Heliocentrism: Discussion Between The Roman Catholic Church And Galileo

Many believe that the primary source of contention between the Roman Catholic Church and Galileo was because of Galileo’s scientific views primarily on the subject of heliocentrism. The theory of heliocentrism declared that the earth rotated around the sun, a concept that opposed the age-long beliefs that the sun revolved around the earth and, i.e., geocentrism (Drake). Geocentrism further declared that the earth was the center of the universe and all other heavenly bodies revolved around the globe. The heliocentric model already existed for about a century before, but Galileo provided visible evidence to the idea. Galileo was able to observe the proof of heliocentrism by inventing the first telescope and thus was able to find the shifting
Galileo could not answer the most cogent argument against heliocentrism, which had been stated much earlier by Aristotle. The case was that if heliocentrism were factual, then there would be visible parallax shifts in the locations of the stars as the earth revolved in the orbit of the sun (Barbour). Perceiving the stars’ vast distance from the earth, a sensitive measuring device was required to document the presence of the mentioned shifts. Given the technology of Galileo’s era, however, no such variations in star positions could be witnessed by mere observation. Therefore, at Galileo’s time the existing evidence theorized that the stars were stationary about the earth and so the geocentric model was the proved theory by the mentioned standards. From the discussion above, Galileo did not demonstrate the theory as per the Aristotelian standards of those days. Galileo later wrote that the Copernican theory contained the "sensible demonstrations" required as per to Aristotelian scientific notion but again such demonstrations were not yet possible (Ferngren). Another important fact is that astronomers in the Galilean days were not convinced that the vast distance of the stars, that the Copernican concept needed, accounted for the absence of observable shifts in parallax. Controversy
In fact, the Jesuits of Galileo’s time were astronomers and scientists of the Roman society who commanded great respect (Coyne). Furthermore, many prominent scientists got encouragement and finance from the Catholic Church and from other Church officials. Many of the scientific accomplishments during the time of Galileo were either made by members of the clergy or resulted from Church finance. A case in point is the case of Nicolaus Copernicus, Nicolaus Copernicus devoted his most important publication, On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, to Pope Paul III. The book gave an outstanding account of heliocentrism. Copernicus later entrusted this theoretical work to Andreas Osiander. Andreas Osiander was a Lutheran clergyman who discerned that Protestant response to the theory would be ultimately negative because Martin Luther appeared to have already condemned the heliocentric theory, and, consequently, the Copernican work would be convicted. Andreas then decided to write the book’s preface, in which the heliocentric model appeared only as a model that would explain the planetary movements more naturally than the theory of geocentrism did (Clark). Another scientist who received no backlash from the Church was Johannes Kepler. Johannes Kepler wrote a heliocentric book that explained Copernicus’s