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By Staff Reports
Published: January 3, 2009
Galileo's Arrest Wasn't for Heresy
Editor, Times-Dispatch:
The Associated Press article, "Vatican Pushes Case for Galileo," is more politically correct than factual. The church only defines faith and morals, but the church schools of Galileo's day did teach their current science, the Ptolemaic System, that the sun revolves around the Earth -- which was also common sense for the day. If that is heresy, then our weather TV news is guilty of heresy each day it proclaims that the sun comes up in the AM and sets in the PM.A Polish monk, Copernicus, taught Galileo's theory a century earlier, but he didn't challenge the commonly mistaken biblical interpretation. Galileo was a brilliant, popular, but rather haughty man who enjoyed chiding non-scientific ignorance. Urged on by a cardinal friend, Galileo would respond that, "The Bible is to teach how to go to Heaven, but not how the heavens go."
The Inquisition didn't try Galileo for heresy but rather for breaking a solemn and formal agreement that he made with Cardinal Bellermine that he would cease challenging the Bible with his theory and confusing the common people. Bellermine agreed that if Galileo could prove his theory, then he could teach it in church schools and that the Bible would have to be looked at in a new light. Galileo broke his agreement when a friend, who was also an amateur astronomer, became Pope -- Urban XIII. Galileo's house arrest was at the estate of a wealthy cardinal who provided him with servants and a laboratory to pursue his science.
Michael T. Reardon. Mechanicsville.
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