Vatican Statue of Galileo CANCELED???
Vatican Statue of Galileo CANCELED???
Good heavens: Vatican rehabilitating Galileo
The Associated Press
Published: December 23, 2008
VATICAN CITY: Galileo Galilei is going from heretic to hero.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/12/23/europe/EU-Vatican-...
"But the Vatican's embrace of Galileo only goes so far.
There were plans earlier this year to give Galileo a permanent place of honor in the Vatican to mark the anniversary of his telescope: a statue, to be located inside the Vatican gardens, donated by the Italian aerospace giant Finmeccanica SpA.
The plans were suspended after some Vatican officials voiced "problems" with the initiative, said Nicola Cabibbo, the president of the Pontifical Council for Science. He declined to elaborate.
Finmeccanica spokesman Roberto Alatri said the Galileo statue was just an idea that never got off the ground.
Italian news reports suggested the Vatican simply didn't want to draw so much permanent attention to the Galileo episode, which 400 years on, still rankles some."
THIS CONTRADICTS PRIOR REPORTS
Galileo statue to be installed at the Vatican
Vatican City, Mar 6, 2008 / 07:10 am (CNA).
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11992
"The Vatican plans to erect a statue of the 16th century scientist Galileo in the Vatican gardens, the Times reports.
The statue will stand near the apartment in which the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633. He was charged with advocating heliocentrism, the theory of Copernicus that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Though he was not tortured or executed, as some believe, he was forced to recant by the Roman Inquisition.
Nicola Cabibbo, a nuclear physicist who heads the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, explained the motive for the statue. “The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith,” he said.
Professor Cabibbo said that the statue was appropriate because Galileo had been one of the founders of the Lincei Academy, a forerunner of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in 1603.
The statue installation, which is being privately funded, precedes a series of celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s invention of the telescope. Events include a Vatican conference on Galileo to be attended by 40 international scientists and a re-examination of the Galileo trial at a Florence institute run by the Society of Jesus, some of whose members were on the tribunal that declared Galileo suspect of heresy."
IF THIS NEW REPORT IS TRUE, WE NEED TO PROTEST
THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!
TAKE TO THE STREETS!!
WAKE UP!!!
What's the big deal?
I consider myself pretty awake (you never know what level you're on) and I am having trouble seeing how the installation of a Galileo statue has anything to do with anything. I wouldn't say the two reports "contradict" each other: one was the idea and one was "we changed our mind". It happens.
Explore Orthodox Christianity
You have been duped by
You have been duped by Vatican spin doctors. The first reports said "the statue WILL stand..."
This was not just an idea. Other reports have stated the statue has already been completed.
I expect to see protests from many, including the students of La Sapienza. A deep six of Galileo is easier said then done. They buried their change at the end of the report.
A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for James Madison.
I don't think I've been duped considering this is the first I've
heard of the whole issue. I just don't see what it has to do with anything.
Explore Orthodox Christianity
It doesn't
Some people are just naturally disputatious. It's easier (and safer) to rail against the Roman Church about church matters that have nothing to do with us, than it is to actually confront evil in our own land.
No matter what Rome does, Galileo remains dead and indifferent to their posthumous apology.
The Freedom Formula: Au + Ag + Cu + Pb
LXXI BC: Ego sum Spartacus // MDCCCLVII: I am Dred Scott // MCMVL: Ich bin Anne Frank // MMX: Je suis Assange // MMXI: Ik ben von NotHaus
I am not a church basher.
I am not a church basher. Nor was the original Galileo.
That said, I'd like to see the statue of Galileo put up at the Vatican. I wouldn't object to a statue of Ron Paul put up at a church somewhere either.
Galileo has a lot to tell us about revolution and the truth about the world we live in. Maybe more important, Galileo was maybe the most persuassive person in history. He sold the Scientific Revolution and the world bought it!
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, LiBerte.
A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for James Madison.
This Tangent Is Germaine…
…to what should deserve some of our attention. I concur with the original poster that we should not be indifferent. There are those of us who understand the challenges of the revolution to be more than political activism, which includes the raising of knowledge, human spirit and consciousness. In fact, I submit the evil we confront is not just confined to our shores, and indeed transcends our age, every bit as much as that which confronted the free thinkers of the Renaissance.
The original poster has been around this forum, and clearly libertarian circles for a while. He has, what appears to be a Galileo fetish and, it seems to be his mission to bring the Galileo story to full light. I think this is a worthy endeavor. An appreciation of ideas and history is indispensible to the revolution.
