"Did the Church reverse itself on Galileo only as recently as 1992?"


Adapted from Robert P. Lockwood's article in the "Truth Be Told" section of This Rock magazine, the July - August issue of 2009. His timely article is called The Anti - Catholic's Trump Card.

His article's summary gives us the answer to this question:

"Galileo died in 1642.

"In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV granted an imprimatur to the first edition of the complete works of Galileo.

"In 1757, a new edition of the Index of Forbidden Books allowed works that supported the Copernican theory, as science had reached the point where the theory could be proven.

"The story of Galileo has nothing to do with the Church being opposed to science.

"Galileo was condemned because he could not scientifically prove his theory to be fact, because he was undermined by many of his fellow scientists, and because he had purposefully blurred the lines between science and theology."

"Was the trial a battle between faith and science?"

"The trial of Galileo is most often portrayed in terms that it clearly was not: Galileo the scientist arguing the supremacy of reason and science over faith: the tribunal judges demanding that reason abjure to faith.

"In reality Galileo and the tribunal judges both believed that science and the Bible could not stand in contradiction.

"If there appeared to be a contradiction, such a contradiction resulted from either weak science or poor interpretation of Scripture.

"[Cardinal Robert] Bellarmine understood this; he argued the same point in 1615.

"He wrote that if the orbiting of the Earth around the sun were ever to be demonstrated to be certain, then theologians ... would have to review biblical passages apparently opposed to the Copernican theories so as to avoid asserting the error of opinion proven to be true..."