Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
Date: Tuesday, 6 Oct 1992 09:26:32 EDT
From: Marty Helgesen <MNHCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Galileo (WAS something else


Dave,

You say, "At one time (April 12, 1633) the church began a series of
hearings against a man who stood against something that the Church
put its foot down on.  Precisely, the issue of Heliocentricity and
its famous professor Galileo, were silenced by the Church.  The
Church had official teachings that were considered sacred regarding
Terra being the center of the Universe.  It's impossible, the Church
shouted!  We are the most important in the whole of Creation, there-
fore the Universe must be centered around us!  Today, we all know
that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong."

There are several errors of fact in that statement.  It is true that
the Holy Office told Pope Pius V that in its opinion the proposition
"that the sun is the unmoving centre of the universe" was false and
"formally heretical."  However, that was never a defined doctrine,
and those who held it did so because they thought the Bible taught
it, not because they thought, much less shouted, that we are the most
important in the whole of Creation.  Note incidentally, that modern
astronomers agree that the statement that the sun is unmoving is
false.

In 1651, less than twenty years after Galileo's second condemnation,
a Jesuit theologian and astronomer who was opposed to Galileo wrote:

     "As there has been no definition on this matter by the Sovereign
Pontiff, nor by a Council directed and approved by him, it is in no
way of faith that the sun moves and the earth is motionless, at least
the decree does not make it so, but only at most the authority of
Holy Scripture--for those who are morally sure that God has revealed
it to be so.  Still, all Catholics are obliged by prudence and obedi-
ence . . . not to teach categorically the opposite of what the decree
lays down"  Riccioli in _Almagesthum Novum_ quoted by B. C. Butler in
_The Church and Infallibility_ (Sheed and Ward, 1954) p.83

We know today that Galileo was correct in his adoption of the Copren-
ican model, but at the time the evidence was not so clear.  Thomas
Henry Huxley, the associate of Darwin who invented the word "agnos-
tic" wrote in a letter to Professor Mivart: "In your paper about
scientific freedom, which I read some time ago with much interest,
you alluded to a book or article by Father Roberts on the Galileo
business.  Will you kindly send me a postcard to say where and when
it was published.

     "I looked into the matter when I was in Italy, and I arrived at
the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had rather
the better of it.  It would complete the paradox if Father Roberts
should help me see the error of my ways."  _Life and Letters of
Thomas Henry Huxley_  (Macmillan, 1913) v. 2, p. 424.

No informed Catholic denies that Church officials acted badly in the
Galileo case, but a lot of exaggerated nonsense has been published
about the case.

Speaking of widely circulated nonsense, there was, and in some cir-
cles still is, the idea that medieval churchmen thought the world was
flat until Columbus proved it was round.  In fact, every educated
person in the Middle Ages knew the world was round.  For a full
discussion of this point I recommend the book _Inventing the Flat
Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians_ by Jeffrey Burton Russell
(Praeger, 1991)

Marty Helgesen
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic