Kelly Liang

10/9/2012
7
The Roman Catholic Church was not justified in convicting Galileo of heresy and
forbidding him to do research on astronomy. First, Copernicus, who was supported by Galileo,
had never been officially charged with heresy. Copernicus originally created the heliocentric
theory Galileo tried to expand. They both favored heliocentric theory, but only Galileo was
denounced. Next, Galileo was charged with violating an injunction of not teaching or espousing
the heliocentric theory, not even as a hypothesis. However, this injunction was not genuine, since
Bellarmine had only warned Galileo to treat heliocentric theory as a hypothesis. Still, the court
accepted the injunction as authentic and found him guilty. Therefore, the Church was abusing its
power, which was unjust. Last, Galileo's theory was based on his observations of the heaven
bodies. He used his telescope to observe and found that Aristotle's ideas about the heaven bodies
were not true. He observed the heaven bodies with a telescope, whereas the ancient philosophers
did not really observe them; they just conjectured about them. In conclusion, the Roman Catholic
Church should not have arrested Galileo.