Faith and questions of society · Question 6
“Look at Galileo and the censorship — isn't the Church a body that blocks inconvenient knowledge?”
The question: “When science collides with doctrine, doesn't it end with the researcher being silenced?”
The Church's answer: The Church recognizes the legitimate autonomy of scientific research and teaches that a genuine scientific discovery cannot contradict the faith. Using the results of science without ethical reflection is dangerous, but neither may findings be distorted or evidence forbidden in the name of ethics. Each has to respect the other's methods and limits and examine things in the open.
An analogy — the referee who decides the result in advance
A referee who uses his authority to settle the score before the match has started is not protecting the game. A field that deals in evidence has to be judged by the evidence and by sound method.
The analogy shows that church authority cannot settle the conclusions of science in advance. Scientific research needs peer review and ethical standards too, but those standards must never become an order to hide what was observed.
First, the admission: In the Galileo affair, the church trial that restricted his work and forced him to recant involved an unjust penalty and errors of judgment. The lesson — that church leaders wrongly applied biblical interpretation and their own authority to a dispute in natural science — must not be hidden.
If they press further: “Isn't the Church talking about bioethics also getting in the way of science?” — “We can do this” and “it is right to do this” are different questions. The Church may ask about the moral consequences of using a technology: the dignity of embryos, of patients, of the environment, of the socially vulnerable. But she has to understand the scientific facts accurately and talk with the experts.
In one sentence: “The wrong in the Galileo affair has to be admitted, and the Church has to respect the evidence and the autonomy of science while talking through the ethics of how technology is used.”