GALILEO.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 80, 7 November 1874, Page 9

GALI L E O .

W. SWANSON, ESQ., M.H.R.— THE R. C. CHURCH.— THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. Wheu imperfectly educated and inveterately prejudiced enemies o£ the Church have a mind to prove that she is an enemy to science, the case of Galileo is ever ready to their hand. A celebrated member of the Legislature and a secularist, Mr. W. Swanson, threw the case of Galileo in my teeth a short time ago, when justifying his views as a secularist. These gentlemen take good care to tell only a part of Galileo's story, and of the relation of the Church to his system of astronomy, for the best of. reasons perhaps, because they do not know the whole story. We .are all aware that a half-told story is very convenient for certain dishonest purposes/and that to suppress part of the truth is often the worst form of direct falsehood. It is true that Galileo was persecuted in one sense, and it is true that his great predecessor, Copernicus, was also persecuted by calumnious tongues, if not otherwise, and that in, both cases ecclesiastics were the persecutors. But Galileo taught his system for years in the Italian Universities, with the full knowledge of dignitaries of the Catholic Church, and when in the full height of his fame as a teacher of the Copernican system of astronomy, the then Pope received him in Rome with every public mark of friendship and honor. A successor of this Pope not only adopted Galileo's system, but, by his thorough knowledge of it, turned it to a most valuable practical purpose. By means of it he introduced a more correct computation of time, the benefit of which the Christian world, with the exception of Russia, enjoy at this day. The present is called the Gregorian Calendar, in honor of the eminent Pope who introduced it. Galileo's great predecessor, Copernicus, dedicated his immortal work on "The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies" to Pope Paul 111., because he said his Holiness was, of all men living, the best qualified, by his profound knowledge of mathematics, to judge of its merits, and to defend his reputation from ignorant and malicious traducers. I have never had an opportunity of seeing in full the report of the judicial proceedings of the Court before "which Galileo was tried at Rome, and should like if any of your learned readers would say where such could be obtained. Individual ecclesiastics — and I presume even ecclesiastical Courts of inferior jurisdiction — may meddle with things they do not understand, and go far out of their depth. Certain it ib, the Church, as a leading authority, does not pretend, and never did pretend, to pronounce with infallible certainty on pure questions of physical science. If Galileo was persecuted, the Church, in her corporate capacity, was not the persecutor. Her Popes and high dignitaries — Catholic kings, princes, and noblemen — have been among the most zealous and munificent patrons of science and learning in past ages. They may be so in the future. It is a notorious fact that ail the great Universities in Europe were founded by Popes, or under their auspices, without the aid of education rates or taxes. Our own matchless Alfred led the way — a Catholic Sovereign, the latchet of whose shoes even Queen Victoria would not be worthy to untie. — Laic.

P.S. — Modern Protestant scholars and philosophers, while reaping all the advantages which their Catholic predecessors in past ages have given tliem, often turn round, and with base and black ingratitude, reproacli them, and the Church which patronised them, as the enemies of all progress. Mr W. Swanson does not pretend to be a scholar or philosopher, yet he makes misuse of the little knowledge he possesses to misrepresent and blacken the character of the Roman Catholic Church and her clex'gy.