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In this episode, Catholic Answers President Christopher Check joins Trent to discuss the real story behind the “Galileo Affair.”
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And a few people on the comments under my recent episode on Anti-Catholic Historical Myths suggested that I talk about the case of Galileo here on the podcast. So I thought it’d be helpful to bring in someone who’s actually recorded an entire course on the Galileo affair for the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics. He has a wonderful knowledge of Church history, European culture, always a fun guy to talk to, and I’m not just saying that because he signed my paychecks. This is Mr. Christopher Check as my guest. He is the president of Catholic Answers. Welcome back to the Council of Trent.
Chris Check:
Trent, thanks for having me on the Greatest podcast in the history of Podcasts.
Trent Horn:
Well, that is encouraging to hear, although I know I still have some catch up to play with Catholic Answers Live, but they were going at it a lot longer than I’ve been.
Chris Check:
It’s true. We were looking at those numbers yesterday and you are lagging a little bit, but I’m grateful for my opportunity. I might be famous after this, after being on your podcast.
Trent Horn:
Well, you are famous now, sir. You are one of the professors of the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics. You have a great course in Galileo, so I thought we could hit some of the high points here in today’s episode. I want to start by asking you, why do you think the incident involving Galileo, it’s happened centuries ago, is so long standing? It’s something that lots of people bring up?
Chris Check:
Influential people in popular culture, in academia, but I would say mostly in popular culture who want to continue this narrative that the Church is in fact an anti-intellectual, anti-scientific organization. So they retell the story in a way that, in fact, misrepresents and in some cases is absolutely dishonest about the story. But also, and this has to be admitted, there are people who find the shortcomings of churchmen gratifying to talk about. And in the case of the Galileo affair, we do encounter churchmen who did not behave well. They did not behave well, and that needs to be admitted in the story, otherwise we can’t have a honest conversation about it. But that’s why it’s persisted. It’s the stick to use to beat the Church to show that the Church is unscientific. So there’s the real Galileo affair, and then there’s this one in the popular imagination, like the Crusades, for example. And in my course, I tell the true story.
Trent Horn:
Well, let’s give a little background to the story before we dive into it, because we’ve thrown different terms around here and people can have mistaken ideas about what they mean. Because we talk about terms like geocentrism, which would be the idea that the sun or other celestial bodies orbit the earth. Heliocentrism, the idea that the earth and other planets orbit the sun. And so I think a lot of people when they talk about the Galileo affair will say, “Oh, well, the Church taught geocentrism, that the sun went around the earth.” And Galileo taught the correct theory, heliocentrism. And the Church freaked out and persecuted him, and then later had to admit he was right, which would be like the mainstream cultural myth. But then you have others Catholics who are saying, “No, the Church taught correct geocentrism and Galileo’s actually wrong.” And like you said, that’s more of a fringe view. But help us understand how these concepts, the lead up to Galileo’s conflict with the Church.
Chris Check:
Sure. So what we’re talking about is man’s understanding of the operation of the motion of the cosmos, if you will. And from the very beginning of time, man’s view of the cosmos was geocentric. And this just accords with natural observation. You go outside, Trent, and you see the sun moving across the sky, right? Well, now we would say that’s not actually what’s happening, but whatever. That’s what you see. And it makes sense. There were-
Trent Horn:
Well, we still use that language. We talk about sunrise and sunset.
Chris Check:
Sunrise and sunset, exactly. I mean, how poetic would it be to say earth fall or earth rotate or whatever. But in any case, there were… So this model is Aristotelian. And although there were ancients who proposed a heliocentric model, it didn’t really catch on because, like I said, the geocentric model just simply accords with observational evidence. It is an Aristotle, it’s in Ptolemy. Ptolemy added some additional, what we call epicycles to account for some of the retrograde motion of the planets. But it was still a geocentric model. And then the other thing, of course, because it was Aristotelian, Trent, and because it accorded with Scripture or how we understood Scripture, the Church adopted it as a model. This, I think, we can say is true, but it never taught it as doctrine. So the Church doesn’t teach heliocentrism today as doctrine, but it was Aristotelian and it accorded with Scripture, and so the Church adopted it as a model.
