The universal Church in the cosmos
First of all, the lead in this story is misleading.
Galileo Galilei is going from heretic to hero.
Neither is exactly true, but it’s time to focus attention on the relationship of faith and reason, religion and science, and the Vatican’s ongoing involvement in it all.
The Vatican is recasting the most famous victim of its Inquisition as a man of faith, just in time for the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy next year.
Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the Italian astronomer and physicist Sunday, saying he and other scientists had helped the faithful better understand and “contemplate with gratitude the Lord’s works.”
In May, several Vatican officials will participate in an international conference to re-examine the Galileo affair, and top Vatican officials are now saying Galileo should be named the “patron” of the dialogue between faith and reason.
Many people think the Church tortured Galileo. Not true.
This AP piece does a fair job reporting the truth of the matter.
The Church has for years been striving to shed its reputation for being hostile to science, in part by producing top-notch research out of its own telescope.
In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from “tragic mutual incomprehension.”
In fact, John Paul started the Galileo Commission in 1981 to study and clarify the theories of that complex scientist.
The Galileo anniversary appears to be giving the Vatican new impetus to put the matter to rest. In doing so, Vatican officials are stressing Galileo’s faith as well as his science, to show the two are not mutually exclusive.
At a Vatican conference last month entitled “Science 400 Years after Galileo Galilei,” the Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Galileo was an astronomer, but one who “lovingly cultivated his faith and his profound religious conviction.”
“Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God,” Bertone said.
Exactly. Which is why scientists, theologians and philosophers are working together to re-frame how the world sees itself, and how ‘modern man’ understands himself in what Benedict calls “the new humanism”. The quicker they pervade modern culture the better.
