CARDINAL BELLARMINE ON SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE.
1_10 THE EDITOR 01 THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Your correspondent, Mr. Poston Crane, holds that " if the Church once admits the necessity for her doctrine to be consistent with science, her very existence is threatened." It may interest your readers to compare with this opinion one expressed by Cardinal Bellarmine, who is usually regarded as a sufficiently thoroughgoing champion of Church authority.
In a letter addressed to a Carmelite Friar named Folic:mini, nearly a year prior to the condemnation, in 1616, of Coperni- canism by decree of the " Index Congregation," Bellarmine wrote as follows :—" I say that, if it should at any time be actually proved that the sun stands in the centre of the universe, and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not go round the earth, but the earth round the sun, it would then be necessary to proceed with great deliberation in explaining the passages of Scripture which appear to assert the contrary, and rather to say that we do not understand them than to say that a demonstrated proposition is false. But I shall not believe that there is such a demonstration until it is shown to me," &c.*—I am, Sir, &c., SEDLEY TAYLOR. Trinity College, Cambridge, September 1st.
[Copernicanism was never condemned. Galileo's treatise on the heliocentric system was condemned ; but the earlier one by Copernicus received the sanction of the Pope of hip day.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
