After congresses and anniversaries, what remains clear about Galileo?
When, at the beginning of this year, the celebration began of the fourth centenary of Galileo’s construction of the telescope (1609), the Church showed her great interest that this year should serve to clarify the historical facts about the great scientist, clearing away in the process the black legend surrounding everything related to his relationship with the hierarchy, and thus relaunching the dialogue between science and faith. In this article, I do not dare to pontificate on what the science-faith dialogue should be like — the Church has doctors for that — but I do want to address the historical question of Galileo and the hierarchy of the Church.
That the matter is not clear even among ecclesiastics is shown by the anecdote told by Mons. Melchor Sánchez, of the Pontifical Council for Culture, who explains that in May of this same year “I was giving a lecture on Galileo in Toledo, Spain, to an audience made up mainly of seminarians and Catholic researchers, and I began by telling them that many people are surprised to discover that Galileo was not burned at the stake, was not tortured, and was not imprisoned. At the end of the lecture one of those present said to me: ‘I am one of those people; I always thought Galileo had died at the stake.’”
The curious thing — the Vatican Monsignor continues — is that in reality no one had told that participant this, nor had he probably read it. It was simply what he imagined. This shows the enormous strength of the myth that has been built around Galileo. As John Paul II said, the historical truth of the facts is very far from the image that was later created around Galileo. Everyone is convinced that Galileo was mistreated, condemned, tortured, declared a heretic, but that is not so.
To give a very recent example of “Galilean” ignorance, Dan Brown’s notorious book Angels and Demons contains a short dialogue about Galileo, whom it presents as a member of the Illuminati sect, and it includes a string of glaring historical errors together with some things that are correct. In reality the book refers to very widespread stereotypes: specifically, regarding Galileo, it presents the usual stereotype according to which he was condemned because he had demonstrated the movement of the earth. No: Galileo demonstrated nothing. That was the missing piece in his argument.
Galileo said — and his judges agreed on this — that there can be no contradiction between the book of the Bible and the book of nature, because both proceed from the same author: the book of the Bible, inspired by God, and nature, the most observant executor of his commands. If they have the same author, there can be no contradiction. When an apparent contradiction arises, it means that we are misreading one of the two books; and he says: it is easier for us to be mistaken in reading the book of the Bible, because the meaning of the words of the Bible is sometimes hidden and must be worked out, than to be mistaken in reading the book of nature, because nature does not err. A very clear criterion, shared by his judges and by everyone.
The Council of Trent, for its part, said that the literal interpretation of the Bible and the unanimous consensus of the Fathers of the Church had to be followed, unless there were a demonstrated truth that allowed for a spiritual or allegorical reading. The criterion was very clear: what happened is that Galileo thought he was on the verge of achieving the demonstration of the movement of the earth. It is one thing to be convinced that the earth moves; it is another thing to demonstrate that the earth moves. Galileo never demonstrated that the earth moved. He was convinced of it, and today we know that he was right; but his judges told him that they did not see why they had to change the way of interpreting the Bible, especially when common sense told them the opposite, without definitive proof. Galileo’s judges adopted a prudential position. Galileo went further. What was the error of Galileo’s judges? They should have refrained from condemning him.
Fundamentally, Galileo was tried in 1633 for having violated an injunction that had been given to him in 1616. The 1616 injunction, which Galileo did not obey, forbade him to teach Copernicanism, that is, the doctrine that says that the sun is at the center and the earth moves around it. Galileo thought the prohibition was not so rigid, especially after the election of Pope Urban VIII, and he published a book in which, under the appearance of a dialogue presenting arguments for and against both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems, there was in fact a blatant apology for the Copernican system. Not only this, which was already a violation of the prohibition imposed on him, but he also obtained the imprimatur fraudulently: he deceived the person who granted it by saying that it was an impartial presentation, when it was not impartial at all. For this reason he was accused and therefore subjected to proceedings, that is, subjected to a disciplinary process.
Galileo was never condemned as a heretic, nor was Copernicanism declared heretical. It was simply declared contrary to Scripture because, on the basis of the evidence available then, it was not possible to demonstrate the movement of the earth and, therefore, to say that the earth moved seemed to go against Scripture. It is very significant that in 1616 a group of experts declared that the doctrine according to which the earth moves around the sun was absurd; and that is perfectly understandable in the context of the time, because it could not be demonstrated and common sense said that the sun sets and rises.
Copernicanism met with great opposition mainly in the universities. Its acceptance was very gradual, and the opposition was not only in the Catholic Church. The Protestant churches also opposed Copernicus. And even in 1670 the University of Uppsala, in Sweden, condemned a student because he had defended Copernican theses.
In the face of Galileo’s trial, one may ask what errors the Church committed. On this it is necessary to recall the conclusions of the commission that John Paul II created in 1981 to study the Galileo case, and which Cardinal Paul Poupard summarized in his address at the conclusion of the commission’s work. With the following words — which in the address seem to be underlined — he highlighted his judgment on what happened: “In that historical-cultural context, that of Galileo, very far removed from our own, Galileo’s judges, incapable of dissociating faith from an age-old cosmology, believed that adopting the Copernican revolution, which moreover had not yet been definitively proved, could shatter Catholic tradition and that it was their duty to forbid its teaching” (…) “This subjective error of judgment, so clear to us today, led them to a disciplinary measure because of which Galileo must have suffered greatly. These errors must be recognized.”