If the Catholic Church won’t have Signor Galilei as one of its patron saints, I would probably join an effort to have the broader libertarian community adopt Galileo as one of its own.
I recall a little more than a decade ago, John Powell wrote a number of colorful biographies that were published by Laissez Faire books and ran in a series of abridged installments in The Freeman, Ideas On Liberty, The Foundation Of Economic Education (FEE) bimonthly publication. History should be the account of remarkable lives, ideas and events, and more than just the context to Galileo’s story and writings is fascinatingly relevant to every age. The Renaissance which he helped usher in was a triumph in the struggle of free minds against oppressive orthodoxy. We still can benefit from these lessons as we will need strong independent minds to overcome the shadows cast over our own time.
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/76809#comment-826996
I salute the original poster’s enthusiasm to see Galileo vindicated and appreciate the desire to see the institutional values repudiated which oppressed the ideals personified by Galileo.
I say bring it, Galileo, the sequel ( and fellow DP Galileo fans). Tell us more about your hero and what his example can teach us.
( But do us all a favor… keep it in one thread ).
This is not irrelevant!
I remember being about ten years old and my mother brought me to the Grand Army Plaza Library in Brooklyn and told me to go find a book. I searched until I found one entitled The Star Gazer which I took home and read. It is the life story of Galileo who used his own judgment and stood up against the Establishment of his day. He saw the four moons visible to him with his primitive home made telescope moving around the planet Jupiter. Each day the four points of light were in different positions and he concluded that they were moons of Jupiter and revolved around it. This was contrary to the dogma of the Church which held that everything in the universe revolves around the Earth which stands still at the center of the universe.
The Church tortured and killed men who disagreed with their dogmas. Giordano Bruno had been burned alive at the stake in the year 1600 for teaching the heliocentric theory of Copernicus who did not permit his book to be published because of his fear of the Inquisition until he was on his deathbed.
Galileo famously recanted thus his life was spared but he was imprisoned in his home for the remainder of his life for heresy. As the previous poster pointed out no statue of Galileo will do him any good now.
The Church was wrong in its teaching and would not tolerate any man disagreeing with them on anything. For any one else to hold a view contrary to that of the Church and shown to be correct was tantamount to suggesting that the Church could be wrong about everything else that they taught as being true.
Since the entire dogma of the Church, any Church, is based on assertions which are unproven and not based on rational evidence rather on Faith, any demonstration of the falsity of the dogma cannot be tolerated. Despite the Church claiming to advocate brotherly love their treatment of men who think for themselves and hold contrary opinions or beliefs during the days and years of the Inquisitions shows their true colors and is evidence for the principle of separation of Church and State.
During those dark times the Church would find someone "guilty" of heresy and would have the State Executioner carry out torture and execution of the "heretic."
I hope that this Campaign For Liberty gets the message and does everything to uphold the rights of the individual to the freedom of thought enshrined in the Constitution. I for one am fighting for a secular society in which each person is free to believe as he sees fit with no oppression of those who hold a different belief.
galt
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine" Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged p731
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine" Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged p731
A sad commentary
RE: I for one am fighting for a secular society in which each person is free to believe as he sees fit with no oppression of those who hold a different belief.
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Your knowledge of the Galileo case stemming from a book you read at the age of 10 indicates that you are as closed-minded and easily led by your secular worldview as you suppose religious people are in general. Your statements reveal a poor understanding of theology and history i.e. "The Church was wrong in its teaching and would not tolerate any man disagreeing with them on anything."
There was much false propaganda that came from the proponents of the self-proclaimed "Enlightenment" period against the Roman Church; later borrowed upon by the reformist churches in Europe in the late 1500's to advance their case against the Roman church for their specific ends.
As is typical, it was some truth mixed with alot of exaggeration and some downright lies to press a given agenda. Error is now "historical fact" to be repeated and believed unquestionably. - talk about dogma!
I, for one, am fighting for truth rather then a freedom to accept error. Knowledge of the truth is true freedom while freedom to proceed in one's self-satisfactory error is true slavery of the human spirit. Not every belief is true even secularism..yet there is an objective truth that can be discovered.
If you would read some scholarly books (by non-Catholics) on the Inquisition or Galileo ,you would find that most of the things you believe about these historical events are false; for instance during the Inqusition how many people were brought before the tribunal were self-professed catholics? How many were self -professed Jews and how many were self-processed atheists or other sects? The answer will surprise you and lead you to more questions, yet the free thinker demands the right to remain in ignorance if is so pleases him.
That is a terrible waste of a life and certainly a foolish cause to "fight for"