title: Four centuries later: how to close the Galileo case?
abstract: The "Galileo case" is still open: John Paul II's 1979 initiative to "recognize wrongs from whatever side they come" was carried out in an unsatisfactory manner. The task would have been easy had the Pontifical Study Commission created for that purpose concentrated on the 1616 decree alone and declared it not in line with the hermeneutical guidelines of the Council of Trent, in agreement with Galileo and not with Saint Robert Bellarmine. A possible avenue to closing the "Galileo case" on the part of the Church of Rome could, thus, be to change its current defensive attitude and declare itself no longer what it was in 1616, since another such "case" is, hopefully, no longer conceivable.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Segre
mesh_terms: D002410:Catholicism; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D012070:Religion and Science; D012586:Science / Q000266:history*