moving the debate onto theological grounds.
There is no question that if the debate over heliocentricism had remained
purely scientific, it would have been shrugged off by
the Church authorities. But in 1614, Galileo felt that he had to answer the
objection that the new science contradicted certain
passages of Scripture. There was, for example, Joshua's command that the sun
stand still. Why would Joshua do that if, as
Galileo asserted, the sun didn't move at all? Then there were Psalms 92 ("He
has made the world firm, not to be moved.") and
103 ("You fixed the earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever."),
not to mention the famous verse in Ecclesiastes.
These are not obscure passages, and their literal sense would obviously have
to be abandoned if the Copernican system were
true.
Scripture and Science
Galileo addressed this problem in his famous Letter to Castelli. In its
approach to biblical exegesis, the letter ironically
anticipates Leo XIII's encyclical, Providentis-sumus Deus (1893), which
pointed out that Scripture often makes use of
figurative language and is not meant to teach science. Galileo accepted the
inerrancy of Scripture; but he was also mindful of
Cardinal Baronius's quip that the bible "is intended to teach us how to go
to heaven, not how the heavens go." And he pointed
out correctly that both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the
sacred writers in no way meant to teach a system
of astronomy. St. Augustine wrote that:
One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: I will send you the
Paraclete who will teach you about the course of
the sun and moon. For He willed to make them Christians, not
mathematicians.
Unfortunately, there are still today biblical fundamentalists, both
Protestant and Catholic, who do not understand this simple
point: the bible is not a scientific treatise. When Christ said that the
mustard seed was the smallest of seeds (and it is about the
size of a speck of dust), he was not laying down a principle of botany. In
fact, botanists tell us that there are smaller seeds. He
was simply talking to the men of his time in their own language, and with
reference to their own experience. Hence the warning
of Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) that the true sense of a
biblical passage is not always obvious, as the sacred
writers made full use of the idioms of their time and place.
But in 1616, the year of Galileo's first "trial," there was precious little
elasticity in Catholic biblical theology. The Church had just
been through the bruising battles of the Reformation. One of the chief
quarrels with the Protestants was over the private
interpretation of Scripture. Catholic theologians were in no mood to
entertain hermeneutical injunctions from a layman like
Galileo. His friend Archbishop Piero Dini warned him that he could write
freely so long as he "kept out of the sacristy." But
Galileo threw caution to the winds, and it was on this point--his apparent
trespassing on the theologians' turf--that his enemies
were finally able to nail him.
The Opposition Musters
In December, 1614, a meddlesome and ambitious Dominican priest, Thomas
Caccini, preached a fiery sermon in Florence
denouncing Copernicanism and science in general as contrary to Christian
faith. The attack was clearly aimed at Galileo, and a
written apology from a Preacher-General of the Dominicans did not take the
edge off Galileo's displeasure at having been the
target of a Sunday homily. About a month later, another Domincan, Father
Niccolo Lorini, read a copy of Galileo's Letter to
Castelli and was disturbed to find that Galileo had taken it upon himself to
interpret Scripture according to his private lights. He
sent a copy to the Inquisition in Rome--one, moreover, which had been
tampered with to make Galileo's words more alarming
than they actually were. The Consultor of the Holy Office (or Inquisition)
nevertheless found no serious objections to the letter
and the case was dismissed.
A month later, Caccini appeared in Rome uninvited, begging the Holy Office
to testify against Galileo. Arthur Koestler writes
that "Caccini beautifully fits the satirist's image of an ignorant,
officious, and intriguing monk of the Renaissance. His testimony
before the Inquisition was a web of hearsay, innuendo, and deliberate
falsehood." The judges of the Inquisition did not buy his
story, and the case against Galileo was again dropped.
But the Letter to 'Castelli. and Caccini's testimony were on the files of
the Inquisition, and Rome was buzzing with rumors that
the Church was going to condemn both Galileo and Copernicanism. Galileo's
friends in the hierarchy, including Cardinal
Barberini, the future Urban VIII, warned him not force the issue. But
Galileo only intensified his campaign to get the Church to
accept Copernicanism as an irrefutable truth.
Bellarmine Challenges Galileo
At this point, one of the great saints of the day, Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine, entered the drama. Bellarmine was one of the most
important theologians of the Catholic Reformation. He was an expansive,
gentle man who possessed the sort of meekness and
good humor that is the product of a lifetime of ascetical struggle. As
Consultor of the Holy Office and Master of Controversial
Questions, he was unwillingly drawn into the Copernical controversy. In
April 1615, he wrote a letter which amounted to an
unofficial statement of the Church's position. He pointed out that:
1.it was perfectly acceptable to maintain Copernicanism as a working
hypothesis; and
2.if there were "real proof" that the earth circles around the sun, "then
we should have to proceed with great
circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to
teach the contrary......"
Bellarmine, in effect, challenged Galileo to prove his theory or stop
pestering the Church. Galileo's response was to produce his
theory of the tides, which purported to show that the tides are caused by
the rotation of the earth. Even some of Galileo's
supporters could see that this was patent nonsense. Determined to have a
showdown, however, Galileo came to Rome to
confront Pope Paul V. The Pope, exasperated by all this fuss about the
planets, referred the matter to the Holy Office. The
Qualifiers (i.e., theological experts) of the Holy Office soon issued an
opinion that the Copernican doctrine is "foolish and
absurd, philosophically and formally heretical inasmuch as it expressly
contradicts the doctrine of Holy Scripture in many
passages......