There was a principle figure, of course, in the story about a century before Galileo in the person of Nicolaus Copernicus who probably had minor orders in the Catholic Church. He was described as a canon. And he wrote a book in the middle of the 15th century that Arthur Koestler calls an all time worst seller. I think about a 500 copies of the book were distributed, and it was called De Revolutionibus or On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. And Copernicus was a mathematician. And what he was trying to do in his book is an involved math textbook, if you will, trying to explain in mathematical terms what is happening in the he heavenly spheres, and this is important, Trent, whether or not physically that was what was happening in the heavenly spheres. Does that make sense, what I’m saying there?
Trent Horn:
Right. Because you could have a model that explains things that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the way reality is. That happens with science all the time.
Chris Check:
Sure, sure, sure. So the difference between the math problem that explains and predicts where the heavenly spheres will be at any time in the calendar year and then what is actually happening in the physical sciences. It’s important to state here that when Copernicus wrote his book, two things, he had no observational evidence at all. He had zero observational evidence. Galileo does start to acquire observational evidence in his work much later. And then the second thing is, Copernicus dedicated his book to the Pope. He was churchman. The Church didn’t have a freak out about it at all.
Trent Horn:
And to be clear, so Copernicus was defending a form of heliocentric. That was a mathematical model saying, “Hey, when I do the math and the numbers to calculate the orbits of the planets, it makes more sense in a heliocentric framework.”
Chris Check:
Precisely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then there’s one other important data point here, or interesting data point you can say. There was a kind of hybrid that was put together by, I think he’s a Dane named Tycho Brahe, or Brahe, however you say it. Tycho. I should learn how to say that because I give this talk a lot anyway.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. B-R-A-H-E. Tycho or Tycho Brahe.
Chris Check:
Yeah. And so this guy was quite an astronomer himself or what they would’ve called an astrologer at the time. And he was very wealthy. He owned his own island. Anyway, he came up with a hybrid model, the Tycho model, and it was basically this, everything revolved or all of the cosmos revolved around the sun except the earth. And then all of that revolving mess, revolving around the sun, revolved around the earth. And actually there are math, successful math equations, if you will, formula that will explain this model. And by the way, I think, and he’s not here to defend himself, but I think Robertson Genes holds to this model, although I think the observational evidence does support it.
Trent Horn:
We have to remember, for our listeners, so that we can, let’s stay grounded on earth while we talk about all of these orbits. Because it may seem obvious to people, “Well, how could they not figure this out?” Obviously the earth goes around the sun, but we tend to think… We forget, we live in this giant universe filled with galaxies that are all moving because it’s easy to think of the heliocentric model, you have the sun and the earth and the planets, and they go… And we did this in elementary school. And they go around it and you think, “Oh, how could they have been so stupid to think the earth is still?” But when modern people think of heliocentrism, they often mistakenly think the sun is still, but the sun is also moving through the solar system. You have galaxies that will pass through one another. So when you try to model motion in the universe, you forget everything’s moving. And it’s a bit more complicated than people make it out to be.
Chris Check:
Oh, it’s vastly more complicated. And you make an absolutely critical point here. And this is why when I give this talk and I made the point earlier in the podcast, the geocentric model was in Aristotle, a profoundly influential intellect in the history of the West, both in philosophy and in science. And it also accorded with Scripture. I don’t know. There’s something upwards of 70 passages in Scripture, I hope that’s close, which suggests a geocentric model.
Trent Horn:
Say the earth shall not be moved and [inaudible 00:10:44].
Chris Check:
Right.
Trent Horn:
And then Joshua and the sun.
Chris Check:
Sure. Right. The sun standing still. And in order for it to stand still, it has to have move. And that whole account with the Israel fighting the, whoever it was there, you’ll know. Yeah. So there’s many accounts in Scripture, and it simply made sense to people. And then the other thing, of course, Trent, is we have observational tools. If we want to talk about when geocentrism, excuse me, heliocentrism has actually proved, I mean that comes much, much later in the middle of the 19th century. But Galileo, who was a brilliant man and doubtless a genius, does begin to gather the evidence over the course of his career that, yes, it does in fact look as if the earth orbits the sun.
