When it comes to PR disasters, the Church’s handling of the Galileo Affair is right up there. To the modern mind, the Galileo Affair is the ultimate proof that the Church is anti-science. The popular narrative is that Galileo proved Copernicus’s theory that the earth goes around the sun, and so the Church condemned Galileo as a heretic because the Bible says the Sun goes around the Earth.
But misconceptions and falsehoods about the Church’s response to Copernicanism abound. I remember being told by a chemistry grad student at my university that Copernicus was burnt at the stake. If this student had been somewhat more knowledgeable, he might have known that when Copernicus’s theory was presented to Pope Clement VII in 1533, the pope received it very favourably and rewarded the presenter with a generous gift.
