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No 'liberal' Anglican could be engaged as I am at the moment, in translating
an important work on the Galileo case without being struck, sadly and
constantly, by vital parallels with the present situation in our Church
about the issue of homosexuality and its acceptance.
I hear the immediate protests: "Ah, but no; that was
a scientific issue; this is a moral one", etc., etc. Of course there
is an element of truth in that; no question of traditional moral teaching
was evidently involved in the determined ecclesiastical assault on one
of Europe's greatest scientists. But from the handling of the case by
the Roman Church authorities, clear elements of similarity of attitude,
of interpretation and of conservative ideology do emerge, and it is important
that we recognise them as this sad and unwholesome conflict continues
to enrage and divide the Church - and not only our Church.
To recapitulate briefly: the Church had rejected, in its
claimed Magisterium, (i.e. authoritative teaching that cannot be questioned)
the Copernican thesis that the universe was heliocentric and that the
earth moved around the sun. Galileo's astronomical and mathematical calculations
led him, in the early years of the 17th century, to advance notions of
the nature of the universe that seemed, at least, to assume that the Copernican
thesis was correct. In 1613 he was called to account, and despite brilliant
arguments in his favour, and far less brilliant ones against, he was forced
to remain silent on the vital Copernican issue, and to submit to the judgment
that the heliocentric theory was "simply a working hypothesis"
to which no real credibility as fact could be given. From later events
it is clear that the church's leaders of the time aimed above all at pronouncing
irrevocably on the matter, believing that they had closed the question
permanently, and on the basis above all of scriptural and ecclesiastical
authority. In 1633, after publishing a new work (The Dialogo) in which
he made it absolutely clear (without stating in so many words that this
was so) that the Copernican view was correct, he was hauled before the
same infuriated ecclesiastical authorities, but this time led by his former
interlocutor and even backer Matteo Barberini, now Pope Urban VIII, and
charged with disobedience and preaching dangerous and false doctrine,
contrary to the Church's long-standing teaching, and almost certainly
heretical. He was probably tortured into making a confession of error
(this is disputed by some scholars); at any rate he was strongly pressurised,
and compelled to renounce what he knew to be scientific truth and agree
not to teach anything to the contrary. Famously, he muttered "eppur
si muove" (and yet it does move) as he left; however, for well over
a century the church was tied to the increasingly grotesque and absolutely
untenable position that what had rapidly become an established scientific
fact was "erroneous and contrary to the Sacred Scriptures as dictated
ex ore Dei". The effects of this shameful episode in the history
of thought and the history of Christianity remained long after even the
Roman Church had come, in practice, to accept that Galileo had, of course,
been right; the official 'rehabilitation' of the scientist, with a less
than half-hearted retrospective apology, did not come until John Paul
II finally took the plunge in the 1990s.
What was the official church's reason for taking up so fanatical, and
ultimately so indefensible, a position on a scientific matter? There were
several elements in it.:
- 'Christian cosmology', if we can speak about it as such, was a
mélange of elements mainly garnered from the Ptolemaic tradition,
which contained many lacunae and contradictions, but which was established
over 1300 years or so, above all because that was the interpretation
in the ancient world which best accorded with the Christian view of
a geo-centric universe. God had chosen to manifest Himself on earth
and therefore the earth must be at the centre of all things. This
teaching had been incorporated into the general body of Christian
doctrine and thus lay behind many of the theories of redemption and
divine attention to human needs which vied for supremacy at different
times of the Church's history. The idea that there is "one tradition
of redemption and the mission of Christ" which one hears so often
repeated by fundamentalists and biblical conservatives today is nonsense,
(as they probably know very well); every age has seen, and rightly
seen, the infinite work of Christ in the world in a different light
and even sometimes in one which seemed in conflict with others. Such
a historical dialectic is essential to the growth and living character
of faith, and cannot be arrested or petrified at any given moment
or in any given body of teaching, and it is here that genuine Anglicans
differ so radically from fundamentalists or dogmatists on either side
of the divide. However, it suited the conservative protagonists in
1633 to insist that such a single and unchangeable body of teaching
existed, and to act decisively to silence a challenge to it.
- Certain scriptural passages, notably the story of the sun 'standing
still' for Joshua, at God's command, were always cited as bearing
out this view of the universe against all those who questioned it
at any stage of history (and it must be remembered that alternative
notions of both scriptural interpretation and its relation to scientific
enquiry did exist in the ancient world, and from time to time put
in their appearance among the brightest and best of the church's thinkers
and the scientists of different ages).
- Church authority was conceived of in such a way, at least in the
conservative reaches of the Church, that any questioning or defiance
of the traditional teaching on the geo-centricity of the universe
was seen as not merely the raising of a scientific question, however
well-grounded it might be, but as a challenge to (a) what had "always
been believed", and (b) what the infallible (?) authority of
Church or Scripture decreed to be the case.
The question could, therefore, be interpreted as not merely an objective
matter of scientific observation but of 'faith and heresy', and indeed
it is quite clear that many of the Jesuits and the more rabid opponents
of Galileo believed that there was a serious challenge to morals, as well,
because if the authoritative teaching of the appointed interpreters of
Scripture and Faith were to be challenged on matters like this, then what
might follow would be chaos and moral anarchy.
Now we are all well aware of what the consequence of this
was. In fact, because of a more moderate and less dogmatic approach, European
liberal Protestantism was able to come to terms with the new scientifically
defined universe in very rapid time, and without very much in the way
of trauma; one did not need a geocentric universe to prove that the stars
and planets proclaimed "the hand that made us is Divine" as
that good Anglican Joseph Addison put it at the beginning of the 18th
century, and a theology of redemption was able to emerge strengthened
and broadened by the new cosmic vision that arose out of Galileo's discoveries.
