Introduction to Galileo Was Wrong the Church Was Right Volume III

Introduction by Robert Sungenis...

Introduction

If you have read the first two volumes of Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, you are now ready to tackle volume three. As was the case with the science, in the historical issues concerning Galileo the data is plentiful but the correct interpretation is almost always lacking. Galileo historians, entrenched in the Copernican Principle, view the history through filtered lenses. Some of the names that control the dialogue on this topic are: Father George Coyne S.J., Cardinal Paul Poupard, Maurice Finocchiaro, Ernan McMullin, Annibale Fantoli, Pierre-Noël Mayaud, Stillman Drake, Guy Cosolmango, Richard Westfall, Richard Blackwell, Pietro Redondi, and a few others. Although all the major Catholic Galileo scholars are guilty of a Copernican bias, perhaps Pierre-Noël Mayaud stands out as one of the better examples. His bias is clear when he includes in his analysis that he accepts all the popular “proofs” of heliocentrism before he does his analysis of the historical events. He writes:

For internal proofs we understand the synthesis of Newton, which was constantly clarified and made perfect during the 18th century. He showed reason for the relative movements of different bodies of the solar system by integrating in particular Kepler’s three laws, apparently purely empiric, while completing this by a prestigious theory of the tides, a necessary consequence of the universal gravitation. One should add, as a necessary condition of this synthesis, the first exact measurement of the solar parallax in 1672, opening the way to the true knowledge of the solar system’s dimensions, and in particular of the enormous mass of the sun in relation to that of the planets. This is the condition of stability of the whole, which would render it inconceivable that the sun would turn around the earth. Concerning the external proofs, there is first of all the discovery of the variation of the pendulum’s length in variation of the width, beating the seconds, the first indication of the daily rotation of the earth, then, with Bradley, the discovery of the aberration of the fixed stars with indication of the annual revolution, and finally the measurement of the terrestrial spheroid’s flatness, indicating again in that sense the daily rotation, and last not least the observation of comet Halley’s return, which was a striking confirmation of the Newtonian Synthesis. All this has been more or less repeated by Olivieri in his developing work, while we are recalling that these proofs are after the decrees of 1616 and 1620. This last point is also expressed in an implicit manner in the ‘posterioza observata’ of the second paragraph of the decree of August 16, 1820. Let us add that Olivieri often mentions as external proof the discovery of the air gravity by Torricelli, which is contrary to the Aristotelian Concept of the light weighing element. It permits to understand how the air is affected by the earth’s rotation. This proof exists nevertheless in the rank of a response to the physical objections against the possibility of the earth’s rotation. 7

Suffice it to say, all of these so-called “proofs” have been discredited, but few, if any Catholic scholars either have the scientific acumen to understand them or are privy to the scientific evidence that does so. Another example is Annabale Fantoli in his new book The Case of Galileo: A Closed Question? He writes:

This new Newtonian physics had finally given a full theoretical justification of the Copernican system, perfected upon the basis of the three laws of Kepler. Any form of geocentrism, including that of Tycho Brahe, had thus been excluded. And they in 1728, the discovery of the phenomenon of the aberration of starlight…had furnished the first geometrical argument in favor of the Earth’s movement about the Sun….And so we have that which Bellarmine himself had admitted…that is, the necessity to reexamine the interpretation of scriptural passages regarding the motion of the Sun and the stability of the Earth. In the face of incontestable physical proofs to the contrary, this could no longer be ignored by the Roman authorities. On the other hand, there was still the decree of the Index of 1616 and the condemnation of Galileo by the Holy Office in 1633. To officially accept the Copernican view now would imply openly acknowledging a mistake on the part of the Church. And this, in the ecclesiastical atmosphere of the epoch, was simply unthinkable.8

It is rather interesting to see Fantoli use the word “unthinkable.” Obviously he believes science has proven the Copernican theory. It is the lens through which he views the whole Galileo affair; and it results in Fantoli believing he is more knowledgeable than the Church, not only on the Galileo issue but also with various social and moral issues. It is the very reason that later in his book he faults the Church for her doctrine on contraception and insists that, due to her mistake with Galileo (which he calls “an abuse of power both doctrinal and disciplinary”),9 the Church should make herself “more open to the world.”10 But Fantoli’s realizes, nonetheless, that the Church considers herself guided by the Holy Spirit who cannot lie, and thus it would be “unthinkable” for her to even consider she made a mistake in condemning Galileo and heliocentrism. Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. “Unthinkable” was the word Einstein’s biographer, Ronald Clark, employed to describe the conundrum of modern science when the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment found direct evidence that heliocentrism could not be demonstrated and that the Earth appeared, indeed, to be motionless in space, even as the Church had maintained for her entire history. Clark writes: