No question, in Galileo's day the scientific authorities were all but unanimous that Ptolemy was right and Copernicus was wrong. Their model was a little more complicated, but it had to be right because it was scriptural. (Moral: Never ignore Occam's Razor when it applies.)
That's the point where I can't let the Church off. Scientists didn't tell the Church to persecute heliocentrics as heretics. They can't do that. It's not their decision; not their job. Somebody might have suggested as much--can't prove it didn't happen--but the Church had to do it. That's their job, their call.
You and I are in complete agreement on this point. In fact, it is exactly the point I try to make with people on this subject: the church, basing their interpretation of the Scriptures (And being helped along by cherry-picked verses of scientists; I suspect you'd agree with me that people can & do pull verses from all over the Bible, out of context, to prove whatever they want.) on what the Ptolemaic Theorists taught them as "truth-in-science", ended up following a terrible course of action. They compromised their views of Scripture, based on the supposed authorities in astronomy of the day. This is exactly the same kind of thing that people are calling on the church to do today.
The other fun topic is on flat-earth. Isn't Scriptural, never was, and wasn't initiated by the church. As a matter of fact, Washington Irving, in his book on Columbus made up the whole story about Columbus and the Queen's conversation about "falling off the earth". However, we still see how the culture still accepts that story as true today, when in fact it is not.
I find it interesting the dogma created by those on both sides which is based on either bad interpretations of scientific evidence or faulty history or both.