The AP is running an article about how the Church is trying to “re-cast” Galileo as a man of faith for the upcoming 400th anniversary of his telescope. As the AP puts it:
The Vatican is recasting the most famous victim of its Inquisition as a man of faith, just in time for the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy next year.
Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the Italian astronomer and physicist Sunday, saying he and other scientists had helped the faithful better understand and “contemplate with gratitude the Lord’s works.”
In May, several Vatican officials will participate in an international conference to re-examine the Galileo affair, and top Vatican officials are now saying Galileo should be named the “patron” of the dialogue between faith and reason.
It’s quite a reversal of fortune for Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who made the first complete astronomical telescope and used it to gather evidence that the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.
The church denounced Galileo’s theory as dangerous to the faith, but Galileo defied its warnings. Tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later changed to house arrest.
The church has for years been striving to shed its reputation for being hostile to science, in part by producing top-notch research out of its own telescope.
The problem I have is that we are always trying to rescue the Church’s reputation. Why doesn’t Galileo’s reputation need rescuing? After all, he came up with a theory (a theory that was only partially correct), insisted he was completely right (which he wasn’t), he then picked a fight with the Church when called a character representing the Pope “stupid” in his book, ended up with house arrest in a beautiful Italian villa.
Some months back I was listening to Catholic Answers on my Sirius radio. A caller inquired of Jimmy Akin what he thought of Galileo. Jimmy answered, “I think he was a jerk.” I almost crashed my car I was laughing so hard.
Now every smug little college student who manages to pass college physics 101 with a C- blindly repeats this the same pseudo-history of Galileo as proof that the Church is anti-science. These same little minds are just as smug and just as obnoxious as Galileo but without the brain power to back it up. (Even though he was still wrong, just less so.)
I sincerely hope that Galileo was a man with faith, I think he probably was. If he managed to make to purgatory, I think that part of his purification is living with the knowledge that he has become the patron saint of jerks.
December 27, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Amen. Galileo’s studies were funded and encouraged by the Church; he went south by demanding that his theory be made part of official Church teaching, as if the concept of mitosis should be part of the Creed.
I am angry that I was taught lies about Galileo and the Inquisition in grade school, and more lies about the Crusades in a Catholic university!
— Mack
December 27, 2008 at 3:10 pm
The book to read is Wade Rowland, Galileo’s Mistake. From Booklist:
In a revisionist look at the seventeenth-century battle between ecclesiastical authorities and Galileo Galilei, Rowland provocatively challenges the prevailing view of the episode. The central issue for the inquisitors investigating Galileo’s orthodoxy, insists Rowland, was never the sun-centered astronomy of Copernicus. No, much broader philosophical issues were at stake. And on these issues, Rowland argues, the church stood closer to the truth than did Galileo. The astronomer erred–in Rowland’s judgment–not in his advocacy of Copernican theory but rather in his endorsement of a thoroughgoing mathematical empiricism. And while everyone now agrees with Galileo in accepting Copernicus, the doctrinaire empiricism Galileo deployed to advance Copernicanism looks as shallow and misleading to today’s quantum physicists as it once did to the Renaissance theologians who forced Galileo to recant. Rowland won’t convince everyone that in retracting his Copernican beliefs, Galileo was affirming sincere faith in Catholic doctrine. But his lucid historical narrative–embedded in a three-voice dialogue of contemporary commentators–does open up long-hidden ironies and paradoxes surrounding a pivotal event in the evolution of Western culture.
December 27, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Maybe I’m luck, but I was taught in a college course that Galileo was, for lack of a better word, a bit of a jerk at times. It was a course on the history of cosmology (the study of the universe and its origin) which was in my opinion, quite balanced. The professor did an excellent job, describing the reasons behind scientific, theological, and philosophical positions and ideas at different times in history. He took neither side and even had us participate in staged debates in which the class was split into positions, made to research them and present the case. The team which won was the one with the most solid argument, not the one now known to be correct-in one case Tycho Brahe’s model of the solar system (which had the Earth at the center and all the other planets orbiting a sun which orbited the Earth) won!
