Galileo
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“At the age of seventy-seven years, ten months, and twenty days, with philosophical and Christian constancy, he rendered his soul to his Creator, sending it forth, as far as we can believe, to enjoy and admire more closely those eternal and immutable marvels, which that soul, by means of weak devices with such eagerness and impatience, had sought to bring near the eyes of us mortals.”
Galileo’s will requested that he be buried next to his father, Vincenzo, in the family tomb in the Basilica of Santa Croce. However, for fear of provoking the anger of the Church, he was buried in a very small chamber under the Basilica’s bell tower. The Grand Duke Ferdinando planned to construct a monumental tomb for him opposite that of the celebrated artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, but this proposal was vetoed by Pope Urban VIII, who continued to maintain that Galileo’s ideas were not only false but also perilous to Christianity. In this case as well, Galileo ultimately had the upper hand. Even though his remains lay for almost a century in an obscure chamber, the last will of his most admiring disciple, Viviani, ensured that they were moved on March 12, 1737, to an impressive sarcophagus, above which an imposing monument was later erected (Figure 11 in the color insert). Viviani, in fact, devoted much of his life to the task of creating what he regarded as a fitting final resting place for his great master, and he effectively turned even the façade of his own house into a monument to Galileo (Figure 9 in the color insert). The Church’s journey to recognizing its mistakes in the Galileo Affair was slower and far more tortuous.
CHAPTER 16 The Saga of Pio Paschini
Perhaps no other story than the tale of Monsignor Pio Paschini demonstrates better why Galileo’s fight for freedom of thought still needs to be presented, examined, and understood today.
In 1941 the Pontifical Academy of Sciences decided to publish a new biography of Galileo for the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of his death. The goal of the project was described by the academy’s president, Agostino Gemelli, as the production of “an effective demonstration that the Church did not persecute Galileo but helped him considerably in his studies.” Sensing perhaps that this statement about the expected result could elicit surprise or even shock, Gemelli added that the book “will not be a work of apologetics, because that is not the task of scholars, but will be a historical and scholarly study of the documents.” Monsignor Pio Paschini, a highly respected professor of church history and rector of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome was selected to write the book. Paschini was known for both his orthodoxy and his integrity.
Even though Paschini had no prior experience in the history of science (he admitted that the theories of the universe were “abstruse and boring” to him), nor was he in any sense a Galileo scholar, he arduously worked on the project, managing to complete the book Life and Works of Galileo Galilei in just three years and producing a manuscript on January 23, 1945. Protocol required that Paschini submit the book for review by the Church’s authorities. That’s when, ironically, history repeated itself. Since Paschini’s impartial, sincere judgment of Galileo’s life contained some serious criticism of the Church’s behavior, the book displeased both Gemelli and the Holy Office and was rejected as “unsuitable” for publication.
An examination of Paschini’s correspondence concerning the rejection, especially that with his friend Giuseppe Vale, a priest, historian, and archivist, reveals that the main reason for not approving the book was that it had been judged as being “nothing but an apology for Galileo.” Paschini put the blame for Galileo’s condemnation squarely at the Church’s and the Jesuits’ door. He explained that in the Dialogo, Galileo presented objectively the opinions for and against Copernicanism. It wasn’t Galileo’s fault, Paschini argued, that Copernicanism appeared much stronger. From Pascini’s letters, we can further infer that the reviewers of his book based part of their criticism on Bellarmino’s old argument—namely, that there was no conclusive proof for the Earth’s motion. Paschini readily dismissed this by pointing out that there had been even less conclusive evidence for the Ptolemaic geocentric model.
Even though Paschini initially protested and fought the decision, he eventually gave up and obeyed the request not to discuss the affair any further “for the good of the Church.” Paschini died in December 1962, legally leaving his unpublished manuscript to the care of his former teaching assistant Michele Maccarrone. In 1963 Maccarrone embarked on a campaign to publish the book. He conducted a series of meetings with various church officials, including Pope Paul VI, who, in his previous position as deputy secretary of state, had informed Paschini about the negative reviews of his book.
Maccarrone’s efforts seemed to have borne fruit, since the Pontifical Academy of Sciences showed interest in publishing the book, this time on the four hundredth anniversary of Galileo’s birth. The academy tasked Jesuit textual scholar Edmond Lamalle with updating the book. Lamalle made a series of revisions that he described as “deliberately very discreet” and “limited to corrections that seemed to us to be indispensable.” He also added an introduction in which he outlined what he regarded as shortcomings of the original manuscript—weaknesses that he supposedly attempted to correct. The revised book was published on October 2, 1964, under the same title, with a preface by Lamalle. The general impression one got from Lamalle’s comments was that the published book was essentially identical to Paschini’s manuscript, other than some minimal editorial corrections.