Trent Horn:
So this is helpful. Before we continue, so people, we summarize the key points here. The Church adopted an assumption about the physical world that is geocentric, but not just because the Bible says so. This is something that within non-Christian, within the general rightest minds of the ancient world believed this. By the time of Galileo, Galileo had not proven heliocentrism was true, but he had assembled some really interesting evidence that points in that direction.
Chris Check:
Yeah, no, absolutely. You’re right. It’s the Amorites, by the way, that Israel is fighting in the Book of Joshua there, where the sun stands still. But also to your point here, Trent, it’s very important that to recognize the Church has it never been closed to new discoveries about the natural world. And you can go all the way back to St. Augustine who makes the point in his commentary on Genesis, in which he says that… In fact, which he cautions people to be careful about two literal interpretations of Scripture because then the Christians can look foolish when in fact the work of natural scientists shows in fact this is what’s happening. That goes all the way back to St. Augustine. And Galileo, to his credit, is something of an exigent. Now I think he has help from some good Benedictines, but nonetheless, Galileo to his credit, in his conversations with the Pope and with the Roman Inquisition, he points to Augustine to this very point which, and I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hijack here.
Another element of this story that is critical to the understanding is the historical context, the cultural context that the story takes place in. And the Church is a little bit reactionary because it’s happening in that post reformation, post Council of Trent world where the Council have Trent has made it clear that exegesis is the job of the Church. So they’re working a little bit of a reactionary time. And I don’t mean to discredit the Church in this regard. It makes sense what they’re doing or what the Church is doing. But I often wonder if Galileo had been making his discoveries in the 14th century or the 13th century, would there have been the reaction that happened? I think it’s a fair question to ask.
Trent Horn:
One, there’s sensitivity. There’s a concern that someone who, because Luther started off saying, “Look, I just have these problems with indulgences.” And then before you know it, you have Christendom just torn apart. So maybe there’s just this extra sensitivity. You just have these problems with X, it’s going to turn into something that’s blown out of proportion once again that we don’t want tearing Chris Andum apart.
Chris Check:
And Trent, what you just said there is exactly what Cardinal Bellarmine, and by the way, he’s the one saint in the story. In fact, he’s a saint.
Trent Horn:
Yes, yes.
Chris Check:
That’s exactly what Bellarmine tells Galileo. He says, “It’s quite possible that what you are observing in the sky, in the night sky, is in fact the physical reality. But you haven’t given us the proof for this. And until you do, the Church has an obligation to be sensitive to the tender sensibilities of the faithful, completely legitimate position of the Church to have.
Trent Horn:
There’s one thing to go from this will come up as we talk about more what the big concern about Galileo was between saying, “This is how I think the physical universe operates,” to, “And here’s how we should look at the Bible.” And then, because it’d be easy for a layperson, and people do this all the time today, “Oh, the Bible got the description of the universe wrong, therefore the Bible is within error. I can’t trust the Bible, so the Bible’s not an authority for me.” It’s easy to make these prudent leaps if you don’t academically qualify the thesis you’re making.
Chris Check:
And to this very point, Trent, one of the things I point out in my course is that, as competent and exigent that Galileo was, or as competent as he was at interpreting Scripture, in like I said, I think he had help from the monks there at Monte Cassino, one in particular. Bellarmine is a very good scientist. And Bellarmine is saying, “Okay, well, if we’re going to follow your requirements for the scientific method…” Now Galileo didn’t call it that but, “If we’re going to follow your requirements for scientific method, you have not demonstrated this.”
So it’s interesting, we tend to think of, the Church is very unscientific here, but Bellarmine is saying, “Galileo, by your own methods, you’ve not demonstrated.” Several of the things that Galileo argues, for example, his work with the tides is the big one, in fact turn out to be wrong. But he was so determined that he ignored some of his own evidence. And Kepler, with whom he had a correspondence, kept saying, “Galileo, probably the orbits are…”
Trent Horn:
Elliptical.
