Mea Culpa, without the Culpa

A lightly edited version of an article I read this morning, with commentary:

"by the New York Times and the LA Times
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI, in a rare papal acquiescence to protest, has canceled a speech at Sapienza University here amid opposition by professors and students who say he is hostile to science. ...

"...The pope's speech at the university was to mark the start of the academic year. But professors and students objected, citing specifically a speech that Benedict gave in 1990, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, on Galileo, condemned by the Inquisition in the early 1600s for arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun.

"In that speech, Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005, quoted the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend as saying: "The church at the time was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just." (The Church was *more* faithful to reason....wait, what?? I wonder if he meant that the Church was more faithful to the same reason that made it wrong. Which doesn't seem the kind of thing that one would want to brag about. And definitely seems a little weird to say, 'Not only was the Church right about being wrong, but it was right for oppressing someone who - as we all know - was right.')

"In the speech, Ratzinger did not argue against the validity of science generally or take the church's position from Galileo's time that heliocentrism was heretical. But he asserted, as he has often since elected pope, that science should not close off religion and that science has been used in destructive ways. (Um. Exactly how is it that discovering the earth orbits the sun - which changes nothing in terms of how the masses should live - would be destructive, I wonder? And, how is it that understanding the world around us - which I'm betting God created - is an activity that should draw the ire of any religious leader? Okay, I can see how those Dianetics people don't want to use reality as a corrective, but they're nuts...) ...

"...The pope would be welcome at the university to debate these issues, [physics professor] Frova said, but not to deliver a speech in which there would be no opportunity for discussion or response.

"Benedict is known as a strong intellectual who has emphasized the importance of reason in the practice of faith. He also says evolution is the work of a divine creator and has helped defeat Italian laws that liberalized scientifically assisted fertility procedures." (I guess if the Italian leadership can be sufficiently persuaded that God had nothing to do with giving us brains amazing enough to do science, then perhaps they don't deserve to have a population that keeps making more adherents. Or voters.)

While some of my favorite people in the world are Catholic, they are all - without exception - also admirable thinkers for themselves.