About the Gaileo incident, I have an article on it which may be of interest
to you. It will be put below.
> difficulties with some articles of faith and I am trying to figure out
> whether or not it is possible that the church may change its position
> in the future due to enlightened truth.
Why kind of positional switch are you talking about? If you're referring to
things like women's ordination, etc. the book is closed.
Here's the article on Gaileo:
The Galileo Affair
No episode in the history of the Catholic Church is so misunderstood as the
condemnation of Galileo. It is, in Newman's
phrase, the one stock argument used to show that science and Catholic dogma
are antagonistic. To the popular mind, the
Galileo affair is prima facie evidence that the free pursuit of truth became
possible only after science "liberated" itself from the
theological shackles of the Middle Ages. The case makes for such a neat
morality play of enlightened science versus dogmatic
obscuratism that historians are seldom tempted to correct the anti-Catholic
"spin" that is usually put on it. Even many intelligent
Catholics would prefer that the whole sorry affair be swept under a rug.
John Paul II and Galileo
This is not, however, the attitude of Pope John Paul II. In 1979, he
expressed the wish that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
conduct an in-depth study of the celebrated case. A commission of scholars
was convened, and they presented their report to
the Pope on October 31, 1992. Contrary to reports in The New York Times and
other conduits of misinformation about the
Church, the Holy See was not on this occasion finally throwing in the towel
and admitting that the earth revolves around the
sun. That particular debate, so far as the Church was concerned, had been
closed since at least 1741 when Benedict XIV bid
the Holy Office grant an imprimatur to the first edition of the Complete
Works of Galileo.
What John Paul II wanted was a better understanding of the whole affair by
both scientists and theologians. It has been said
that while politicians think in terms of weeks and statesmen in years, the
Pope thinks in centuries. The Holy Father was trying to
heal the tragic split between faith and science which occurred in the 17th
century and from which Western culture has not
recovered. Following the guidelines of the Second Vatican Council, he wished
to make clear that science has a legitimate
freedom in its own sphere and that this freedom was unduly violated by
Church authorities in the case of Galileo.
But at the same time--and here the secular media tuned out--the Holy Father
pointed out that "the Galileo case has been a sort
of 'myth,' in which the image fabricated out of the events was quite far
removed from the reality. In this perspective, the Galileo
case was the symbol of the Church's supposed rejection of scientific
progress." Galileo's run-in with the Church, according to
the Pope, involved a "tragic mutual incomprehension" in which both sides
were at fault. It was a conflict that ought never to
have occurred, because faith and science, properly understood, can never be
at odds.
Since the Galileo case is one of the historical bludgeons that are used to
beat on the Church--the other two being the Crusades
and the Spanish Inquisition--it is important that Catholics understand
exactly what happened between the Church and that very
great scientist. A close look at the facts puts to rout almost every aspect
of the reigning Galileo legend.
The Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who had no brief for
Catholicism, once examined the case and concluded that
"the Church had the best of it." The most striking point about the whole
affair is that until Galileo forced the issue into the realm
of theology, the Church had been a willing ombudsman for the new astronomy.
It had encouraged the work of Copernicus and
sheltered Kepler against the persecutions of Calvinists. Problems only arose
when the debate went beyond the mere question
of celestial mechanics. But here we need some historical background.
"Saving the Appearances"
The modern age of science began in 1543 when Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish
Canon, published his epochal On the
Revolution of the Celestial Orbs. The popular view is that Copernicus
"discovered" that the earth revolves around the sun.
Actually, the notion is at least as old as the ancient Greeks. But the
geocentric theory, endorsed by Aristotle and given
mathematical plausibility by Ptolemy, was the prevailing model until
Copernicus. It was given additional credibility by certain
passages of Scripture, which seemed to affirm the mobility of sun and the
fixity of the earth. Most early Church Fathers simply
took it for granted; but they weren't really interested in scientific
explanations of the cosmos. As St. Ambrose wrote, "To
discuss the nature and position of the earth does not help us in our hope of
the life to come."