Galileo’s judges were mistaken not only because today we know that the earth moves, but in that time it was not possible to know it. On the other hand, the history of humanity has been full of madmen who affirmed astonishing things that later proved false; today no one remembers their names. If Galileo had proposed a different theory, today no one would remember him. That was the first objective error.
In addition, Cardinal Poupard speaks of a subjective error. What was it? They believed that they had to forbid a scientific teaching for fear of its consequences. They thought that allowing the teaching of a scientific doctrine that had not been proved could endanger the edifice of the Catholic faith and, above all, the faith of simple people. And they believed it was their duty to forbid this teaching.
Today we know that forbidding the teaching of a scientific doctrine is an error. It is not for the Church to say whether it is scientifically proved or not. That belongs to science. What Galileo was asking was that the Church not condemn Copernicanism, not so much out of fear for his own professional career, but because if it were later demonstrated that the earth moved around the sun, the Church would find herself in a very difficult situation and would look ridiculous before the Protestants; and Galileo wanted to prevent this, because he was a sincere Catholic man. And he also said: “If today a scientific doctrine such as that the earth moves around the sun is condemned as heretical, what will happen on the day when the earth demonstrates that it moves around the sun? Will it then be necessary to declare heretical those who maintain that the earth is at the center?” That is what was at stake; it is much more complex than is usually said.
They said that Galileo had been found vehemently suspected of heresy, but they did not declare him a heretic. They asked him to abjure in order to dispel every doubt. Galileo abjured. He said that he had not defended, and had never defended, Copernicanism. His work The Dialogue was condemned to the Index of Forbidden Books, and a salutary penance was imposed on him, consisting of reciting the seven penitential psalms once a week. His daughter offered to do it in his place; and the most humiliating thing was that a copy of the sentence and of the abjuration had to be sent to all the nunciatures in Europe. He was sentenced to imprisonment under house arrest. That is to say, objectively speaking the sentence was not very great. He did not spend a single moment in jail; in consideration of his fame, his age, and the esteem in which he was held, he was always treated with great respect.
In reality — and this is what surprises many — Galileo not only was not burned or tortured; he was also a Catholic and a believer throughout his life. There is not the slightest trace in him of a freethinker. He was not an exemplary Catholic, it is true, and there are moments in his life that are not very edifying; but at no point did he renounce his belonging to the Church. What is more, he felt the duty to defend her from the ridicule she might incur before some Protestants. He says so, exaggerating as he always did, in a letter to a French nobleman: “others may have spoken more piously and more learnedly, but none with greater zeal for the honor and reputation of Holy Mother Church than what I have written.” It is exaggerated, but in any case it shows that it is true.
Galileo had three children, two of whom were girls. When he moved from Padua to the court of Tuscany, he placed them in a convent, for which he had to request a dispensation because they were very young. From one of them, Sister Maria Celeste, the correspondence between father and daughter has been preserved, and it is truly admirable. She was an extraordinary woman, very intelligent, very sharp, a great writer; and there is a book based on the correspondence between Sister Maria and her father.
Having seen all this, it should not be forgotten that there are still those interested in continuing to turn Galileo into a kind of “secular saint”, secular in an anti-Christian sense. In reality, he was a man of the Church, even with all his shortcomings: he lived with Marina Gamba in Padua without being married to her, and had three children by her. That was not especially scandalous, but neither was it well regarded. On the other hand, he had a very bad temper, like great geniuses in general. He had a terrible tongue. He was imprudent; he clashed with the Society of Jesus, even though the Jesuits had welcomed him in Rome and endorsed his discoveries when he was a complete unknown. He was somewhat presumptuous, vain, with a great ego. These are defects that anyone can have, and they take nothing away from Galileo’s genius.
But in the secular world, in reality, there is no interest in Galileo having been a secular saint; what is really of interest is to continue setting his figure against the Church. An archbishop of Pisa, who was an astronomer, wanted years ago to place in the Piazza dei Miracoli, the most famous square, where the tower stands, a statue dedicated to Galileo. The city council did not allow it, because it wanted to continue maintaining exclusive control over Galileo’s image, as if he were someone who did not belong to the Church but to the so-called secular world. For this reason, whenever someone on the Church’s side cites Galileo, there is a reaction of “instinctive allergy” in these pseudoscientific circles, who say: “how dare you speak of Galileo, you who burned Galileo?” But Galileo is a model of a believing scientist. He investigates the heavens, discovers new things, and tries to integrate his new knowledge within a Christian vision. He strives to show that there is no contradiction with Scripture, with the Bible. What happened is that he did so with all the overflowing enthusiasm that greatly irritated others. Without being a theologian, he entered a field reserved exclusively to theologians. In the Counter-Reformation, for a layman without theological studies to take it upon himself to interpret the Bible on his own, even if in harmony with Catholic tradition, immediately aroused suspicion.
Author: Fr. Alberto Royo Mejía
Source: Themes from Church history, Blog of Infocatolica.com
