Galileo: The Trump Card of Catholic Urban Legends

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

[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?