In an effort to rehabilitate its treatment of Galileo Gallilei—and by extension, its own—the Vatican is planning a laudatory treatment of Galileo to mark the 400th anniversary of his telescope.
Good Heavens: Vatican rehabilitating Galileo
VATICAN CITY – Galileo Galilei is going from heretic to hero.
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.
Horse-shit.
It’s horse-shit that the Vatican is trying to rehabilitate the man that was labeled a heretic 400 years ago because he had the audacity to suggest that the Earth revolved around the sun, contrary to the position of the Vatican that the sun revolved around the Earth. Galileo’s teachings went against Roman Catholic dogma. When Galileo defied the Vatican, he was labeled a heretic, tried, and sentenced to life in prison.
The first attempt by the Vatican to rehabilitate its own image of how Galileo was treated was back in the 90s when Pope John Paul insisted that Galileo was never really a heretic because the pronunciation wasn’t ex officio, or an “official statement.” This was a simple technicality that did nothing to undo the actual affront to science and reason. It seems quite odd that an unofficial conviction by the Vatican can place a man in prison for life. I wonder what an official conviction would warrant?
But I’m also quite pissed off about the last statement of the excerpt above:
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.
The AP story cites several Vatican officials stating that Galileo proves that faith and reason can live side by side. Really?
Faith … belief in the absence of evidence … is compatible with reason, a mechanism that relies upon logical premise:conclusion relationships? Since when?
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