problems.

I don't think any of the above justified the Church's actions toward Galileo. It was perhaps one of the biggest errors of judgment in the history of the Church, and history bears witness to the magnitude of the error -- that it has allowed the Church to be unfairly stained with charges of anti-science, when in fact the Church created the very ground in which Western Science could flourish. There is a supreme irony and bitter tragedy in this reality...The cost of sin is large, and beyond imagination.

But what if Galileo had turned out to be wrong? He would be considered a fool and would be forgotten to history. He was fortunate that his conjectures turned out to be mostly correct -- but he was still wrong about a lot of things, as others have pointed out in this thread. He was wrong about the heliocentric view and so was Copernicus. The sun is not the center of the universe, as we obviously now know. And the more we have come to understand the universe, the more it conforms to the Christian cosmological worldview, but a more sophisticated one that could not have been anticipated by the man of the Middle Ages. For an examination of that issue, I would recommend, for starters, Stephen M. Barr's outstanding book, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.

[Poe White Trash]

Have you?

[bdeaner]

Great book!

[bdeaner]

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.

Using the Galileo incident as a condemnation of Church authority on Scripture is, I think, an erroneous argument. Unfortunately that conversation is one that will have to wait for later, because I am about to leave town on a business trip. But maybe later.

[Poe White Trash]

>>> history bears witness to the magnitude of the error — that it has allowed the Church to be unfairly stained with charges of anti-science, when in fact the Church created the very ground in which Western Science could flourish. There is a supreme irony and bitter tragedy in this reality...The cost of sin is large, and beyond imagination. <<<

Then again, there are a lot of anti-Christian and anti-Catholic bigots out there (not to mention Epicurians) who have an axe to grind. If not the Galileo Affair, then some other incident would have been elevated to mythic status to slam the Church and “Religion.” And if they couldn’t find some event that would do the job — Bruno doesn’t fit the “scientist” mold that well — they could just make it up from whole cloth: look at the case of “Columbus and the Flat Earth” myth.”

After a certain point you’re no longer talking about history, just propaganda.

[Mr. Lucky]

The introduction to Copernicus' major work on heliocentricism was written by Andreas Osiander, a prominent Lutheran theologian.

On the other hand, the book was dedicated to Pope Paul III, so go figure.

[Varda]

“How did Protestants respond to heliocentric theories? Is there any data?”

There is information that takes a fair amount of digging. I recall that the “authorities” against Copernicus were all Protestant. Specifically the University of Wittenberg, Luther and Calvin all spoke out against the theory. An early effort to publish “De revolutionibus orbium caelestium” resulted in a rejection by Wittenberg to use their press. They did agree to publish only the chapter on mathematics.

[Varda]

"It must be noted that the foreword by Andreas Osiander was not authorized Copernicus, and that Osiander, who oversaw the book’s printing, included it without the author’s knowledge and without identifying Osiander as its author." link

[Mad Dawg]

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.

Actually, quite so with Rome. "Rome" does acknowledge SOME changes in its powers. Vatican City is a smaller chunk o' real estate than the larger chunk over which emperors asked the Pope to assume civil authority a few gazillion year earlier.

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.

At least you used the word "formally". Vatican decrees can be made to say whatever you want them to say if you ignore some and overstress or misinterpret others. To someone who wants more to know what we teach than to find or to cobble up some bogus inconsistency in which to trap us, there is no contradiction between the formal anathemas of Trent and the teaching that God's extraordinary saving acts might extend further than even the Church imagines.

And on other threads I HAVE gone to the mat asserting that the Church teaches, not unreasonably, that the unbpatized can be saved.

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.

This is "precisely" not true. Before Galileo's condemnation, back in 1624 Urban VIII is said to have told Galileo that the Church had never declared and would never declare Copernicanism to be heretical. (So says Wood, Thomas; How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization page 73.) Heilbron, in The Sun in the Church:Cathedrals as Solar Observatories, refers to statements by Church astronomers in 1642 and 1651 that heliocentrism was not heretical, and these guys were not condemned. Before and after the Galileo disaster Catholic priests and astronomers continued to explore heliocentric hypothesis with impunity.