Prone as we are to what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery," we must
try to understand the prevailing attitude toward
science when Galileo began his work. Since the time of the Greeks, the
purpose of astronomy was to "save the appearances"
of celestial phenomena. This famous phrase is usually taken to mean the
resorting to desperate expedients to "save" or rescue
the Ptolemic system. But it meant no such thing. To the Greek and medieval
mind, science was a kind of formalism, a means of
coordinating data, which had no bearing on the ultimate reality of things.
Different mathematical devices--such as the Ptolemaic
cycles--could be advanced to predict the movements of the planets, and it
was of no concern to the medieval astronomer
whether such devices touched on the actual physical truth. The point was to
give order to complicated data, and all that
mattered was which hypothesis (a key word in the Galileo affair) was the
simplest and most convenient.
Toys For Virtuosi
The almost universal belief that the purpose of science was not to give a
final account of reality, but merely to "save
appearances," accounts for how lightly the Church hierarchy initially
received Copernicus's theory. Astronomy and mathematics
were regarded as the play things of virtuosi. They were accounted as having
neither philosophical nor theological relevance.
There was genuine puzzlement among Churchmen that they had to get involved
in a quarrel over planetary orbits. It was all one
to them how the "appearances" were "saved." And, in fact, Copernicus, a good
Catholic, published his book at the urging of
two eminent prelates and dedicated it to Pope Paul III, who received it
cordially.
That Copernicus believed the helioocentric theory to be a true description
of reality went largely unnoticed. This was partly
because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he
also borrowed from Aristotle the notion that the
planets must move in circles because that is the only perfect form of
motion. There was, moreover, the famous preface by
Osiander, a Protestant who oversaw the printing of the first edition.
Osiander knew that Luther and Melanchthon violently
opposed any suggestion that the earth revolves around the sun. So he wrote
an unsigned preface, which everyone took to be
Copernicus's, presenting the theory as a mere mathematical devise for
charting the movements of the planets in a simpler
manner than the burdensome Ptolemaic system, one that was not meant to be a
definitive description of the heavens.
The Copernican Revolution
But in reality Copernicus's book marked a sea change in human thought, one
that caught the universities even more off guard
than the Church. Owen Barfield, in his fascinating book Saving the
Appearances, calls it "the real turning-point" in
the history of science: "It took place when Copernicus (probably--it cannot
be regarded as certain) began to think, and others,
like Kepler and Galileo, began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis
not only saved the appearances, but was physically true
.... It was not simply a new theory of the nature of celestial movements
that was feared, but a new theory of the nature of
theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances, it is
identical with truth."
Copernicus had delayed the publication of his book for years because he
feared, not the censure of the Church, but the
mockery of academics. It was the hide-bound Aristotelians in the schools who
offered the fiercest resistance to the new
science. Aristotle was the Master of Those Who Know; perusal of his texts
was regarded as almost superior to the study of
nature itself. The Aristotelian universe comprised two worlds, the
superlunary and the sublunary. The former consisted of the
moon and everything beyond; it was perfect and imperishable. The latter was
the terrestrial globe and its atmosphere, subject
to generation and decay, the slagheap of the cosmos.
Ptolemy's methodizing of Aristotle to explain the motion of the stars was
part of this academic baggage. And it made perfect
empirical sense; by using it, ships were able to navigate the seas and
astronomers were able to predict eclipses. So why give up
this time-honored system for a new, unproved cosmology which not only
contradicted common sense (as no less an authority
than Francis Bacon averred), but also the apparent meaning of Scripture?
Galileo's Telescope
Such was the scientific mind of Europe when Galileo burst on the scene in
1610 with his startling telescopic discoveries. Up to
that point, the forty-six year-old Galileo had been interested mainly in
physics, not astronomy. His most famous
accomplishment had been the formulation of the laws of failing bodies.
(Contrary to legend, he never dropped anything from the
Tower of Pisa.) Galileo was a gifted tinkerer, and when he heard about the
invention of the telescope in Holland, he
immediately built one for himself, characteristically taking full credit for
the invention.
