Science: Rehabilitating Galileo's Image

Pope John Paul II moves to correct a 350-year-old wrong

During the often stormy relationship between science and religion, no other event has proved so troublesome as the Roman Catholic Church's denunciation of Galileo Galilei. In 1633, at the age of 69, the noted Italian scientist was judged by the Inquisition to have violated a church edict against espousing the controversial Copernican view that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the universe. For the last nine years of his life, Galileo lived under house arrest.

In an age when heretics were sometimes burned at the stake, Galileo was treated relatively leniently.

Still, he became widely regarded as a martyr of science who had been humbled by backward churchmen. Despite some tributes to Galileo by later church leaders, including several Popes, his condemnation has continued to taint relations between the Vatican—indeed, perhaps all religious authority—and scientists.

The division has been a matter of special concern to Pope John Paul II. In public statements, beginning with a speech in 1979 before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, he has said that there are no irreconcilable differences between science and faith. As a symbol of comity, he has made the rehabilitation of Galileo a major goal.

In 1980 John Paul appointed a commission of scientists, historians and theologians to re-examine the evidence and verdict.

The panel's initial findings have now been made public. In a series of essays titled Galileo Galilei: 350 Years of History, published in Italian and French editions, nine Catholic scholars, including one American, acknowledge that the church was wrong in silencing Galileo. Writes Archbishop Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture and editor of the collection: "The judges who condemned Galileo committed an error."

Indeed, the essayists argue that his condemnation was something of an aberration by the church's own standards.

They point out that the church's attitude toward science then was not as backward as it is now sometimes perceived. As early as the 13th century, French Physicist George Bene notes, theologians like Thomas Aquinas had warned against the danger of literal interpretation of the Bible.

Galileo, however, seemed to court his own difficulties. His discoveries with the newly invented telescope—the mountains of the moon, the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter—made him known throughout Europe. But he was a flawed hero.

He could be acerbic, arrogant and vain. He claimed discoveries that were not uniquely his:

for example, the finding of sunspots, which were also seen by other 17th century observers. He wrote in a highly flamboyant style, scorning a scholarly Latin for vernacular Italian in order to reach a broader public. Among those who felt the bite of his pen were Jesuit astronomers. Some members of their order had originally supported Galileo, but by the time of his trial, they had died off and their hostile successors sharply attacked him as he faced the Inquisition.

Galileo's first brush with the authorities came in 1616, when he received a warning from Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, the leading theologian of the time.