Around the same time, during the Second Vatican Council, held in four annual sessions of two or three months each from 1962 through 1965, the Church was engaged in discussions concerning the relationship between religion and science, under the general theme of “the Church in the modern world.” As part of that discourse, a draft of a committee report included the significant sentence: “It is necessary that we do our best, insofar as human frailty permits, that such errors [where science is presented as opposing faith], as for example the condemnation of Galileo, are never repeated.” Due to opposition from a few bishops, however, this text, which mentioned the Galileo affair explicitly, was dropped in favor of a more general statement, saying:
“One can, therefore, legitimately regret attitudes to be found sometimes even among Christians, through an insufficient appreciation of the rightful autonomy of science, which have led many people to conclude from the disagreements and controversies which such attitudes have aroused, that there is opposition between faith and science.”
Galileo’s case was pushed to a footnote: “See P. Paschini, Life and Works of Galileo Galilei, 2 vols., Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City, 1964.”
All of this might have still seemed moderately appropriate were it not for the fact that in 1978 Pietro Bertolla, a participant in a conference honoring Paschini, decided to compare word for word Paschini’s original manuscript with the published work. He discovered a few hundred changes, which numberwise didn’t seem excessive, given the book’s more than seven hundred pages. However, when Bertolla scrutinized the individual changes, he realized that in some places the revisions resulted in the opposite of Paschini’s original meaning. In particular, Lamalle played down the significance of Galileo’s scientific discoveries and heaped more of the blame on him in his interactions with the Inquisition. For example, when discussing the anti-Copernican decree of 1616, Paschini wrote:
… to be directed against the Copernican doctrine and to arrive at a condemnation in a decree pronounced with a levity that was wholly unusual on the part of the austere tribunals. What is worse is that one never revisited that decree with a weightier examination. The Peripatetics [Aristotelian philosophers] had won and did not want to let go so soon of the victory. As regards Galileo, he was silenced by means of an injunction.
In the published book, on the other hand, Lamalle changed the text to read: “This decree appears surprising today considering that it came from such a balanced and austere tribunal, but it should not be surprising if we consider it in the context of the doctrine and the scientific knowledge of tha
t time.” In other words, while Paschini maintained that the anti-Copernican decree of 1616 was at best careless, and the fact that it had never been reexamined inexcusable, Lamalle made it look as if Paschini said that while the decree was unfortunate, and not one that we would expect from such a wise body as the Inquisition, it was entirely understandable for the early seventeenth century. The important point here was not whether Lamalle was correct in his interpretation but, rather, the intellectual dishonesty in presenting his own views as if they were Paschini’s, without mentioning this fact. A similar deception occurred in the presentation of Paschini’s conclusion about Galileo’s condemnation in 1633. Citing an article from 1906, Paschini wrote:
Regarding the responsibility [for the condemnation], one can frankly say that “the persons who are most to blame in the eyes of history are the defenders of an outdated school who saw the scepter of science slipping from their hands and could not bear that the oracles coming out of their lips should no longer be religiously listened to, and so they used all means and intrigues to regain for their teaching the credit it was losing. One of the chief means used were the Congregations and their authority, and the latter’s fault was to have allowed themselves to be used.”
Paschini was putting the blame on the conservative Jesuits and the Inquisition. Lamalle replaced this entire passage by citing an article from 1957 claiming that “one was dealing with a great struggle… scientific reason took a bold step, although without advancing decisive proofs; and such a giant step necessitated recombination of the familiar images that were connected to the representation of the universe, in the mind of the scientist as well as in that of the man on the street.”
Put another way, Lamalle dismissed Paschini’s view as outdated. Again, irrespective of the validity of Lamalle’s perspective, in spite of his claims to the contrary, he essentially rewrote Paschini’s book, at least with regard to Paschini’s conclusions about the Inquisition’s treatment of Galileo and Copernicanism.
The entire Paschini saga, which occurred in the middle of the twentieth century, does leave us with a bitter taste and a suspicion that the restrictions by the Church on freedom of thought, and the associated intellectual dishonesty, are still not something of the very distant past.
The story took a new turn in 1978. Pope John Paul II, who was elected that year, had previously experienced the denial of personal and religious freedom in Communist Poland, his homeland. It was therefore only to be expected that he would at some point address the interaction between science and religion in general and the Galileo affair in particular. Indeed, he did, the very next year.
THE “HARMONY BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC TRUTH AND REVEALED TRUTH”
On the occasion of the centennial of Einstein’s birth, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a conference at which John Paul II delivered a speech entitled “Deep Harmony Which Unites the Truths of Science with the Truths of Faith.” In this address, the Pontiff made a few historically important admissions. First, he acknowledged that Galileo had “had to suffer a great deal” from the actions of church officials and institutions. Second, he noted that the Second Vatican Council “deplored” unwarranted religious interventions in scientific matters. The Pope was also quick to point out that Galileo himself (in his Letter to Benedetto Castelli and Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina) expressed the view that science and religion are harmonious and not in contradiction with each other if Scripture is adequately interpreted.
