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posted by chromas on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:41PM   Printer-friendly

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The truth about Galileo and his conflict with the Catholic Church

Today virtually every child grows up learning that the earth orbits the sun.

But four centuries ago, the idea of a heliocentric solar system was so controversial that the Catholic Church classified it as a heresy, and warned the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei to abandon it.

Many people believe that Galileo was hounded by the church for almost two decades, that he openly maintained a belief in heliocentrism, and that he was only spared torture and death because his powerful friends intervened on his behalf. But an examination of the fine details of Galileo’s conflict with church leaders doesn’t bear that out, according to English department distinguished research professor Henry Kelly.

In an article published this month in the journal “Church History,” Kelly clarifies some popularly held notions around Galileo’s travails with the church.

“We can only guess at what he really believed,” said Kelly, who for his research undertook a thorough examination of the judicial procedure used by the church in its investigation of Galileo. “Galileo was clearly stretching the truth when he maintained at his trial in 1633 that after 1616 he had never considered heliocentrism to be possible. Admitting otherwise would have increased the penance he was given, but would not have endangered his life, since he agreed to renounce the heresy — and in fact it would have spared him even the threat of torture.”

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the Catholic Church’s investigation into Galileo.


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday February 13 2019, @03:19AM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday February 13 2019, @03:19AM (#800472) Journal

    Okay, I'll agree with some of what you said, but in other cases you seem to miss the forest from the trees. Such as sexual abuse -- you seem surprised by the Southern Baptists... why? There's never been good stats showing that the incidence of abusers in the Catholic Church is worse than any other denomination... or worse than scout leaders or coaches or probably teachers.

    The main difference with the Catholic Church is that they are more hierarchical than many organizations, so they have records. Most of the time in a Baptist church or in a school or with a sports coach or whatever, they are just dismissed (so as not to draw publicity) and they just go somewhere else and abuse as in the Catholic Church. We just aren't as easily able to see the scale without the hierarchical records.

    I want to be clear: I'm not defending the abusers or those who covered up in the Catholic Church -- they should all be in jail and doing hard labor, and if there were ever a justification for torturing as punishment for a crime, they would deserve it. But this isn't a Church problem -- it's a problem just about anywhere you have people with lots of kids unsupervised.

    Also, you last paragraph has a boatload of valid criticisms against the Catholic Church, and I'll pretty much join in with you on them. But I don't think any of those issues really has much to do with Science -- it's just BS religious opinions on social questions and morality.

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