Church and Science

Yet another timely article from The American Spectator outlining the long history of support that the Catholic Church has given over the centuries to various scientific ventures:

Modern astronomy may be said to have begun with Copernicus, a Catholic priest, who dedicated his 1543 work, On the Orbits of Heavenly Bodies, to the Pope of the day. Galileo might have avoided trouble as easily as Copernicus did if he had shown a little more diplomatic skill and common sense, for example if he had refrained from mocking a Pope who had befriended and honored him.

The contribution of the Catholic Church to astronomy was massive and unequalled. Without it astronomy might very well never have grown out of astrology at all. The cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, for example, were designed in the 17th and 18th centuries to function as solar observatories. Each cathedral contained holes through which measured rays of sunlight could enter and meridian lines on the floor.