Dr. Thomas Madden

But the problem that the Church had, and particularly the scientists in Rome—

And by scientists, I mean Jesuits.

These are people like St.

Robert Bellarmine, great minds.

Their problem with this was the Copernican model didn't work.

It didn't match the observations that you would see in the sky.

The only state in Europe that had a state observatory was the papacy.

They had armies of scientists who examined these things.

And so Galileo said, no, it's the Copernican model.

That's the way it is.

And they said, okay, well, it doesn't work.

We're not opposed to the idea of the sun being in the center, but it has to predict what we see in the sky.

Because the Copernican model has, everything is in circles, perfect circles, and that's not the way the solar system is.

It's ellipses.

So it didn't predict what they could actually observe.

Galileo was not willing to debate.

He just insulted everyone.

Then the worst came when he decided to write theology and decided to get into what his truths now mean for the truths of the Catholic Church.

And that's the point in which he ran afoul of the Inquisition.

Because if you're going to teach things which are false—