Looking through his new spyglass, he made some discoveries which shook the
foundations of the Aristotelian cosmos. First, he
saw that the moon was not a perfect sphere, but pocked with mountains and
valleys like the earth. Second, and more
astonishing, Jupiter had at least four satellites. No longer could it be
said that heavenly bodies revolve exclusively around the
earth. Finally, he observed the phases of Venus, the only explanation of
which is that Venus moves around the sun and not the
earth.
The response to these discoveries ranged from enthusiastic to downright
hostile. The leading Jesuit astronomer of the day,
Christopher Clavius, was skeptical; but once the Roman college acquired an
improved telescope, he saw for himself that
Galileo was right about Jupiter's moons, and the Jesuits subsequently
confirmed the phases of Venus. These men were not
ready to jump on the Copernican bandwagon, however; they adopted as a
half-way measure the system of Tycho Brahe,
which had all the planets except the earth orbiting the sun. This accounted
quite satisfactorily for Galileo's discoveries. Still,
Galileo was the man of the hour; in 1611 he made a triumphant visit to Rome,
where he was feted by cardinals and granted a
private audience by Pope Paul V, who assured him of his support and good will.
Galileo returned to Florence, where he might have been expected to continue
his scientific research. But for about two decades
after 1611, pure science ceased to be his main concern. Instead, he became
obsessed with converting public opinion to the
Copernican system. He was an early instance of that very modern type, the
cultural politician. All of Europe, starting with the
Church, had to buy into Copernicus. This crusade would never have ended in
the offices of the Inquisition had Galileo
possessed a modicum of discretion, not to mention charity. But he was not a
tactful person; he loved to score off people and
make them look ridiculous. And he would make no allowance for human nature,
which does not easily shuck off an old
cosmology to embrace a new one which seems to contradict both sense and
tradition.
Cardinal Newman, who was not one to think that secular truths are determined
by ecclesiastical fiat, wrote concerning Galileo's
crusade, that "had I been brought up in the belief of the immobility of the
earth as though a dogma of Revelation, and had
associated it in my mind with the incommunicable dignity of man among
created beings, with the destinies of the human race,
with the locality of purgatory and hell, and other Christian doctrines, and
then for the first time had heard of Galileo's thesis.... I
should have been at once indignant at its presumption and frightened at is
speciousness, as I can never be, at any parallel
novelties in other human sciences bearing on religion."
The Astronomer's Beligerence
But Galileo was intent on ramming Copernicus down the throat of Christendom.
The irony is that when he started his campaign,
he enjoyed almost universal good will among the Catholic hierarchy. But he
managed to alienate almost everybody with his
caustic manner and aggressive tactics. His position gave the Church
authorities no room to maneuver: they either had to accept
Copernicanism as a fact (even though it had not been proved) and reinterpret
Scripture accordingly; or they had to condemn it.
He refused the reasonable third position which the Church offered him: that
Copernicanism might be considered a hypothesis,
one even superior to the Ptolemiaic system, until further proof could be
adduced.
Such proof, however, was riot forthcoming. Galileo's belligerence probably
had much to do with the fact that he knew there
was no direct proof of heliocentricism. He could not even answer the
strongest argument against it, which was advanced by
Aristotle. If the earth did orbit the sun, the philosopher wrote, then
stellar parallaxes would be observable in the sky. In other
words, there would be a shift in the position of a star observed from the
earth on one side of the sun, and then six months later
from the other side. Galileo was not able with the best of his telescopes to
discern the slightest stellar parallax. This was a valid
scientific objection, and it was not answered until 1838, when Friedrich
Bessel succeeded in determining the parallax of star 61
Cygni.
Galileo's other problem was that he insisted, despite the discoveries of
Kepler, that the planets orbit the sun in perfect circles.
The Jesuit astronomers could plainly see that this was untenable. Galileo
nonetheless launched his campaign with a series of
pamphlets and letters which were circulated all over Europe. Along the way,
he picked fights with a number of Churchmen on
peripheral issues which helped to stack the deck against him. And, despite
the warnings of his friends in Rome, he insisted on
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