LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Galileo: Catholic Inquisition
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Galileo, in failing health for several years, loses his eyesight. He petitions the Inquisition to be freed for medical reasons. His request is denied but in March the Inquisition gives Galileo permission to attend religious services on holidays.
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Although three of the ten cardinals who judged Galileo refused to sign the verdict, his works were eventually condemned. Anti-Catholics often assert that his conviction and later rehabilitation somehow disproves the doctrine of papal infallibility, but this is not the case, for the pope never tried to make an infallible ruling concerning Galileo’s views.
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After an oral dispute between Galileo and Francesco Ingoli, it is agreed that Ingoli will write out his argument and Galileo will then reply in writing. Ingoli's tract, Disputation on the place and stability of the Earth, against the system of Copernicus, in which he uses scriptural arguments against Copernicus, is not printed. Because of the decision by the Inquisition, Galileo does not reply at this time.
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The pope asked Bellarmine to convey the ruling against the Copernican system to Galileo. Bellarmine had a meeting with Galileo, and apparently there were ... some Dominicans present. Just what happened at this meeting is not quite clear, at least to me. Later (in May) Galileo was given an affidavit by Bellarmine stating that he must no longer hold or defend the propositions that the earth moves and the sun doesn’t. Another document, however, which was unsigned (and therefore perhaps of questionable accuracy), stated that the Commissary of the Inquisition, in the name of the pope, ordered that Galileo could no longer hold, defend or teach the two propositions (Drake, page 67). This second document was not given to Galileo. The inclusion of teach was a crucial difference-it meant Galileo couldn’t even describe the Copernican system.
Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's opposition to this view resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting the advocacy of heliocentrism as potentially factual, because that theory had no decisive proof and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture.[7] Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Inquisition.
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Anti-Catholics often cite the Galileo case as an example of the Church refusing to abandon outdated or incorrect teaching, and clinging to a "tradition." They fail to realize that the judges who presided over Galileo’s case were not the only people who held to a geocentric view of the universe. It was the received view among scientists at the time.
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