Chris Check:
Elliptical. Yeah, right, exactly. And Galileo just ignored him. And this is another part of this Galileo story, his personality was not… He wasn’t a friendly guy and he was probably a difficult fellow. He liked to set people up, make examples of them. He was impatient. And so he disregarded. It’s interesting, you can look in the margins of his copies of Kepler, and he goes, “What a fool. What a poltroon,” or something. And Kepler was right about the orbits, and he was right about the tides and Galileo was wrong.
Trent Horn:
So this is helpful because sometimes when people look at the Galileo story, they might think, “Oh, well, the Church was the bad guy and Galileo was the good guy.” Or you have a few Catholics who will say, “Well, the Church was the good guy and Galileo was the bad guy.” And that’s a very binary thinking. And most of it’s what you’re saying for Catholics to understand they might try to get the Church off the hook, so to speak, is to have a more complex view that, no, lots of people on both sides of this debate were not acting in the best way forward.
Chris Check:
It is an involved tale. And that’s why I wanted to do the course on it, Trent, because I think it’s possible to take these involved stories like inquisition, like crusades and render them for the non-specialist so that people can get their imaginations around it and then talk in an articulate way about it. But it is an involved tale involving Scripture, science, and the religious mood of the time, and personalities on both sides.
Trent Horn:
Why don’t you tell us then like, what were some things that Galileo did that caused this to spiral out of control and maybe some imprudent things Galileo did and maybe some imprudent things that the Church did to try to understand the whole episode?
Chris Check:
Sure. So Galileo is what today we would call a physicist or an astrophysicist. The state of the science plays in here as well. But he is definitely a pioneer in taking mathematical observation and scientific observational evidence and uniting these two fields. And his observations begin, I don’t remember the exact date, but we’re talking about in the middle of the… Oh, yeah. So around 1610, he begins to observe the night sky. He didn’t invent a telescope, but he greatly improved it. Up to this point, the telescope was kind of a carnival toy. He greatly improved it so that he could start looking at the moon. He notices irregularities in the moon’s surface. And because prior to this, Trent, and this is shorthand, but the world generally believed that all the heavenly bodies were kind of made of this ethereal matter called quintessence, which was just kind of weightless… quintessence.
But he observes the mountains of the moon. And he says, “Oh, well, okay, if the moon has these irregularities, perhaps it’s composed of the same stuff that planet Earth is.” And then he begins to observe the moons of Jupiter. And I’ve always wondered, Trent. I have no proof for this because it’s around Epiphany that he’s looking at Jupiter, and I wonder if he was one of those people who kind of a associated Jupiter with the Star of the Magi. I’ve never been able to prove this, but it’s always something I’ve wondered. And then he sees, “Oh, there are moons of Jupiter.” And he names them the Medician Stars after his patron, the Medicis.
Trent Horn:
Oh, he’s named after the guy who’s paying you.
Chris Check:
Oh, my gosh. It’s a great fundraiser. Exactly. He absolutely understands that. Yeah. So he gets his observational evidence. He starts to publish on this, I mean, we’re racing through the story here, but the Aristotelians, especially in Florence, who are Dominicans are saying, “Whoa, you’re going pretty fast.” But I can tell you who were big supporters of Galileo, and these were Jesuits at the Roman College. Father Christopher Clavier who had been consulted when it was necessary, he had helped do some of the math to change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, for example.
And the Jesuits are getting telescopes. And they’re looking up that whole business about the churchmen refusing to look to the telescope. It’s a complete myth. The Jesuits of the Roman College were looking up and they were verifying the things that Galileo was seeing in the night sky. So Galileo becomes something of a rockstar, if you will. He gets invited to Rome, and this controversy over Scriptural exegesis and observational science begins to, I was going to say “flower”, but that’s the wrong word, sort of exploded. And he makes several trips to Rome. And in the course of the story, he gets a real break. We’re just leaving so many parts out, but watch my course. He gets a real break and a close friend of his becomes Pope, Pope Urban. And the two of them have a number of conversations. We don’t know exactly what they said. There was no tape recorder, but…
Trent Horn:
Just like Francis and that one Italian reporter.
