On October 31, 1992, the Roman Catholic Church admitted it had been wrong to condemn Galileo
Galilei for promoting the Copernican astronomical theory.
After a 13 year investigation into the persecution of Galileo that led to his official condemnation
in 1633, Pope John Paul II rectified a wrong that forced the Italian astronomer and physicist
to live the last years of his life in exile, and worse yet, to recant his proven discoveries
to save his hide.
Through his use of the telescope – a tool he did not invent but greatly improved upon
-Galileo proved the Copernican theory that Sun, and not the Earth, was the center of
the solar system.
This scientific fact was in direct contradiction to certain interpretations of scripture and
was therefore considered heresy at the time.
The relevant text included Psalm 104:5, “the Lord set the Earth on its foundations; it
can never be moved…”
But Galileo had influential patrons such as the Medicis and Barberinis, and Pope Urban
VIII happened to be a member of the Barberini family, as well as a close friend and great
admirer of Galileo’s.
Pope Urban VIII also, before being raised to Pope, opposed a previous attempt at condemning
Galileo in 1616.
In the end, the Pope allowed Galileo to continue his study into both the Ptolemaic and the
Copernican theories, on the condition that he drew no definitive conclusion that would
contradict Church teachings.
Instead, he was to merely present the cases for and against both sides of the argument,
staying neutral in the telling.
Galileo agreed, but when he published “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,”
it was a ringing endorsement of Copernican thought in direct defiance of the Pope’s
order.
However, Galileo, who was Catholic himself, took the position that this was not in opposition
to scripture because not every passage should be taken literally, particularly ones dealing
with lyrics to songs, a position shared by many even among the clergy.
He might have gotten away with this even still, except for one little fact not often talked
about.
The Pope had requested that Galileo include the Pope’s own thoughts on the matter.
Galileo did this, but in such a way as to make the Pope look the fool, incorporating
his ideas into the arguments of “Simplicio,” (with connotations of “simpleton” in the
name) who defended the Geocentric view, often with bumbling errors in the process.
It’s not thought that Galileo intended to make fun of the Pope in doing this.
He was no fool himself and even explicitly stated in the preface that “Simplicio”
was in homage to the philosopher Simplicius.
Nevertheless, Pope Urban VIII certainly felt like he was being mocked in seeing some of
his own words put into the mouth of Simplicio.
Needless to say, making the Pope feel like you were publicly calling him an idiot was
not a good idea when you’re writing already highly controversial scientific notions about
the universe that is likely to antagonize the Catholic church.
Because of his perceived heresy, Galileo was summoned to Rome to appear before the dreaded
Inquisition.
During his trial, Galileo fervently denied that he had advocated for the Copernican view
in his work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Despite threats of torture, he still held onto his denial.
Nevertheless, he was convicted of “suspected heresy” and was required to “curse and
detest” the Copernican viewpoint.
Galileo was placed under house arrest in his home near Florence until his death in 1642
at the age of 77 (though was permitted to travel to Florence to see doctors).
Beyond being under house arrest, his punishment was relatively light compared to others who’d
been convicted of heresy.
He was, for a time, required to recite seven psalms of penitence once per week, but Maria
Celeste, his daughter, was eventually able to convince the church to allow her to fulfill
this punishment for him.
With nothing better to do while confined to his home, he wrote perhaps his most famous
work, Two New Sciences, which more or less summarized his life’s work.
After several failures to get this new work published, due to the prohibition on any of
his writings, he finally found a publisher in Holland willing to risk the Catholic church’s
ire in publishing it.
Since then, the Catholic Church has taken several steps to reverse its stance against
Galileo’s findings prior to the action in 1992.
Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” was stricken from the
Index, a list of banned publications, in 1757.
A preliminary report conducted in 1984 by scientists, theologians, and historians surmised
that Galileo had been falsely condemned.
Pope John Paul II concluded that he had been “imprudently opposed.”
The leader of the investigation conducted in 1992, Cardinal Paul Poupard, said, “We
today know that Galileo was right in adopting the Copernican astronomical theory,” a statement
that would have put him at risk of being arrested, and possibly executed, by his own Church just
a few hundred years previously.