The Galileo Affair (final)

Here’s my wrap-up of the Galileo affair.  When evangelizing its always more effective when we can use questions:

“What facts do you have about the Catholic Church’s interaction with Galileo?”

“What would you say if you were informed that Galileo was unable to prove his claims to his peers in astronomy?”

 “What would you say if you were informed that Galileo was not imprisoned but instead placed on house arrest and provided a servant for his needs? And that while under house arrest, Galileo published one of his most famous works on physics?”

“I agree that the Church overreacted to Galileo’s overzealous claims lacking proof and his assertion that he knew better than Church Scripture Scholars how to interpret the Bible.  The Catholic Church should have left the matter to be settled within the scientific community – including those Catholic clergy who were also scientists. However, can you agree that the Church was, nonetheless, standing with the scientific community when it insisted that Galileo’s assertions about heliocentrism were only theories until explicit proof could be provided?”

“Yes, the Church overreacted to Galileo’s overzealous claims lacking proof and his assertion that he knew better than the Church how to interpret Scripture.  It should have left the matter to be settled within the scientific community.  Nonetheless, the historical evidence shows that the Church was in agreement with the larger scientific community calling for Galileo to provide explicit proof for his claims.  Given that, my question remains: what evidence do you have for claiming the Catholic Church stands in direct conflict with science?”

With the information on the Galileo affair provided in previous posts, I hope you will be able to respond, and even better, ask effective follow-up questions.