Chris Check:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
What did they talk about?
Chris Check:
Yeah. Or on several occasions. But in any case, there’s a controversy or a conversation rather between Urban and Galileo about a book that Galileo wants to publish, On the Orbit of the Heavenly Spheres and The Tides. And Urban basically says to Galileo the same thing that Bellarmine had said, Cardinal Bellarmine had said to Gallo in one of their earlier meanings, which was, “Just because your evidence, your observational evidence suggests a particular model of the heavenly spheres or the tides, that doesn’t mean that there are not other models that could be true.” And Galileo writes like a play, if you will, in which three men spend a weekend away discussing these scientific observations. And one is clearly the smart guy and one is the dope, and one is the mediator in this conversation. And Galileo puts Urban’s words in the mouth of the dope. Simplicity is his name, or Simpleton.
And the Pope who had been Galileo’s friend, he’s pushed beyond the limits of what he wants to endure personally. And could he have shown more forbearance? Possibly he could have, but Galileo certainly could have shown more restraint and friendship and charity as well. So Galileo gets hauled before the Roman Inquisition. I mean, we’re racing through the story here, and the court trials are fascinating. At one point, Galileo presents a letter from Bellarmine signed by Bellarmine, in which Bellarmine had said that Galileo could hold as mathematical possibilities, or he could teach heliocentrism mathematically, but he was restrained from teaching it scientifically, or in terms of physics, what we would say call physics.
There was some dispute about the nature, the veracity of the document. And this guy, I think, was it forged? Did the Roman Inquisition forged this thing? There were irregularities in the trial. And personalities, they dominated here. And the Pope couldn’t let Galileo leave Rome without making something an example of him, which is what the Inquisition did. And he was found suspect of heresy and given a sentence to recite the seven Penitential Psalms. And it’s after that, by the way, where he does a lot of his work in motion, which is frankly his most valuable contribution to physics.
Trent Horn:
Right. Galilean relativity, the idea, it’s like how fast are you going? If you’re sitting in a plane, it can feel like you’re sitting still, even though you’re going at 500 miles an hour.
Chris Check:
Yeah. Thank you to the Catholic Church for putting them on house arrest there in Florence because it’s during this period after the Galileo affair that he makes his most valuable contributions to science. Anyway, I’m sorry, Trent. I’m really trying to summarize a very involved tale there.
Trent Horn:
No, you covered a lot of great ground. I think it’s helpful for people to see a lot of elements here that could just be symbolized. It’s not like the trial was just like the sun goes around the earth. No, the earth goes around the sun. And it’s just this very simple idea. It’s about more what authority you have, what is safe to teach what isn’t. And even in science today, we have this where you have things in quantum physics that are mathematical speculations, like we don’t have physical evidence for it yet. But you wouldn’t just put it out there in a textbook like, “Yes, this is the truth.”
If it hasn’t been proven yet, especially in relation to, well, how do we trust and understand what the Scripture says, if this is our physical understanding of the world. Let’s talk though a little bit about the myths related to how Galileo is treated. What are some myths? Like the idea he was tortured, things like that. But also maybe some things like some people will err in saying the Church did things it never did, and other people might err in saying the Church did absolutely nothing wrong and Galileo got what was coming to him. How do we walk the line between?
Chris Check:
Yeah, neither of those is true. First of all, he was never tortured. If you ever go to Rome, my friends, the place where Galileo was tried is right next door to one of my very favorite churches in Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, where Catherine of Siena is under The High Altar. That’s the Dominican church there in Rome in the historic center. Very close to Pantheon. Yeah. No, he wasn’t tortured.It’s funny, there’s a marker up by the Villa Medici up past the Spanish steps and to the left. If you go up the Spanish steps and go to the left, you come to the Villa Medici and there’s a marker there and it says, “Galileo was imprisoned here for seeing that the Earth revolved around the sun.” Now, he posited that it did. He didn’t really see it. He certainly didn’t prove it, I guess.
