My Life with God in and out of the Church

This excerpt from chapter 11 pages 164-168 shows the fallibility of the Church
when her Inquisition condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun

Galileo

         One evening, with a heavy heart I took a walk under a full moon that lit up the sky and kindled my memory of Galileo. I pictured him peering through his homemade telescope. In 1609, he was the first human to see the moon's pitted and mountainous surface, the four moons circling Jupiter, and thousands of stars invisible to the naked eye. These stars flashed signals supporting the Polish astronomer Copernicus who wrote in 1543 that the earth circles the sun. The gleam in Galileo's eyes reflected the stars in the sky and the joy in his heart. 

Others did not rejoice, notably the advisors of the Pope. For centuries, the Roman Church had accepted and taught Ptolemy’s 1500-years-old theory that positioned a stationary earth at the center of the universe. In this system, the planets and the sun revolved around the earth - and Rome. What a glorious place to be! So, when Galileo endorsed Copernicus’s sun-centered theory, the papal court cried, “Heresy.”

          To determine the orthodoxy of Galileo’s writings, the Pope did not consult astronomers, only theologians. Before advising the Pope, these churchmen did not search the heavens through a telescope. They simply perused the Bible searching for texts that supported the Church’s position. They found two. One stated that “at Joshua’s order, the sun stopped in mid-heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day.” (Js 10:13) The other text read, “the sun rises and the sun goes down.” (Eccl 1:5) On this basis, the Church’s theologians declared that Galileo’s sun-centered proposition was “philosophically foolish and absurd and formally heretical, since it expressly contradicts the doctrines of Holy Scripture in many places, according to their literal meaning and the common exposition and interpretation of the holy Fathers and learned theologians.” These very words of the Pope’s commission, first read in the seminary, scarred my mind as with a branding iron.

          With that accusation, the Holy Office had grounds to brand Galileo a heretic. If he refused to recant, the Holy Office could hand him over to the civil authority for execution by fire, like Savonarola and Giordano Bruno and thousands more. So, the commissary-general of the Holy Office gave Galileo an absolute injunction “not to hold, teach or defend his opinion in any way, either verbally or in writing.” Galileo surely felt like defying that arrogant judge. But he wanted even more to continue probing the sky to prove Copernicus’s theory. Death could wait.

          During sixteen long years, Galileo kept a low profile, making research at home with his telescope. He suspected that stars would play a role in resolving the sticky mystery of the earth revolving around the sun. He was right. Two hundred years later, in 1838, the German astronomer, Friedrich Bessel fixed his telescope for months on the star called 61 Cygni and observed its apparent motion on the celestial sphere. The only explanation for that parallax was the orbital motion of the earth around the sun.

          As I continued my evening walk, I imagined how Galileo would have reacted if he himself had made that discovery in 1632. He would have rushed to the Vatican and the Holy Office and given the Pope and his entourage the good news. Then Galileo would have danced round and round the obelisk in Saint Peter’s Square, chanting, “So moves the earth around the sun.”

          In 1632, however, Galileo had not yet discovered the definitive proof of Copernicus’s heliocentric system. He had only indications that the earth revolved around the sun - enough to convince him but not the commissary-general of the Holy Office. Then one day, after sixteen years of forced silence, Galileo shouted, “Enough!” and published Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems. He did this not to spite the Pope, but to stir up further discussion and research on the subject. What he stirred up, however, was a hornets’ nest in the Vatican.

          Again the Pope sought counsel from theologians. Within days, they reported that Galileo had blatantly defied the Holy Office’s order not to defend the theory of Copernicus. This time Galileo was not charged with heresy but with disobedience of the Church. Against the Church’s command, Galileo had continued to believe and teach that the earth revolves around the sun. For this so-called crime, Galileo was restricted to house arrest for the rest of his life. In 1637, Galileo became totally blind. No more telescope, no more stars; only darkness and frustration until his death in 1642. Feeling sad for Galileo and mad at the Church, I returned home, collapsed into bed and fell asleep.

          The following night, the stars quickly rekindled my memory of their champion, Galileo. After publishing his Starry Messenger in 1610, he had a serious problem with the Church. Basically it was similar to mine: the Church’s claim to absolute authority over God’s revelation. We both wondered whether the Church really had the full right to determine what God had revealed and to defend her position as she saw fit. Galileo never resolved that problem before his death. But from the grave, by my recalling his struggle with the Church, he helped me find the solution.