Catholic Church Seemingly Reverses Apology to Galileo

Twenty two years after the historic “apology” of Pope John Paul II to Galileo in 1992, astronomers are beginning to question the apology’s sincerity. “The beauty of the Copernican solar system, and following it, that of Galileo, was its simplicity,” said one astronomer, “you put the sun in the middle, and the whole mess is cleared up. That’s what made it so convincing against the Ptolemaic system.” The system of Ptolemy, placing earth, and therefore mankind, in the center of the universe, had to become more and more complicated in order to justify itself. “You had circles within circles, spirals, unnatural motions, and nobody knew where to look, what the middle was, or what was really going on,” said a historian of early renaissance thought. “The worst part of it all was that all this was being done just so we could make ourselves the most important thing in the solar system, rather than the Sun. It required mental acrobatics that seem, in retrospect, simply embarrassing, though at the time they had convinced almost everyone.” He concluded, “At some point, the system just stopped making sense, and had to be thrown out.”