But have you ever been to the Vela Medici? I mean, I wouldn’t be object to being imprison there. And the reason by the way he was there is because he was a citizen of Florence. Italy was not a united country at the time, so that’s where he happened to be staying. So yeah, he was not tortured. He wasn’t burned at the stake. I’ve even read that. I read that in a guidebook of Rome one time, that he was executed or burned at the stake. To the other point on the other side, the story is not about the Church versus science. The churchmen at the time were eagerly pursuing themselves at the Roman College, especially there were churchmen who like Dominicans in Florence who publicly mocked Galileo, and this is poor form. But the Jesuits at the Roman College were investigating his observations, verifying them. His friend Castelli at Monte Cassino, Benedictine, there was also verifying them and supporting him.
So there were churchmen supporting him. Nor by the way, Trent, another myth was this thing about Papal infallibility. The Pope, first of all, as we said at the very beginning, the Church never declared geocentrism to be a doctrine. The Church has not declared heliocentrism to be a doctrine. And as you quite rightly pointed out, we’re continuing to discover very involved ways that the universe moves and the heavenly bodies interact. So it’s not about papal infallibility either. It really revolves around the personality of Galileo, resolving the Scripture question with some observational evidence, but hardly proof. And then, Trent, the problem of scandal, and we talked about this a little bit earlier. But without sufficient evidence, and I go back to Augustine here. Augustine says, “Look, let’s not interpret Scripture too literally, because when the observational proof reveals itself about the natural world, we don’t want to look foolish. So that goes all the way back to Augustine.
But that was not present at the Galileo affair. It’s much later that geocentrism is, excuse me, heliocentrism is proved, if you will, with the observation of stellar parallax. So it really is about the personality of Galileo, the problem of scandal, the Scripture question, the state of the science at the time. And those things combined at a particular moment in history. I recommend very highly a book that Ignatius Press came out with. If you’re just going to read one book, I mean, everybody should take my class. But if you’re just going to read one book on the Galileo affair, it’s this one, Galileo Revisited: the Galileo Affair in Context, Dom Paschal Scotti. He teaches high school, I think, at a school in Rhode Island. But Ignatius Press came out with it a number of years ago. And it’s the Galileo Affair in Context. The other one I like a lot is The Realist Guide to Religion and Science by Father Paul Robinson. He’s a priest of the Society of Pius X. I hope I don’t scandalize any of your listeners there, but it is an excellent, excellent book.
Trent Horn:
Well, no, I think that’s good. And maybe to give an analogy, so people can understand why would the Church do something like this. And like you said, it doesn’t contradict the Church’s infallibility because this was a disciplinary tribunal that’s not articulating doctrine, especially not in an infallible way, but it’s trying to exercise discipline among Catholics to say, “Well, what can you.” Because we are used to living in America in the 21st century where you can say whatever you want to your home peril, and just put out there. But to talk an analogy, in the early 20th century, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which is now an advisory body, but back then was a part of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave a disciplinary ruling to Catholic biblical scholars, saying that it’s not safe to teach, for example, that the Gospel of Mark was written first, because in the late 19th century, you had these German form critics saying, “Oh, everything we thought we knew about the Bible, the sources are different. The Genesis multiple sources. And the gospels weren’t composed in their traditional order.”
But then some of them go so far to say, “And this is mythology, the Christ of Jesus of history versus the Christ of Faith, to turn Scripture into mythology.” They might have some valid historical observations, but it’s mixed in with the idea, “Well, we can’t actually trust the Bible anymore. This is myth.” And so the Church did a full stop at the moment, say, “Wait a minute, let’s pause on teaching these things.” But now, as that’s come more to the fore and that one can safely teach it within the range of permitted opinions, maybe that’s a similar analogy what we have with Galileo that look at the Church today would say geocentrism and heliocentrism are in the range of permitted opinions. You want to believe in either? You can. I think it was Cardinal Caesar Baronius who said that the Church teaches people how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go.