This verdict was fortunately overruled under pressure of more cautious
Cardinals and was not published until 1633, when
Galileo forced a second showdown. A milder decree, which did not include the
word "heresy", was issued and Galileo was
summoned before the Holy Office. For that day, February 26, 1616, a report
was put into the files of the Holy Office which
states that Galileo was told to relinquish Copernicanism and commanded "to
abstain altogether from teaching or defending this
opinion and doctrine, and even from discussing it."
There is a still unresolved controversy over whether this document is
genuine, or was forged and slipped into the files by some
unscrupulous curial official. At Galileo's request, Bellarmine gave him a
certificate which simply forbade him to "hold or defend"
the theory. When, sixteen years later, Galileo wrote his famous Dialogue on
the Two Great World Systems, he technically
did not violate Bellarmine's injunction. But he did violate the command
recorded in the controversial minute, of which he was
completely unaware and which was used against him at the second trial in 1633.
Papal Overreaching
This second trial was again the result of Galileo's tactless importunity.
When, in the 1623, Galileo's friend and supporter
Cardinal Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII, Galileo naturally thought
that he could get the decree of 1616 lifted. Urban
gave several private audiences to Galileo, during which they discussed the
Copernican theory. Urban was a vain, irascible man
who, in the manner of a late prince of the Renaissance, thought he was
qualified to make pronouncements in all areas of human
knowledge. At one audience, he told Galileo that the Church did not define
Copernicanism as heretical and would never do so.
But at the same time, he opined that all this quibbling about the planets
did not touch on reality: only God could know how the
solar system is really disposed.
As a scientist, Galileo was perfectly correct in rejecting this half baked
philosophizing. But he grossly miscalculated Urban's
tolerance by writing the great Dialogue. There he not only made it clear
that he considered the defenders of Aristotle and
Ptolemy to be intellectual clowns, but he made Simplicio, one of the chief
interlocuters of the dialogue, into a silly mouthpiece
for Urban's views on cosmology. Galileo was mocking the very person he
needed as his protector, a pope whose hubris did
not take such barbs with equanimity. At the same time, Galileo alienated the
Jesuit order with his violent attacks on one of its
astronomers, Horatio Grassi, over the nature of comets (and, in fact, the
Jesuit was right--comets are not exhalations of the
atmosphere, as Galileo supposed.)
The result of these ill-advised tactics was the famous second trial, which
is still celebrated in song and myth as the final parting
of ways between faith and science. Galileo, an old sick man, was summoned
before the Inquisition in Rome. In vain he argued
that he was never shown the document which, unbeknownst to him and
Bellarmine, had been slipped into the file in 1616
forbidding him to even to discuss heliocentricism. Contrary to popular
accounts, Galileo did not abjure the theory under threat
of torture. Both he and the Inquisitors knew that the threat of torture was
pure formality. Galileo was, in fact, treated with great
consideration. Against all precedent, he was housed with a personal valet in
a luxurious apartment overlooking the Vatican
gardens. As for the trial itself, given the evidence and the apparent
injunction of 1616, it was by the standards of 17th century
Europe extremely fair. The historian Giorgio de Santillana, who is not
disposed toward the Church's side, writes that "we must,
if anything, admire the cautiousness and legal scruples of the Roman
authorities" in a period when thousands of "witches" and
other religous deviants were subjected to juridical murder in northern
Europe and New England.
Galileo was finally condemned by the Holy Office as "vehemently suspected of
heresy." The choice of words was debatable, as
Copernicanism had never been declared heretical by either the ordinary or
extraordinary Magisterium of the Church. In any
event, Galileo was sentenced to abjure the theory and to keep silent on the
subject for the rest of his life, which he was
permitted to spend in a pleasant country house near Florence. As the
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "In a
generation which saw the Thirty Years' War and remembered Alva in the
Netherlands, the worst that happened to men of
science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof,
before dying peacefully in his bed." And it is
notable that three of the ten Cardinals who sat on the Commission did not
sign the judgment, although we do not know their
precise motives for abstaining.
Unjust Condemnation
Galileo's condemnation was certainly unjust, but in no way impugns the
infallibility of Catholic dogma. Heliocentricism was
never declared a heresy by either ex cathedra pronouncement or an ecumenical
council. And as the Pontifical Commission
points out, the sentence of 1633 was not irreformable. Galileo's works were
eventually removed from the Index and in 1822, at
the behest of Pius VII, the Holy Office granted an imprimatur to the work of
Canon Settele, in which Copernicanism was
presented as a physical fact and no longer as an hypothesis.
The Catholic Church really has little to apologize for in its relations with
science. Indeed, Stanley Jaki and others have argued
that it was the metaphysical framework of medieval Catholicism which made
modern science possible in the first place. In Jaki's
vivid phrase, science was "still-born" in every major culture--Greek, Hindu,
Chinese--except the Christian West. It was the
insistence on the rationality of God and His creation by St. Thomas Aquinas
and other Catholic thinkers that paved the way for
Galileo and Newton.
So far as the teaching authority of the Church is concerned, it is striking
how modern physics is playing catch-up with Catholic
dogma. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council taught that the universe had a
beginning in time--an idea which would have
scandalized both an ancient Greek and a 19th century positivist, but which
is now a commonplace of modern cosmology.
Indeed, the more we learn about the universe, the closer we come to the
ontological mysteries of Christian faith.
by George Sim Johnston
This article is available in pamphlet form from Scepter Press, P.O. Box
1270, Princeton, NJ 08542.
--------------------------------
"Nothing except a battle lost Breier W. Scheetz
is half as melancholy as a battle won"-Wellington breier@halcyon.com
Seattle, WA USA
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