From the Bulletin of June 21, 2020
Last week, I briefly highlighted some great saints to emphasize that God always sends more grace in times when we need it more. The list was woefully short and didn’t even address other well-known saints like John Fisher, Thomas More, John of Avila, Charles Borromeo, Aloysius Gonzaga, and Philip Neri. Towards the end of this tumultuous century, there is another saint named St. Robert Bellarmine, who plays a role what we’re looking at today: the Galileo Controversy.
Spend just a few minutes looking for atheists online and you’ll quickly come across people who point to the Galileo controversy as proof that the Catholic faith – and all forms of Christianity – is irrational and anti-scientific. This is, of course, not true. The Church to this day fund a variety of scientific projects, including the Vatican observatory. I think I may have written about this false tension before, but it’s worth repeating it now as we deal with this part of the Church’s history and tradition.
In case you’re not familiar the controversy, the Galileo Affair was essentially a conflict between the scientist Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642, and the leadership of the Catholic Church. For most of human history, it was believed that the universe revolved around planet Earth. There were a variety of well-thought out explanations and patterns based on this theory which seemed to fit what people could see very well. Yet, science continued to ask questions and the scientists Nicolaus Copernicus Johannes Kepler, at different times in history, proposed the theory of Heliocentrism – that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Along comes Galileo and he likewise defended the theory of Heliocentrism against what most other scientists believed. This is what most people who bring up this controversy fail to mention: that Galileo did not actually have proof of his theory and that most other scientists rejected it on scientific grounds. They simply did not have the technology at time to prove what we now know.
Still, the real controversy came from those people who did incorrectly try to use Scripture to disprove Galileo’s theory. Even St. Augustine, more than a thousand years before, argued that Scripture is true, but is also not a scientific document. Still, it was not always clear how to interpret the various passages about the Sun’s movement in the sky (Psalms 93 & 104, Joshua 10:13). On top of that, this was right after the Protestant Rebellion, which was largely fueled by people interpreting Scripture on their own and using that to justify leaving the Church. So, Catholic leaders were particularly sensitive to any interpretations that seemed new and this made them suspicious of Galileo. Eventually, Galileo went to Rome to confront the Pope, who asked his leading advisors to evaluate the situation. They condemned the theory, but St. Robert Bellarmine did intervene to moderate the situation. Although Galileo was told not to put out the theory as proven, he was allowed to conjecture and present arguments for and against it.
When Galileo met with the next Pope a few years later, he was given permission to write about it, but had to present both sides. So, he did write, but he also used his writing to make fun of the Pope and one of the Jesuit astronomers, thereby alienating most Catholics who would consider defending him. This lead to a rather infamous trial that has been greatly misrepresented. At this trial, Galileo actually recanted his position and was placed on house arrest. The claim that he was tortured into recanting his belief is absolutely not true. Historical records make it clear that the Church officially banned the use of torture. Further, the man who oversaw Galileo’s house arrest was his friend who would have reported any such illegal torture had it happened during or after the trial.
Eventually, with greater scientific instruments, both sides were proven wrong to some extent. Galileo was wrong about the Sun being the center of the universe and the majority of scientists at that time were wrong about the Earth being the center. The controversy was ultimately a clash of personalities with both sides judging too quickly with too little evidence. At no point did the Church make this a doctrine – we can’t make doctrines about science any way – so this mistake does not in any way disprove her authority to teach on faith and morals. It’s only further proof of human weakness at work in all of us.
In Christ,
-Fr. Albert