Perhaps most important, the Pope encouraged a new study to be conducted of the entire Galileo affair, one that would be considered “with complete objectivity.” When this initiative was announced in October 1980, it made headlines all around the world. The Washington Post, for instance, declared, “World Takes Turn in Favor of Galileo.” The Post’s article itself concluded that the Pope’s action was designed “to wipe out a judgment that in living memory was being used by adversaries of the Church as a symbol of its opposition to intellectual freedom.” The actual charge of the appointed commission did not speak of “retrying” Galileo, but, rather, expressed the intention “to rethink the whole Galileo question.”
The Vatican commission issued its final report on October 31, 1992, and the Pope acknowledged that he regarded the commission’s work as done. After hearing a presentation from the commission’s chairman, the Pope himself gave a speech, under the auspices of a meeting on the phenomenon of complexity in mathematics and science. One of his main points addressed the relationship between the results of scientific research and interpretations of Scripture—the topic to which Galileo had devoted so much of his reasoning powers, only to be frustrated by the Church. The Pope admitted: “Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, proved himself more perspicacious on this issue than his theologian adversaries. The majority of theologians did not perceive the formal distinction that exists between the Holy Scripture in itself and its interpretation, and this led them unduly transferring to the field of religious doctrine an issue which actually belongs to scientific research.”
The Pope presciently added that the lessons from the Galileo affair would probably become relevant in the future, when “one day we shall find ourselves in a similar situation.” He then repeated his belief that science and religion are in perfect harmony.
With that presentation, the Church basically declared the Galileo case closed. Media around the world had a feast. The New York Times announced: “After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves.” The Los Angeles Times had a similar message: “It’s Official: The Earth Revolves Around the Sun, Even for the Vatican.” Some Galileo scholars were not amused. Spanish historian Antonio Beltrán Marí wrote: “The fact that the Pope continues to consider himself an authority capable of saying something relevant about Galileo and his science shows that, on the Pope’s side, nothing has changed. He is behaving in exactly the same manner as Galileo’s judges, whose mistake he now recognizes.”
To be fair, the Pope was in some sense in a no-win situation. Whatever he said, or failed to say regarding the Church’s errors would have been criticized on some grounds. Nevertheless, the chiefly theological rehabilitation of Galileo was far too late.
Interestingly, in both his 1979 speech and the one in 1992, Pope John Paul II mentioned Albert Einstein. In 1979 he started his address with: “The Apostolic See wishes to pay to Albert Einstein the tribute due to him for the eminent contribution he made to the progress of science, that is, to knowledge of the truth present in the mystery of the universe.” This led the Pope to the following conclusion: “Like any other truth, scientific truth is, in fact, answerable only to itself and to the supreme Truth, God, the creator of man and of all things.” In his 1992 presentation, he reiterated the same idea. Starting with a popular form in which an aphorism by Einstein is often quoted—“What is eternally incomprehensible in the world is that it is comprehensible”—the Pope suggested that the intelligibility “leads us, in the final analysis, to that transcendent and primordial thought imprinted on all things.”
Given the frequent references to Einstein, it is interesting in this discussion of the relationship between science and religion to examine Einstein’s thoughts on religion and God, and to compare those with Galileo’s, more than three centuries earlier.
CHAPTER 17 Galileo’s and Einstein’s Thoughts on Science and Religion
In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo expressed in the clearest fashion what he regarded as the proper relationship between science and religion. This document was, at the same time, a manifesto of Galileo’s fight for intellectual freedom—for the right of scientists to defend what they view as compelling evidence. One of the reasons for Galileo’s clash with the Church had to do with the rather different interpretations he and church officials had given to the actual nature of the disagreement. Whereas Galileo was convinced that he was trying, in some sense, to save the Church from committing a monumental error, these officials treated his obstinate insistence on the validity of his opinions as
a direct attack on the sanctity of Scripture and on the Church itself. To support his point of view, Galileo recruited the writings of Saint Augustine, who cautioned against making conclusive statements about things that are hard to understand: “We ought not to believe anything inadvisedly on a dubious point, lest in favor to our error we conceive a prejudice against something that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way to the sacred books of either the Old or the New Testament.” Basically, Saint Augustine was arguing in the fifth century that biblical texts should not be understood literally, if they contradict what we know from reliable sources. This was precisely the mistake, Galileo contended, that his adversaries were committing: “They would extend such authorities [of the Bible and Holy Fathers] until even in purely physical matters—where faith is not involved—they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words, this passage may contain a different sense.”
Galileo reiterated this idea repeatedly, expressing his conviction that “He [God] would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations.” Referring more specifically to his Copernican convictions, Galileo was emphatic that “the mobility or stability of the Earth or Sun is neither a matter of faith nor one contrary to ethics.” You might have thought that more than three centuries later, we would not have to go through some of the same types of adversities that Galileo experienced when it came to literal interpretations of the Bible, but unfortunately that is not the case. For example, a 2017 Gallup survey in the United States found that about 38 percent of adults were inclined to believe that “God created humans in their present form, at one time within the last ten thousand years.”