People commonly believed that the Catholic Church persecuted Galileo for favoring the geocentric view of the solar system rather than the heliocentric view. The Galileo episode, for many anti-Catholics, is proof that the Church hates science. For Catholics, however, the case is usually an embarrassment. In the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church was an important part of European life. It had the ability to stop anything that made it vulnerable never to do so again. The Protestant Reformation had led the church to become especially delicate in the opinions that people upheld that might have a negative effect on it. The church was prompted to set up the Holy Office, known as the Inquisition. The Holy Office had branches in many countries to investigate threatening teachings. The Church was also vulnerable due its struggle with European influence and budget. Galileo not only committed blasphemy but irritated the church emphasizing a notion that was previously put forward by Copernicus. The Catholic Church maintained that one could not be a scientist and a devout Catholic all at once (Papal Condemnation (Sentence) of Galileo, 1963, June 22).
Galileo's cosmology contested three significant aspects of Catholic Church theology. First, the idea that God and heaven are unchangeable and that the universe is directed stationary order were destabilized by Galileo's unification terrestrial and celestial mechanisms. Second, mathematical reasoning that played a crucial role in Galileo's methodology contrasted sharply with divinity and the Church as the sole authority of judgment. Thirdly, the significance of human beings, supported by the geocentric world view, was weakened by the heliocentric cosmology (Halsall, 1997). Catholic Church authorities had long firmly ingrained the philosophy in the Catholic theology for over a century. In a Catholic's standpoint, heaven is perfect and unalterable. The Creator of heaven is also considered infallible and unchangeable.
