Review of Current Religious Thought: January 18, 1960

A challenging book about Galileo appeared in Germany that merits the attention of everyone concerned about faith and science. The writer, F. Dessauer, makes an attempt to draw significant lessons for our time from the Church’s condemnation of Galileo. Dessauer is particularly concerned with the turn-about that the Church had to make: once having condemned Galileo’s ideas, the Church later came to new understanding and had to confess implicitly that she had erred in the case of Galileo. Dessauer is a faithful Catholic and underscores his insistence that the infallibility of the Pope is not in question here at all. Nonetheless, he recognizes that the problem arises from the fact that the Church spoke out in condemnation of a scientific idea and found herself forced later by incontrovertible proofs to admit that her condemnation was unjust.

Dessauer describes the personal tragedy of Galileo very movingly. He lets us hear his judgment, see his arrest, watch him live his lonely life without contact with the world, and finally hear him recant what he had formerly taught as inescapable truth. Dessauer is rightly amazed that the Church could have treated so noble a man so badly. He also calls attention to the tragic estrangement that the case created between the officialdom of the Church and the new spirits rising within and outside of the Church of that day.

Dessauer is deeply impressed by the great responsibility that the Church carries when she speaks. He is impressed by the care with which the Church must exercise her responsibility in connection with the developments of science. He is aware that the Galileo affair was haunted by the fearful ghost of the Inquisition and he lets us know that the Pope had spoken judgmentally of Galileo to the Florentine ambassador. In short, Dessauer frankly exposes the entire tragedy, holding only one reserve in his judgment on the Church—the infallibility of the Pope.

The Galileo episode has implications for other people besides the Roman Catholics. The issue raised by Dessauer touches the whole Church and her relationship to the growth of modern science. It faces us with the religion and science conflict or, as it is better described, the relationship between Scripture and science. One is forced to acknowledge the enormous damage that can be done to the cause of the Church when the Church speaks presumptuously on matters belonging to science, and has to take back later what she said in judgment before. The Church’s tendency to err here is perhaps understandable in the light of past history. But when the Church has to recant dogmatic positions previously taken in the heat of controversy, she suffers undeniable loss of face and prestige. Worse than that, she loses respect.

In the Galileo affair, the Church repeatedly summoned the Word of God as witness to the truth of her stand. The motives of the Church were probably pure; the Church felt called upon to protect truth. But time proved that the Church’s appeal to the Word was conditioned by her own limited insights. And so the Church failed to proclaim the eternal truth that is above the shifting sands of opinion and fear.

When the Church errs by presumptuous attacks on new ideas of science, she always estranges people from herself. This has been especially true of the Church’s responses to the conclusions of natural science. Today, it is especially clear that the Church has a calling to avoid all quick and easy appeals to Scripture against science. We must take great care that we do not needlessly estrange young people who are reared in modern science. Christianity must never alienate people from Jesus Christ by theologians’ foolish arguments against authentic and scholarly science.

This does not mean that science presents no danger to the Church and her preaching of the Gospel. It does mean, however, that pious motives are not sufficient as defenses against these dangers. The Pope had pious motives in his attack on Galileo. He was afraid of the determinism which he thought was implicit in the new science of that day. But the Pope’s good intentions did not spare the Church from the serious damage done by the condemnation of Galileo. The youth and especially the men of science were shaken in their confidence in the Church. This example should teach us to reckon seriously with the relation between the Church and the world of science. It should also be a cogent warning against quick and simple judgments on natural science by the Church.

The Church always has a temptation to make pronouncements that have a superficial basis in the Bible whenever science poses a particular threat to faith. But it is just such temptations that lead to the embarrassment of having to take back in leisure what was pronounced in haste. Tension between faith and science can exist even when no scientist is being condemned and no official pronouncement is made by the Church. The Church must accept as her solemn responsibility the task of keeping the tensions within the sphere of truth; she must avoid making the tensions a matter of science versus obscurantism or fear. When science attacks the Christian faith, it is a tragedy. But when the Church, with an appeal to the Bible, creates a needless alienation between science and the Gospel, it is a worse tragedy.

There is no reason for the believer to fear science. If Christian faith is genuine faith, her disciples need not live in the fear that some discovery may one day be made that will render faith impossible. Indeed, believers must accept the scientific challenge in complete honesty and with a deep sense of responsibility. I do not want to underestimate the great problems that still exist within the relationship between Church and science. But it needs to be declared emphatically that the resistance of the world to the Gospel must be aroused only by the Gospel itself. Resistance to the Gospel and alienation from the Church must not be aroused by any foolish pronouncements against science. We should learn from the Church’s frequent embarrassments of the past. We must remember how certain the Church often was of her stand against scientific conclusions, and how deeply embarrassed she was when she had to swallow her own words.

May the Lord save us from casting away our power by presumptuous pronouncements on matters outside our ken. The Lord save us from creating a stumbling block by our own foolishness, and from the loss of influence that stems not from orthodox theology but from human pretension. The cross of Christ is the stumbling block; let the Church beware lest she create any other.

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