The Galileo Affair (2)

Along with encouragement from learned ecclesial dignitaries, Copernicus, in 1543 published Six Books on the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbits.  Copernicus dedicated it to Pope Paul III. 

Astronomers who were critical of heliocentrism at the time, “objected that the earth could not move through space as fast as Copernicus said it did, because of its weight, and that if the earth were spinning it should cause dropped objects to fall behind, instead of directly below, the point from which they were dropped. They questioned how the moon could orbit both the earth and the sun at the same time, and they wondered why things did not simply fall off a moving earth. These were not stupid questions, and some of them would only be answerable in the following century when Newton analyzed the concept of gravity and applied it to astronomy.” [Seven Lies About Catholic History by Diane Moczar]

Although it was attacked by Protestants for being opposed to Holy Scripture, the Copernican system was subject to no formal Catholic censure, at least not until Galileo insisted - without adequate evidence - that it was fact.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), did make important observations using a telescope that lent support to the Copernican model. He saw mountains on the moon, demonstrating that that heavenly bodies were not perfect spheres as had been assumed. He discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter, proving that a planet moving in its orbit would not leave its smaller satellites behind. (One argument against an orbiting Earth was that the moon would be left behind.) And in 1610, Galileo detected Venus moving through a cycle of phases much like the Earth’s moon, another observation not explainable with a geocentric model.