A few hours ago:
The goal of astronomy is to unveil the traces of God’s perfection and collect the echoes of His harmonies – Pope Pius XII
— Vatican Observatory (@VaticanObserv) February 10, 2013
Seriously, the Vatican gave up its astronomy street cred sometime around June 22, 1633.
Georges Lemaître would get a bang out of that comment.
Ironically, astronomy is one area where the RCC is relatively progressive compared to other right-wing religious groups such as evangelicals (mostly young-earth creationists) and Mormons (Scientology lite). Emphasis on the word “relatively”: the official line is that the big bang theory is not imcompatible with Biblical scripture. That doesn’t mean they are declaring it to be fact.
To be fair Pope John Paul II admitted that Galileo was correct in (if I remember correctly) 1992. So it took them a few centuries, but they still eventually came around.
Interestingly the argument of the Pope who condemned Galileo looked at Galileo’s evidence and said, in a nutshell, that God merely decided it would look like the Earth revolved around the Sun. In other words it was an early version of “teach the controversy”.
Rob, I’m disappointed in you. Galileo was 400 years ago, the Church has long since moved on from all that, accepts all the modern science of physics and biology, and as the commenter above noted, JPII even issued a formal apology back in the 1990′s. To dredge up that episode as if it has some relevance today is like castigating the current U.S. government with, say, the Dred Scott decision or the internment of Japanese citizens in WWII: pointless.
I’m not a Catholic, and the church has a number of valid criticisms to answer for today. But this mindless dredging up of ancient history is really dumb, really childish, and unworthy of the caliber of your intellect, Rob. Just sayin’.
Should I be abashed? I mean, it’s not like the Vatican’s tweet is displaying the exact same attitude that led to Galileo’s condemnation in the first place. Is it?
Oh Rob. You are far too smart to believe that one poetic little quote from a pope dead for 55 years has any relevance to anything actually happening today beyond being a pretty thought for the faithful – and which in fact sounds very like several similar thoughts expressed by Einstein himself, which you can easily google up. The fundamentalists are expert at picking stray quotes out of context and making philosophical mountains out of them. Please don’t waste your brilliance that way. There are far more urgent matters that need your close attention and clear thinking.
Galileo was the first thought I had when reading this quote, and I don’t know my RCC history (I’m not Catholic). Regardless of whether or not they apologized for what they did to Galileo or not, there are quotes they hold on to that are far older than the 1633 event. It’s called scripture. Of course, holding one quote to be valid while ignoring others… I wish Rob and the rest of us had a word for that. So I understand why Rob would mention that. But thanks for the info Russ – I didn’t know they apologized to Galileo, even if it did take well over three hundred years to do so. At least they finally apologized. Right?