Why Did The Catholic Church Hate Galileo?

Question

I Heard That The Catholic Church Had a Fued With Galileo? What Was It Over?

Answer 1

Galileo's opponents published some of his work that confirmed we did not have a geocentric universe. At the time, the Church did not accept this doctrine. So they told him to recant and he did. Then he wound up under house arrest anyway. But it was house arrest in a luxurious Villa where he carried on his studies.  

Answer 2

The Catholic Church has always opposed science.

Answer 3

The Catholic Church did not hate Galileo and they have privately and publically apologized.

Galileo was a friend of Pope Urban's, who supported his research and gave him money to discover more. When some of Galileo's teachings were called into question, he personally--of his own volition--came to Rome to speak with the Vatican concerning his beliefs.

At that time, he did not have sufficiant evidence to prove his teachings and the tribunal council (which is not the whole Church) told him not to recant his beliefs, but to not teach his beliefs to others.

He agreed, signed a contract and left. At that time, Pope Urban was a friend of Galileo's and was also backing his research. He also urged Galileo to publicize something to help his case. Unfortunately, Galileo's published work made fun of Pope Urban and Galileo lost his backer and friend.

Later, it was reported to Rome that Galileo was teaching a group of students and he was called back to Rome for breaking his agreement. This is why he was placed under house arrest, to make sure he did not try to teach others, as per his agreement. He was allowed a spacious place and allowed to continue his research and write his beliefs down.

He died peacefully and comfortably and even Protestant friends were hard pressed to say he was "in prison". He was allowed visitors and allowed out of his villa with supervision.

Answer 4

The main reason was Galileo proving the Ptolemaic model (*) was nonsense and that Aristotle had a great imagination, which contradicted what the Bible said. Religion, at that age, was a tool to keep in power and to make the lower orders of the society submissive. Imagine a serf working for one of the most powerful families of Italy, had he known that all about religion was nothing but a great codswallop and that there was going to be no paradise that God will reward you with after all the dirty work you do for the rich without uttering a single word of impatience when you die, there would be no reason for you to work for those big bellied rich land lords. And what does the Church share its interests with, who is the biggest supporters of the Church? Yes, the land lords. So think of Galileo's actions as the trigger of a big chain of reactions, it's a revolution and no one, especially the Church, ever wants a revolution. For them, Galileo was only a troublemaker, they KNEW he was telling the truth -they even made use of his inventions- but to keep the status quo, people like Galileo and Bruno had to keep quiet.

Edit: Dear Pope Urban Barberini was not exactly a buddy of Galileo, he was interested in mathematics and science, so Galileo thought perhaps his approach to his reseach findings would be more flexible than the former pope, which actually was the case since he allowed Galileo to write about his theory. But -there's always a but- the Catholic Church made Galileo write his book compatible with teachings of the Church, they told Galileo to present both sides of the argument -for and against his "sun in the centre of the universe" model- but in the end, make sure that there was no proof that Copernican universe existed. Galileo, instead, wittly, made the man who advocated the Copernican model appear intelligent, but the other guy, naturally, dumb. Yada yada yada, Galileo was in the end forced to recant his own theory, much to the dismay of people like Descartes.

Don't pretend the Catholic Church was an ardent defender of scientific facts.

Answer 5

Galileo threatened the very existence of the Church.  They had maintained all along that the Earth was the center of the universe because Man lived here, and in Genesis, God says, "Let us make man in Our image."  If Man was in the image of God, then Man's world had to be at the center of everything.

If the Church was wrong about the center of the universe, then what else were they wrong about?  Virgin birth?  Resurrection? The existence of God himself?  The Church had been burning people who dared to cross them for centuries.  The only reason Galileo didn't burn was that he had very wealthy sponsors who might have been inspired to stop giving the Church money if the Church burned this great scientist.