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Under the pontificate of John Paul II (1978-2005), the worldwide enthusiasm for the great advances of the conquest of space faded somewhat. The scientific rivalry of the early days mutated into a cold strategic conflict, in which the interstellar conflicts of Star Wars, published a year before the pope’s election, appeared less and less to be the stuff of science fiction.
“The question is inescapable: Who owns space? I have no hesitation in answering that space belongs to all mankind, that it is at the service of all,” asserted the Polish pope in 1984.
Fascinated, like his predecessors, by the conquest of space, he showed a particular interest in the scientific dimension of this quest. He was also keen to correct a very famous Church error in this area: the case of Galileo’s trial.
A process of re-evaluation
As long ago as 1979, on the occasion of the centenary of Albert Einstein’s birth, the Pontiff had asked a commission to re-examine the trial of Galileo, condemned by the Church in 1633. He wanted to put an end to the “bitter and painful conflict,” and to allow a “fruitful concord between science and faith.”
And as early as 1983, he had told scholars at the Vatican: “We certainly recognize [that Galileo] suffered at the hands of Church organizations.”
However, it wasn’t until 1992 and the completion of the commission’s work that the Pope made a decision on the subject. In a long address to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, he re-examined the errors committed during the trial that led to Galileo Galilei’s condemnation. John Paul II recalled that Galileo’s discovery of heliocentrism had challenged the widely accepted geocentric view of the time, based on an erroneous reading of the Bible.
Faith and science
“The new science, with its methods and freedom of research, forced theologians to question their own criteria for interpreting Scripture. Most failed to do so. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, was more perceptive on this point than his theological adversaries,” he points out.
The Polish pope therefore acknowledges the error of condemning Galileo, reproaching his detractors for having “unduly transposed into the realm of the doctrine of faith a question of fact falling within the scope of scientific investigation.”
He also points out that Galileo’s heliocentrism has long since been superseded by numerous discoveries about the workings of the universe.
Finally, the Pope insists that Galileo’s approach in no way corresponds to the “tendency towards scientism” that characterizes “contemporary culture.”
“The Galileo case has become a kind of myth,” he says: that of “the Church’s alleged rejection of scientific progress.” On the contrary, he insists, Galileo’s vision of the scientist’s mission “presupposes that the world is not chaos, but a ‘cosmos,’ i.e. that there is an order and natural laws, which can be apprehended and thought about, and which therefore have a certain affinity with the spirit.”
And today we celebrate...