We learned that Galileo was arrogant but also brilliant. At times, a combination of arrogance and brilliance and lead people to make some stupid mistakes.
I’m happy that the Vatican is involved with the International Year of Astronomy (2009 dubbed so by the International Astronomical Union and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). The Church has played an important role in the history of astronomy and continues to be involved in research and discussion with the field. This ought to be remembered at time when astronomy is being celebrated and introduced to millions.
December 27, 2008 at 6:51 pm
One of the things to understand about the Galileo case is that Renaissance Rome was not a post-Enlightenment democracy. That concept had not even yet been imagined. So to judge the Church authorities as if it had is decidedly unfair. Galileo was imprisoned (house arrest was probably quite posh) because he violated the CIVIL standards of respect for proper authority, not because of his theories. His refusal to wait for approval was the issue and defying the civic authority was the issue. (And because Church and state were intertwined this meant that Church was involved.) Every good saint in history always waits…even if he or she is right and treated unfairly.
December 27, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I have mentioned Jimmy’s reply before that happened in the last 30 seconds of Catholics Answer Live and so he had to be brief. I was laughing pretty hard also since it is so true.
When people bring up Galileo they never seem to remember that he also said that tides were a proof of his theory or that the largest negative response was from other scientists. They also seem to forget that scientific proof for his theory did not happen until quite a long time after his death and it was pure hubris to teach the theory as fact when he did not yet have any evidence. He intuited the correct answer and also built on the work of others – which he never wanted to acknowledge.
Or the fact that his harsh punishment was him having to say the penitential psalms over a short period of time. And then he got permission for his daughter (who was a nun) to them for him instead.
The Church certainly made mistakes in handling this, but Galileo made plenty himself and I would say was the more guilty.
December 28, 2008 at 5:57 am
It amuses me how the church (and a lot of you) is/are still hung up on how it was proven wrong hundreds of years ago.
Probably because this was the beginning of the end for letting the church tell western civilization how the universe works, and without that foundation, it’s a lot harder to assume the authority to tell us also how to live our lives.
Now we just need to get your idiot counterparts in the middle east to get with the times and then maybe the world can focus on bigger issues like food/water distribution and renewable energy instead of killing each other over who’s god is “real” and promises of virgins in the afterlife.
December 28, 2008 at 2:00 pm
It amuses me how the church (and a lot of you) is/are still hung up on how it was proven wrong hundreds of years ago.
The hang-up is clearly on the side of the smug C- Physics students. The only time I and most Catholics think about Galileo is when they go on autopilot and repeat the tired “ecclesiastical angelism” error and use him for an example.
And when someone can give me a decent reason why we should help the starving and not killing each other without resorting to relativistic nice-guyism, maybe I’ll take it seriously.
December 28, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Here again that smugness..
Got a name, anonymous troll?
December 29, 2008 at 7:36 am
Galileo was absolutely a man of faith. His findings were at odds with the church, but there were so many occasions where if he wanted to, he could have easily either gone into hiding or into Protestant lands where he would have been a celebrity. He loved his church, and I’m sure he felt betrayed by the short-sightedness and intolerance for the truth by some within it.
Any parallels to what we are seeing today? Mahoney…we’re looking in your direction…
December 30, 2008 at 1:02 am
This is one of the more intriguing situations, that I always try to expand upon when I’m teaching Newtonian physics (only time I ever get to, haha)
Pope Nicholas and Galileo were good friends. I can hardly imagine friend wanting to torchure another friend.
Had Galileo stuck to science, and had more proof behind his theories he would have been alright, but once he crossed the line between Theology and Science that’s where all his problems began.
The Church has no need to apologize because the Church was right.
All the major scientists in the day were clergy anyway (another little reported fact). And to sit and put something that’s not proven before a community and call it fact, of course it’s going to be destroyed.
The only thing the Church needs to do is to tell the story. When Protestants are writing the history books, of course the Church is going to come out looking horrible.
December 30, 2008 at 1:05 am
Deusdonat: As someone whose in LA’s Archdiocese, The arrogance of Mahony and Galileo at times seems absolutely understandable