Dogma should be those things required for salvation. Whether something is “truth” or not isn’t reason for dogma. Should the Church be dogmatizing all the scientific theories found to be truth? Should the existance of Black Holes, Gravity, or anything like that be made into dogma? You can argue that the Church has no place in science, but that certainly didn’t stop the Church from condemning Galileo for insisting the rotation of the Earth causes the tides.
Glory be to Jesus Christ…for opportunities to defend my faith against anti-Catholic charges, half-truths, and outright lies, for they give me strength to face even harsher things.
I don’t like trashing threads with unrelated topics, but the bold contains only half-truths.
We know now that the rotation of the Earth causes the tides, but do not make the mistake of using what is now knowledge for what then could only be proposed as theory due to primitive equipment.
Now, I don’t know much about tides, but as far as Galileo’s take on heliocentrism (which we know now to be true since we can send a satellite in orbit to confirm this), we must remember that Galileo was not able to completely able to answer the inquisitors’ questions to their satisfaction. Remember that Cardinal Ballermine, who warned Galileo several years before his appearance before the Inquisition, that he (the cardinal) is willing to believe heliocentrism if there is some undisputable proof that it is actually true. Until then, Galileo could teach it as theory, but not complete fact. Now, why would the Cardinal allow Galileo to teach it as theory, if the Cardinal did not believe that there was some possibility it was actually true?
Galileo himself tried to use scripture to back up his claims. But the Jesuits warned Galileo that theology was the province of the Church, and that he should stick to science. What is worse was that this whole affair was going on during the Protestant upheaval. The reigning pope and Church officials were eager to demonstrate their fidelity to Scripture, and there was agreement among both Catholics and Protestants that geocentrism was the best way to explain Scripture,
absent any complete scientific proof to the contrary, not to disparage true scientific discovery. Had the Protestant upheaval not occured, this whole affair may not have occurred. (The irony of this is that Protestant & other anti-Catholics use this whole affair to make the Holy Catholic Church look anti-scientific, though the Church during this time frame used her cathedrals, among other things, as solar observatories and much knowledge was preserved in…who would have guessed?..monasteries?!.) But even worse yet, Galileo made a book…and in the book there was a character resembling the pope, who in real life admired Galileo very much…but who was made to look like a simpleton in the book. The pope was not altogether pleased and summoned Galileo to the inquisition.
Why sure, it is not considered appropriate for the Church to try people for scientific matters, but Galileo’s arrogance contributed to his fate…as well as his meddling in theological affairs.
Don’t make the mistake of using what we know now to judge the state of science back then. Leading scientists used the scientific method back then to judge heliocentrism-----and found the evidence wanting.
Read D’Souza’s (himself a former Catholic and consequently with nothing to gain by defending the Holy Catholic Church explicitly, though not an anti-Catholic) book, “What’s So Great About Christianity” and its chapter on the Galileo and Cardinal Ballermine’s quote in this chapter instead of just accepting anti-Catholic propaganda and spin. Read all of the chapter----don’t just cherrypick and slice and dice to your heart’s content.
