The Galileo Affair

Whenever anyone wants to point to the anti-intellectualism of Christianity, the immediately point to the case of Galileo Galilei , the Renaissance physician, physicist, and astronomer famously prosecuted by the Catholic Church in 1632 for suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The so-called “Galileo affair” really started nearly a century before Galileo’s trial when with Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death. In it, he challenged the generally accepted geocentric theory of Claudius Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe. Ptolemy was a 2nd century Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt. A mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and astrologer, Ptolemy proposed a geocentric universe where the Earth was the center of the universe and all the heavenly bodies rotated around it.

Ptolemy’s theory held sway for almost 1500 years. The publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1542 was the first serious challenge to Ptolemy and it also challenged the official position of the Church that the Earth was the center of the universe. The Church, based on scripture, held, "the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved" (Psalm 104:5) and that "…the sun rises and sets and returns to its place" (Ecclesiastes 1:5). Strangely enough, the Church did not react strongly to De revolutionibus when it was first released, and it was only the gradual acceptance of the Copernican thinking that that provoked the Church to take action.

In the late 1570’s, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is response to De revolutionibus developed has geo-heliocentric theory that held that the Earth was the fixed center of the universe, but that the Moon and Sun circled the Earth and the planets circled the Sun.

In this depiction of the Tychonic system, the objects on blue orbits (the Moon and the Sun) revolve around the Earth. The objects on orange orbits (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) revolve around the Sun. Around all is a sphere of fixed stars

Attacks on the Copernican system accelerated throughout the remainder of the 16th century, and by 1616, the Church was poised to ban the Copernican theory as heretical. It was at that point that Galileo entered the fray, offering a defense of Copernicus in Rome. In spite of Galileo’s effort, a decree of the Congregation of the Index was issued, declaring that the ideas that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved were "false" and "altogether contrary to Holy Scripture", and suspending Copernicus's De Revolutionibus until it could be corrected.

Galileo was warned that the Copernican theory could not be "defended or held", and was ordered to abandon their belief. Galileo promised to obey and remained silent on the subject until 1632. He revived his interest in the subject following the election of his friend Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. The result was the book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

Almost immediately following publication, Galileo was ordered to come to Rome to stand trial. His “friend” Urban had begun to fall more and more under the influence of court intrigue and the problem of Galileo was placed before him by court insiders and enemies of Galileo. Coming on the heels of recent criticism that Urban was soft on defending the church, he permitted the trial of Galileo to go forward. Galileo arrived in Rome in February 1633 and was brought before the Inquisition. Throughout his trial, Galileo denied belief in or support for Copernican heliocentrism, but he did admit that, contrary to his true intention, a reader of his Dialogue could well have obtained the impression that it was intended to be a defense of Copernicanism. The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on June 22 in three essential parts:

1) Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the center of the universe, that the Earth is not at its center and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.

2) He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life.

3) His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

Galileo remained under house arrest for the remainder of his life and when he died in 1643, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II, wished to bury him in the main body of the Basilica of Santa Croce and to erect a marble mausoleum in his honour, but these plans were scrapped, after Pope Urban VIII protested because Galileo was condemned for "vehement suspicion of heresy". He was instead buried in a small room next to the novices' chapel of the Basilica.

The Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned Dialogue) in Florence. In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of an edition of Galileo's complete scientific works which included a mildly censored version of the Dialogue. In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus remained. All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index.

On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture.

In its 2000 year history, the Catholic Church has made a number of mistakes, some far more consequential and cruel that its action against Galileo, but the “Galileo affair” more than any other has been the popular emblem of Church anti-intellectualism. In the early 1870s, scientist John William Draper espoused what came to be called “conflict theory” which posited there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science and that the relationship between religion and science inevitably leads to public hostility. Even though modern historians no longer support this idea, it has remained fixed in public consciousness.

The facts suggests while there were individuals and period in the history of the Church that were openly opposed to scientific investigation, the overall impact of the Catholic Church has been remarkably progressive. In responding to Draper’s position, James Joseph Walsh (1908) wrote:

. . . the story of the supposed opposition of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue to harbor it.

The Church, in fact, has a long history of support for the sciences. After the Fall of Rome, it was the Catholic Church which gradually re-established scholarship in Western Europe through the preservation of Latin and Greek learning. The Church emerged in the Middle Ages as the central unifying force in Europe and became the founder of its first universities, which were preceded by schools attached to monasteries and cathedrals, and generally staffed by clergymen. It is noteworthy that the Catholic Church is, and has historically been, the largest non-government provider of education in the world.

In the 5th century, St. Augustine took the view that the Biblical text should not be interpreted as properly literal, but rather as metaphorical, if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason . Thus, the Catholic Church does not insist on the literal truth of Bible (although this general policy was not always followed throughout the Church’s history). The Church contends that natural reason, being a God-given capacity, is not opposed to the Church's teachings and the church therefore holds that its role throughout history has led to progress of science and intuitive reasoning.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts: "Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things the of the faith derive from the same God.”

It is for this reason that the Catholic Church does not take a stand in direct opposition to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, the position of the Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has slowly been refined. For about 100 years, there was no authoritative pronouncement on the subject, though many hostile comments were made by local church figures. In the 1950s, the Church's position was one of neutrality and by the late 20th century its position evolved to one of general acceptance.