Chris Check:
Not how the heavens go. Right. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Right. So maybe that might be an analogy, to see why the Church… And maybe it’s not silly, prudent there we’re in the face of like, “Oh, people are tearing apart the Foundation of the Faith.” Here’s one more person in that line. And then you overreact. And then the other person does things that are imprudent and kind of fans the flames.
Chris Check:
Trent, I think that’s an excellent analogy. And I would just state declaratively that the Church when it comes to science, it has to be one of the most open-minded organizations in history. There’s a wonderful quote from Cardinal Newman in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. He says, “I have not here to speak of any conflict which ecclesiastical authority has had with science for this simple reason.” That conflict there has been none. And that because the secular sciences, as they now exist, are a novelty in the world and there has been no time yet for a history of relations between theology and these new methods of knowledge. And indeed, the Church may be said to have kept clear of them as is proved by the constantly cited case of Galileo here. Exceptio probat regulam, the exception proves the rule, for it’s the one stock argument,” as Cardinal Newman points out.
And when people point to it, as we’ve been talking about for this entire podcast, they’re not even pointing to what actually happened, but what the perception of it is. It’s the Church, and of course, you’ve probably devoted podcasts to this already, and we could go on and on for hours and hours of all of the contribution the Church has made to the physical sciences, to the medical sciences, in chemistry. For goodness sakes, the Church is the inventor of modern education. The Church invented the universities.
Trent Horn:
I like what Newman says like, “It’s the exception that proves the rules.” The stock example. Because when you look at other scientific breakthroughs, the biological theory of evolution, breakthroughs in the theory of geology, that show. One of the founders of the, I think it was Nicolas Steno, who was a clergy. I think it was a Catholic clergy man, who was one of the fathers of modern geology. You have Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, who was an Augustinian monk, or friar. When these scientific breakthroughs occur, it’s like when the germ theory of disease came out, it’s not like the Catholic Church under the index per hit said, “It’s demons. It can’t possibly be bacteria.” As things have continued, the Church has always been open. The Galileo myth persists because it’s this one unusual example that sticks out. I want to ask though what relates to us, you can wrap their heads around it because I believe it was Pope Saint John Paul II who apologized for some of the treatment of Galileo.
Chris Check:
That’s exactly right.
Trent Horn:
So how should we understand that? And how it relates to everything?
Chris Check:
Yeah. And I think what he really is apologizing for. And it’s a good question. And I wish that I had brought the passage with me here, but what he’s apologizing for are the excesses of personality that we are all afflicted with because of original sin. And when personal interests and pride get in the way of honest discourse on both sides of this question, Galileo and the members of the Inquisition, do people do things honestly? Do they forge documents? That is a question in this case, for example. Does the Pope act with a heavy hand because he’s been publicly.
Trent Horn:
Slighted.
Chris Check:
Yeah, humiliated by Galileo. Yeah. So very well and good. Okay. Did people act like human beings in this fallen human beings in this case? They absolutely did. Here’s another thing, Trent, to that point, Galileo was a loyal son of the Church. Sometimes in this story, people try to cast him as a pioneer of science and setting the sacerdotal superstitions of the Catholic religion behind. And now we follow the science. Remember, follow the science. But he’s a loyal son in the Church. For goodness sake, he has a great devotion to St. Anthony. When he is looking for a better position when he’s in Venice, he makes a novena to St. Anthony. He has a daughter who’s a nun, for goodness sake. Now, there are things in his personal life that with respect to his common law wife and the way he treated her and things like that are not… I don’t think he’s going to be a candidate for sainthood anytime, but he’s a loyal son of the Church.
Trent Horn:
He was not some atheist doing battle with oppressive clerics and things like that.
Chris Check:
And he’s not a heretic either.
Trent Horn:
So when the tribunal says suspicion of heresy, does that just mean he’s just teaching things that are unsafe and he’s transgressing the boundaries of decency or something like that?
