“A decree of February 19, 1616, summoned Qualifiers of the Holy Office and required them to give their opinion on the two following propositions in Galileo’s work on the solar spots. (The assessment was made in Rome, on Wednesday, February 24, 1616.)
Proposition to be assessed:
(1) The sun is the center of the world and wholly immovable from its place.
Assessment: This proposition was unanimously declared “foolish and absurd. philosophically and formally heretical inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology.”
(2) The earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but it moves as a whole, also with diurnal motion.
Assessment: This proposition was unanimously declared “deserving of the like censure in philosophy, and as regards theological truth, to be at least errouneous in faith.”
Catholics always get in trouble when they decide to be literalists.
The Church and the Protestants believed the same things here. But this is not how Bellarmine phrse3d the matter: He said that these hypotheses could be debated, but that it would be wrong to assert their truth since they seemed contrary to Scripture, and neither Galileo nor any other scientist was competent to re-interpret Scripture.