<story><title>Why Catholics Built Astronomical Features into Churches</title><url>http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/catholics-built-secret-astronomical-features-into-churches-to-help-save-souls</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jawns</author><text>Up until college, I had always heard the story of the Catholic Church persecuting Galileo as sort of the prototypical example of the church&amp;#x27;s attitude toward science.  As a Catholic, I figured it was an episode where Galileo was clearly in the right and the Church was clearly in the wrong.&lt;p&gt;In college, though, I discovered that many influential Catholics strongly reject the idea that Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church because the Church disagreed with his theory or felt it threatened to undermine its teachings:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.catholic.com&amp;#x2F;tracts&amp;#x2F;the-galileo-controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.catholic.com&amp;#x2F;tracts&amp;#x2F;the-galileo-controversy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr - It&amp;#x27;s more complicated than the typical anti-Catholic narrative suggests.  The episode was primarily a clash of personalities (Galileo was a jerk and insulted thin-skinned Vatican officials who misused their power to punish him), rather than a dispute about science, or even a dispute about the intersection of science and religion.</text></item><item><author>mike_ivanov</author><text>&amp;quot;Update 11&amp;#x2F;15: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Galileo was executed for his beliefs.&amp;quot; -- that should serve as a hint about the overall quality of the article.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arjie</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been hearing this sort of thing a lot lately and it has just reinforced, in my mind, that the Catholic Church at the time was a pretty repugnant institution (though this is not nearly the worst of its actions). All of your clarifications only reinforce the belief that Galileo was in the right and the Catholic Church was in the wrong. Abusing power to persecute someone because you were insulted doesn&amp;#x27;t exactly move someone closer to being right.&lt;p&gt;One could make the argument that at the time it was normal to persecute someone because they insulted you and I don&amp;#x27;t want to get into that whole debate about moral relativism, but that&amp;#x27;s not the defence you&amp;#x27;ve brought up.&lt;p&gt;I mean, ultimately they convicted him of heresy for his claims. It&amp;#x27;s not like they were &amp;quot;We condemn you to house arrest for being a dick!&amp;quot;. They were like &amp;quot;We condemn you to house arrest for heresy since you claimed the Earth goes around the Sun!&amp;quot;. And on top of that they go and repudiated his ideas. So not only did they say that the claim was false, they also said that it was such a terrible claim that it qualified for one of the highest kinds of crimes (heresy).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no need for anti-Catholicism here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Catholics Built Astronomical Features into Churches</title><url>http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/catholics-built-secret-astronomical-features-into-churches-to-help-save-souls</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jawns</author><text>Up until college, I had always heard the story of the Catholic Church persecuting Galileo as sort of the prototypical example of the church&amp;#x27;s attitude toward science.  As a Catholic, I figured it was an episode where Galileo was clearly in the right and the Church was clearly in the wrong.&lt;p&gt;In college, though, I discovered that many influential Catholics strongly reject the idea that Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church because the Church disagreed with his theory or felt it threatened to undermine its teachings:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.catholic.com&amp;#x2F;tracts&amp;#x2F;the-galileo-controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.catholic.com&amp;#x2F;tracts&amp;#x2F;the-galileo-controversy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr - It&amp;#x27;s more complicated than the typical anti-Catholic narrative suggests.  The episode was primarily a clash of personalities (Galileo was a jerk and insulted thin-skinned Vatican officials who misused their power to punish him), rather than a dispute about science, or even a dispute about the intersection of science and religion.</text></item><item><author>mike_ivanov</author><text>&amp;quot;Update 11&amp;#x2F;15: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Galileo was executed for his beliefs.&amp;quot; -- that should serve as a hint about the overall quality of the article.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drzaiusapelord</author><text>Except the standard narrative is fairly honest, if reductionist. Of course the details are far more interesting, but I find there&amp;#x27;s this new historic revisionism that&amp;#x27;s trying to whitewash Catholic history and its fairly repugnant.  Look at your comment. Putting in qualifiers like Galileo was a jerk and those selfless Vatican officials were just a little &amp;quot;thin-skinned&amp;quot; is making excuses to promote a pro-Church narrative and to blame Galileo. You are aware we are discussing the Inquisition here which, if we include the entire church all through Europe, led to the deaths of over 125,000 people. This wasn&amp;#x27;t some protocol slight taken overly-wrongly, but an active system of censorship, oppression, imprisonment, and mass murder Galileo was on the receiving end of.&lt;p&gt;I hate when the &amp;quot;Oh, there&amp;#x27;s more to this story&amp;quot; attitude is used to defend the wrong narrative. I see it all the time on the internet. Edison is on par with Hitler for some reason, Lincoln is a war mongering criminal for going against the peace loving Confederate states, etc. The larger narrative is dismissed for smaller details that are presented in a way to distract or contradict the larger narrative. Its purposely viewing the trees and ignoring the forest. Sadly, its a popular way for disingenuous people to promote their views.</text></comment>