Chris Check:
This is precisely what it means. And I think heresy, of course, has a broader, as Jimmy Aiken likes to point out, has a broader definition than we can confine it to in the modern world right here, or in modern theology or in modern Church teaching. But yeah. Is this a reasonable conclusion of the Inquisition at the Roman Inquisition time. Well, it could be you are teaching something that appears to be contrary to Scripture and you have not provided the evidence for it.
Trent Horn:
And a similar thing could occur if you look in the development of biblical studies, like the authorship of the New Testament epistles, right? Is it safe to say, Paul may not himself have written some of the pastoral letters or that Paul didn’t write the letter of the Hebrews? I mean, that one goes way back. And even origin said, “We don’t really know who wrote Hebrews.” But there was a traditional view that it was Paul until somewhat recently. And then of course you could see someone might say suspicion of Harris saying, “Well, I’m not sure if an apostle actually wrote this.” Well, if they didn’t write it, how could it be Scripture? It’s like, when you put forward a controversial view that seems to clash with the faith, you have to do so gently, especially for the consciences and dispositions of lay people who aren’t very good at making qualifications. And so, that’s over and over again. The Church and maybe in a heavy-handed way is relying on this reasoning. That’s what going on here with Galileo.
Chris Check:
It’s funny, Trent. You summarize it really well. And Newman has a similar passage saying exactly that, to be sensitive to the faithful. Why would they have any other understanding of the world, the cosmos other than the one that they see every single day and read about in Scripture? So you can’t imagine how alarming this would be. Does it have to be managed? Of course it does. That’s such a reasonable thing, what we call this today, a pastoral solution. So the Church is applying a pastoral solution. And by the way, in this sense, it’s doing exactly what she should have done, to be sure, that she does it heavy handedly, that Galileo has made an example of. Yeah. Is there some lack of charity in this? There certainly is. Let’s admit it. Let tell the story.
Trent Horn:
But let’s tell the whole story. And so, I wish we had six hours to do that. But we don’t need six hours because you have your entire course where you walk people through all of the rich intricacies, personalities, the historical episodes that are involved. Because when we look at events in history, it’s just so easy to simplify them when there are just so many other factors going into play. So tell us where our listeners can go to check out your new course.
Chris Check:
Schoolofapologetics.com. schoolofapologetics.com. All the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics courses are up there. I know, Trent, you’ve got a bunch up there. I like to take the Neuralgic topics, inquisition, crusades, Galileo. I just finished one on Henry III’s divorce, which Jimmy Aiken is waiting for my study guide, and I’ve not written it yet. But schoolofapologetics.com. And my friends, apart from my own shortcomings as a teacher, I am not a scientist. And frankly, it’s nice what you said about my knowledge of history, Trent, but I’m not a professional historian. My background is English literature. I think I’m a pretty good storyteller, and that’s why I like to take these involved topics and render them for a popular audience. And when I put them together, I think about, “Well, what do people know about this? What do they think they ‘know’?”
And then let’s see how we can render the story for the non-specialist so that we can talk articulately about it. And the guys in the video department as you know, Trent, they do a superb job. And there’s a lot of images in the course explaining what stellar parallax is and the very different models of the cosmos and this kind of thing. Schoolofapologetics.com. The course came out really well. And I had to thank my dad because he is a scientist. He is a nuclear physicist and many painful nights on the kitchen table in high school doing calculus together, the poor man. But he was the first person, I don’t know, 15, 16 years ago that got me interested in the story. So I love telling it. It’s in my quiver of a dozen or a couple, three dozen lectures that I give. I love to tell this story. So happy to come on the road and tell it to your parish or school.
Trent Horn:
And if you want to see Chris at his storytelling best, come to our Catholic Answers Conference next year. Give him a glass of wine by the fire pit, and he will regal you with bats and all that. Well, great. Well, thank you so much, Chris, for joining us. Check out Catholic Answers School of Apologetics, Chris’s course on Galileo. We’ll link to it below here in the description. Thank you guys. And yeah, I just hope you have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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