” He was a good scientist with a theory and didn’t want the Church to fall with a theory that he knew might someday be proved wrong.”
I have to agree that the Church has a long history of being wrong in its understanding of the world—its long insistence that the earth was the center of the universe being perhaps the most famous. But I think that Lemaitre’s objection with the Church delving into scientific matters was more fundamental than that it might back the wrong theory:
“It was Lemaître’s firm belief that scientific endeavour should stand isolated from the religious realm. With specific regard to his Big Bang theory, he commented: ‘As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question.’ Lemaître had always been careful to keep his parallel careers in cosmology and theology on separate tracks, in the belief that one led him to a clearer comprehension of the material world, while the other led to a greater understanding of the spiritual realm... ...Not surprisingly, he was frustrated and annoyed by the Pope’s deliberate mixing of theology and cosmology.” Simon Singh (2010). Big Bang. HarperCollins UK. p. 362
Point taken about Lemaitre, thanks for that quote.
However, was the Church really “being wrong” and “insisting” that the earth was the center of the Universe?”
Geocentrism was a scientific theory not a theological one. The Church theologized it for sure (e.g. Dante), but that was more because it simply accepted the science of the day than it came up with all this stuff on its own. And there was very good evidence to suggest that geocentrism was right—how could they know, for instance, that the “gravity well” of the Earth did not extend out forever, when everything about the motions of the planets could be explained with spheres and epicycles, when there was no observable stellar parallax, and when they couldn’t see any body orbiting another in space? (Remember—Galileo seeing the moons orbiting Jupiter is what convinced him).
Also, if you read the Divine Comedy there is a very interesting passage where Dante passes the sphere of the fixed stars (I think), and suddenly the whole world looks to him inverted, with God at the center and the universe on the periphery. This, he learns, is because he is now looking at a deeper reality with spiritual eyes and not physical ones. And of course who did he put at the center of the Earth but Satan? So as far as medieval theology was concerned, the earth wasn’t really at the “center” of the Universe, it was at the “bottom” of the Universe—the plughole into which all corruptible things fell.
If anything, I think the geocentrism episode underscores exactly what Lemaitre was trying to say—that the Church ought not wed itself too tightly to scientific theories.