The Church's failures and accountability · Question 8
“The Church condemned Galileo — and now it says it respects science?”
The question: “You silenced a scientist by authority and then changed your story once the results came in, didn't you?”
First, the admission: Trying Galileo, forcing him to recant his position, and restricting his work involved real error and real injustice committed by people of the Church. Explaining that the scientific evidence, the politics, and the interpretation of Scripture were all complicated at the time does not erase the wrong of silencing a researcher by authority.
The Church's answer: True science and faith cannot contradict each other in God, the source of truth, but their questions and their methods are different. Scripture must not be used as a natural-science textbook, and the Church's authority must not settle in advance a scientific conclusion that can be tested. The Church has to learn from its past error and protect the rightful autonomy of research and the humility proper to scholarship.
If they press further: “Scientists can be wrong too, can't they?” — Of course; science is revised as the evidence requires. That is exactly why you answer it with better observation, better experiment, and better argument, not with authority and punishment.
In one sentence: “The unjust treatment in the Galileo case has to be admitted, and the Church must not use Scripture or authority to suppress science but must respect the autonomy of research.”