[cinives]

"I would like to underline the constant support she has given over the course of her two thousand-year history to research aimed at the cure of illnesses and at the good of humanity."

Galileo begs to differ.

[wagglebee]

That was dealt with long ago, so go back to your Jack Chick comics.

[Mr. Thorne]

Uh, given the circumstances, he might be more inclined to agree…

As I recall, history says it was the Copernican Theory scholars who accused him of heresy, or some such.

These would be the 'establishment scientists', which, given our current laws, would make them the pro abortion types, yes?

[Mrs. Don-o]

Galileo --- sheesh, I've written a bunch on this, and right now I'm too tired to go back and look up all that stuff. Sufficient to say, for now, that Galileo was judged unjustly and later exonerated, just as St. Joan of Arc was judged unjustly by a church tribunal and later exonerated (and proclaimed a saint)--- church tribunals are manned by human beings, all with their share of sin and error.

The fact is that the Church never had a doctrine on a geocentric solar system; it was Ptolemaic-oriented University professors who really hated Galileo's guts; they lassoed the Church in on the issue of "private intepretation of Scripture" and Galileo, who was rather brash, stepped right into it; he'd also rather injudiciously tweaked his friend and patron Pope Urban VIII by putting his views in the mouth of a fictional characer called "Simplicius," ("Simpleton," more or less --- and hey, popes can get injured egos, too) and it ended up with his being put under house arrest.

The injusticeof it was (belatedly) acknowledged and apologized for; it had nothing to do with Catholic doctrine; and those who try to make it into a leitmotif of Church-Science relations know little and care less about the real intellectual patrimony of the Church.

With a Schoolmarmish harrumph, OK?