Monty Python has done more to shape people's understanding of the Middle Ages than any history book.
The fact is that the Scholastic age represented the height of Christian culture.
So were one or more of his unalienable Rights violated, in your opinion?
“In 1616, an Inquisitorial commission unanimously declared heliocentrism to be “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.” The Inquisition found that the idea of the Earth’s movement “receives the same judgement in philosophy and... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith.” (The original document from the Inquisitorial commission was made widely available in 2014.
Pope Paul V instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to deliver this finding to Galileo, and to order him to abandon the Copernican opinions. On 26 February, Galileo was called to Bellarmine’s residence and ordered
“... to abandon completely... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”
— The Inquisition’s injunction against Galileo, 1616.
So no, the Romans were not simply conducting rigorous peer review of a scientific publishing. They were a despotic government. As for the pythons, if it were not basically true, the comedy would have simply made no sense. There is a reason they are poking fun at them. The same comedy would have got them killed at the hands of the church a few centuries earlier.
Look, no sane person today argues that the catholic church today is a murderous, despotic, institution, spreading more fear than Christianity. But back then, it did indeed. The apologetics are a waste of time. And are simply not needed. While we may quibble on doctrine wars, the church today is basically good. The respect one can hold for the church today does not depend on defending those A-holes.