Saint Galileo?

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Sorry for the terse answer, but until I had a specific explanation (not wanting to just work from memory) I thought the short answer was best. The following quote from Wikipedia explains why he isn’t a saint.
Galileo’s championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo’s presentation of heliocentrism as proven fact resulted in the Catholic Church’s prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven fact, because it was not empirically proven at the time and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture.[7] Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition
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As usual Wikipedia has it wrong. But that’s par for the course when it comes to Church history for them.

No, Galileo is not a saint of the Catholic Church. He’s a secular saint of anti-Catholic bigots who use him as proof that the Church taught the earth was the center of the universe, which it never did, and that he was a poor misunderstood soul who only wanted to drag the Church out of the Dark Ages into the light of reason, which he wasn’t. But, bigots don’t want the truth when a convenient lie will work for them, sad to say.
 
Della said:
As usual Wikipedia has it wrong. But that’s par for the course when it comes to Church history for them.

No, Galileo is not a saint of the Catholic Church. He’s a secular saint of anti-Catholic bigots who use him as proof that the Church taught the earth was the center of the universe, which it never did, and that he was a poor misunderstood soul who only wanted to drag the Church out of the Dark Ages into the light of reason, which he wasn’t. But, bigots don’t want the truth when a convenient lie will work for them, sad to say.
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It’s always interesting to see them forget that Galileo was teaching a theory developed by a Catholic monk.
 
He may be in heaven, of course, but he is not canonized.

His sin, of which he was arrested for, was that he decided to insult the Pope for his decision to only allow Galileo to research his beliefs, not advocate them publicly. Perhaps God forgave him for this, but he did do something wrong.
 
EphelDuath said:
He may be in heaven, of course, but he is not canonized.

His sin, of which he was arrested for, was that he decided to insult the Pope for his decision to only allow Galileo to research his beliefs, not advocate them publicly. Perhaps God forgave him for this, but he did do something wrong.
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Not only this, but he tried to put forward his ideas as the only ones anyone should accept. He shot himself in the foot by doing that, not because he was right–he was only partly right, but because other scientists, who were more right than he was were rightly angered. Then he wandered into theology and made some very obstinate statements to the Inquisition that didn’t help his cause, either. It matters not if the Inquisition interpreted Scripture rightly–it wasn’t the Magisterium, after all. What mattered is that Galileo set himself up for his fall and should have stuck to science and been less arrogant with those who had the power to decide his fate. None of these things were mortal sins, but they certainly were faux pas of the worst kind, and he paid dearly for it.
 
I hear Galileo repented quite fervently, though, later on. I’ve also heard he was quite devout. So I have lots of hope for him. He was a good and smart man with a very serious attitude problem.

It’s pretty ironic that the man hailed by liberals was condemned in the first place for being too “intolerant.”
 
Lief_Erikson said:
I hear Galileo repented quite fervently, though, later on. I’ve also heard he was quite devout. So I have lots of hope for him. He was a good and smart man with a very serious attitude problem.

It’s pretty ironic that the man hailed by liberals was condemned in the first place for being too “intolerant.”
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I hope he’s in heaven too. After all, one doesn’t miss out on heaven just for being stubborn and making social blunders. He no doubt rethought a lot of things along those lines before he died.

And it is ironic. I remember Carl Sagan making hay out of Galileo’s case, when he actually knew nothing about it except what the enemies of the Church have claimed, not the facts. Odd too for someone who claimed that mankind ought to be motivated by what is true not by what they believe merely because someone said so.
 
Della said:
I hope he’s in heaven too. After all, one doesn’t miss out on heaven just for being stubborn and making social blunders. He no doubt rethought a lot of things along those lines before he died.
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I love how merciful God is toward us, even when it comes to committing big faults :).

I hope to see Galileo in Heaven. Like you, I wonder what went on in his soul in his later years.

We all have so much to repent for . . .
Della said:
And it is ironic. I remember Carl Sagan making hay out of Galileo’s case, when he actually knew nothing about it except what the enemies of the Church have claimed, not the facts. Odd too for someone who claimed that mankind ought to be motivated by what is true not by what they believe merely because someone said so.
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Yes, unfortunately this is pretty normal. I’ve encountered incredible prejudice among the many liberals I’ve debated with over the years, with only extremely rare exceptions. And among conservatives too, including me. It’s a pretty common feature of humans to form judgments about things we know little about :o.
 
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