WHAT CATHOLICS HAVE DONE FOR ASTRONOMY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 37, 13 September 1900, Page 6

WHAT CATHOLICS HAVE DONE FOR ASTRONOMY.

Fboji the earliest times illustrious Catholics were working in the field of astronomy.

St. Bede, Doctor of the Church, wrote a treatise nn astronomy and was one of the n>st to teach that the shape of the earth was globular ; that the ebb and flow of the tides was due to the pull of the moon. He showed (nays the Cut Italic Time*') the true ciuse of eclipses of the sun and moon, and condemned superstitious astrology as falne and pernicious. Abbot Alcuin showed that what were thought to be portentous and erratic movements of the planet Mars ■was his natural course previously not understood. Popo Syivester 11., better known as the celebrated Gerbert, was a leading astrocomer of his day. Albertus Magnus, the great Dominican theologian, before the invention of the telescope, taught that the Milky Way was a vast assemblage of stars, and that the figures on the moon were the ground-markings of its own surface. Copernicus dedicated his great work to Pope Paul 111., and published it at the earnest entreaty of his friend Cardinal Schomberg. Ihe first observation of a planet's transit across the sun's disc wax made by the Abbe Gasssendi. The first of the asteroids was disco-

vered by the Abbe Piazzi. The great names of Clavius, Grimaldi, Rosenvifch, Mayer, De Vico, and La Caille are all Catholic priests. Afc the present moment the Catholic Church possesses more astronomical observatories than any country or any government. Beginning with the Vatican Observatory at Rome, founded out of the private purse of Pope Leo XIII., they are found all over the world, even in such countries as China, Patagonia, and the Philippine Islands. Our own Stonyhurst Observatory is an example near home. This ia a meagre statement of what Catholics have done for astronomy, and knowing much more we feel insulted when bigoted correspondents aie permitted to iguuiantlv aooeit otherwise.