Those who insist that the Church was simply resisting science in general or even heliocentrism in particular should provide an explanation of how Galileo's condemnation seems to have had very little impact on the continuation of heliocentric researches OR, for that matter, why Copernicus was not condemned.

Again:Gallileo WAS condemned for his scientific work,...

No. This is not true. Galileo was feted and honored for his scientific work. He was even given papal medals! Galileo was condemned for insisting, beyond his knowledge and in the face of the absence any confirming evidence of a parallax shift, that heliocentrism was proven fact.

In history as in science, facts and data are our friends. The facts and the data show that the standard slam about Galileo ain't so.

[Mad Dawg]

Thanks to both of you. I did’t know the Osiander connection.

[Lurker]

First, he was teaching Copernican theory as fact, rather than hypothesis, when there really was no scientific fact to back it up.

Wrong. There were mountains of scientific evidence to back up Copernicus.

Second, the popularity of his writings brought an essentially philosophical discussion into the public arena, requiring some sort of church response.

Can't have scientific matters uncommented on by a bunch of corrupt Church officials. That simply wouldn't do.

Third, by elevating scientific conjecture to a theological level, he was raising the stakes enormously

Where to start on this. It wasn't conjecture. Copernicus proved his 'theory' with solid mathematics. Second the only people raising the stakes were Church officials.

This article is bunk.

L

[Antoninus]

Is this science? No! Bad craziness! Burn him!

You fall victim to that most pernicious of modern historical trends--the desire to judge every historical occurance based on 21st century humanist values--the same values that allow our very own enlightened, modern society to legally sanction the butchery of millions of unborn children in the womb each year in the name of "individual rights."

I tend to agree with Chesterton:

"The modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious....It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors the in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else.”

It really is hard to get worked up over the fate of Bruno considering where we are today.

[Mad Dawg]

Wrong. There were mountains of scientific evidence to back up Copernicus.

Like what? There was increasing evidence to weaken Ptolemy. Mountains on the moon, Jupiter with moons, and phases of Venus. But to SHOW a moving earth, you gotta have parallax, I think.

Copernicus PROVED the planets move with regular circular motion? Nope.

[Lurker]

But to SHOW a moving earth, you gotta have parallax, I think.

Not really. All you need to do is follow the sun.

L

[Mad Dawg]

Not really. All you need to do is follow the sun.

What do you mean?

The problem is to "save the appearances," that is to put together an account which explains what one sees. The advantage of Copernicus is the comparative simplicity of heliocentrism. But if the sun is "fixed" and the earth moves, then the "fixed stars" should have apparent motion because the earth moves with respect to them.

And it turns out they do, but that wasn't detectable with the instruments of the 17th century.

Observing the sun showed the troubling phenomenon of a change in apparent diameter. My impression is that that was one of those things that made Kepler's explanation more elegant than Copernicus's

[Ditto]

They didn't arrest and put Copernicus on house arrest, did they?

Well Copernicus didn't call the King of the Papal States (also known as the Pope) a blabbering simpleton either, which is exactly what Galileo did in his book.

Church or no church, the fact is that the Pope at that time was also a reigning monarch and in the 17th Century, no monarch took insults like that lightly.

Henry VIII would have cut his head off and then drawn and quartered him, not given him penance and house arrest in a pretty nice villa.

Galileo for all his brilliance was also an egotist who caused his own problems with his attitude, not his science.

[GunRunner]

In other words, it's revisionism.

Damn right it is.

Not only does it leave out Galileo's lifetime house arrest, but it keeps brining up a glaring inconsistency; that the church didn't accept his theory because he "couldn't prove it scientifically". Yet the Ptolemaic model was accepted as fact, even though it could not be scientifically proven either (and was WRONG!).

[campaignPete R-CT]

lew
galileo claimed the sun was stationary. FALSE
he claimed that planets revolve around the sun
in circular orbits. FALSE

Scientists knew that if the Corperican model were correct, that they would observe a parallax effect when viewing stars, yet they did not. Why was that?