“Can’t blame Catholics for wanting to point out that they were a bit better than the barbarians. Still, the poor manager should take blame for holding back progress, even if he did do better than total ignorance or anarchy.”
Your attitude simply reflects the bias of the English Reformation and its re-writing of history. You are believing a myth. In reality, the Catholic Church has been a supporter of the sciences for thousands of years. Of course, everyone always trots out Galileo, and no doubt many real errors were made – scientific, theological, and moral – but they hardly negate the fact that the Church has supported the sciences. Just take one discipline, astronomy: the Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions. During Galileo’s time, the Jesuits had a highly respected group of astronomers and scientists in Rome. Many notable scientists in other disciplines received encouragement and funding from the Church and from individual Church officials. Many of the scientific advances during this period were made either by clerics or as a result of Church funding.
Prior to Galilieo, Copernicus (a Polish priest) first advanced the doctrine that the sun and not the earth is the center of our system. His great work, De Revolutionibus orblure coelestium, was published at the solicitation of Cardinal Schömberg and the Bishop of Culm. It was dedicated to Pope Paul III, with his permission. No objections or difficulties were raised against Copernicus by any official of the Catholic church. Neither Paul III, nor any of the nine popes who followed him, nor the Roman Congregations raised any alarm.
On the contrary, Copernicus was rewarded with honors by the Pope, and became an influential individual within the Catholic church. In sum, the heliocentric solar system was warmly received by the established church of the day.
It’s interesting to note that Copernicus entrusted his book to Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran clergyman who knew that Protestant reaction to it would be negative, since Martin Luther seemed to have condemned the new theory, and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory that would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did—something Copernicus did not intend.
Ten years prior to Galileo, Johannes Kepler published a heliocentric work that expanded on Copernicus’ work. As a result, Kepler also found opposition among his fellow Protestants for his heliocentric views and found a welcome reception among some Jesuits who were known for their scientific achievements.
Galileo could have safely proposed heliocentricity as a theory or a method to more simply account for the planets’ motions. His problem arose when he stopped proposing it as a scientific theory and began proclaiming it as truth, though there was no conclusive proof of it at the time. Even so, Galileo would not have been in so much trouble if he had chosen to stay within the realm of science and out of the realm of theology. But, despite his friends’ warnings, he insisted on moving the debate onto theological grounds.
Christopher Hitchens writes that “The attitude of religion to medicine, like the attitude of religion to science, is always problematic and very often necessarily hostile.” He adds that medical research only began to flourish once “the priests had been elbowed aside.” But that’s simply another myth – oddly, in the very next line he quotes Louis Pasteur as an example of this enlightened research, without acknowledging that Pasteur was a pious Catholic.
It’s also a myth that the Church forbade dissection.