Certain areas of the Church universal, in other words, did not make fools
of themselves by adopting fundamentalisms of one kind or another which
would bind them to contradiction, absurdity and eventually to discredit
in the future. But the trap of "irrefutable dogma", whether
based on Scripture or on some supposed capacity for infallibility in the
Church's utterances, rather than in its life, was to bind other parts
of that church universal over a great period of history.
Now what, you may ask, do I find in the homosexuality issue,
to be in common with this particular case? One must admit that there are
less scientific and provable certainties involved in the challenge to
tradition. The matter also does affect the deep reaches of human life
and relationships in a way which the establishment of a heliocentric universe
did not. But similarities there are, and they are not only related to
the vehemence of expression and the almost apocalyptic denunciations used
by defenders of the conservative (and erroneous) tradition (though the
parallels here are sadly familiar). A number of elements are too common
to miss:
- in the first case, anthropological science and the exploration
of the human psyche over the last hundred years (at least) have made
it clear that whatever different interpretation is placed on the homosexual
condition, it is not a 'perversion' or deliberate deformation of the
human sexual instinct. Whether it is genetically caused or environmentally
induced (and the former now seems far more probable) it is in any
case, objectively speaking, a minority condition of a substantial
element of the human race, both male and female, and this can no more
be regarded as an 'objective disorder' than can black swans or other
similar 'anomalies' in the majority pattern of evolution. To argue
otherwise as the Roman Church does, is simply once again to bury the
head in the sand, and to base the concept of 'nature' on completely
unfounded Aristotelian principles of inflexibility and immutability,
or on a degree of biblical fundamentalism about the Book of Genesis
which is notable absent in Roman Catholic teaching elsewhere. Homosexuals
may or may not be great sinners; they may or may not be prone to temptations
above heterosexuals in certain fields of sexual life, but they are
not, in and per se 'anomalous', and they should not be judged morally,
or excluded from the economy of salvation, by any criteria other than
those applying to all human beings. The recognition of this fact of
life requires only a measure of common sense, but the opposition to
recognising it comes from a deep suspicion of much of what bio-anthropology
has to teach us;
- selective and often grotesquely silly references to Scripture are
the inevitable retreat of those, just like the conservative Churchmen
of 1633, who refuse to acknowledge (along with Saint Augustine, among
many others) that there are different ways of interpreting and viewing
scripture, and that indeed we should not allow literalism to blind
us to the poetic nature of some scriptural statements or to the fact
that they were, in their time, based on an inadequate or incomplete
cosmology or anthropology. There were plenty of churchmen at the beginning
of the 17th century who were ready to state this - it was, after all,
the tail end of the Renaissance which had opened European eyes to
much that was new and true. But they were shouted down by the raucous
voices of those who claimed that one minimal departure from the "tradition"
(which of course they never defined or expounded in detail) would
open the floodgates to disbelief and heresy and disaster. One of the
most tragic things in the Galileo case is the fact that, early on,
Matteo Barberini had appeared to be one of these enlightened Churchmen;
the acquisition of the huge power that the Papacy then involved coupled
with the corruption and greed that his voracious family exercised
on the basis of his unlimited authority drove him, over a twenty year
period, to become a fierce and bad-tempered defender of authority
and intellectual repression at all costs, in the name, at times, of
the 'integrity of the Church'.
- the level of unscrupulousness which was used to bring down Galileo
and silence him was startling. There seems to be little limit to the
lengths to which those who believe themselves to be defending "the
true faith" will go in order to silence challenges to it, even
when these challenges are presented with care, thoughtfulness and
a genuine desire to open up the faith to new visions rather than to
destroy it. The shudder that still comes to us now when the Inquisition
is mentioned is only the reaction to the worst and most lasting wound
inflicted on humanity by so-called 'Christian' authoritarianism. These
days it is less easy for the Church, at least, to have people hauled
up before a secret tribunal and tortured because they defend scientific
- in this case, anthropological - truths that are thought to conflict
with the "one and only tradition", but we have seen that
the equivalent of the Jesuits of the 17th century and the "upholders
of authority" do not scruple to use threats, bullying tactics,
economic pressures and, of course, vituperative insults calculated
to hurt and humiliate in their "war" against what they call
"heresy", just as Galileo's opponents did. And let me stress
now; there was no heresy involved in Galileo's teaching about the
geo-centric universe, any more than there is in the defence of the
homosexual condition as an acceptable and God-given one. No phrase
of the creed was or is challenged; no denial of the redemptive love
of Christ in the Incarnation and the Passion is involved - indeed
quite the reverse; no repudiation of sin and obedience to the divine
imperative is implied. Defenders of an open attitude to this issue
are not shaking the foundations of faith; they are seeking to broaden
and deepen its reach, so that a whole area of humanity is not excluded
from its embrace and its ministry.
What is to be learned from this? Well, in the first case,
one very stark fact is obvious. The conservatives in 1633 said that acceptance
of the Galileo thesis would be the beginning of the end, and the Church
must take a united stand against it or risk collapse. They believed that
authority and obedience, and a united front against doubt, were more important
than objective truth. And they believed that the allowance of a new insight
would do irreparable harm to the whole body of belief. They were radically,
ineffably and ridiculously wrong on every count in 1633; in my view they
are equally wrong today. The revision of the Church's view of homosexuality,
and the acceptance of the inevitable consequence in terms of allowing
homosexuals to fulfil their full role in the Church without shame or calumny,
will not destroy either the faith or morals of Christianity; it will not
bring evil to the throne of the world; it will not, far from it, prevent
the love of God being made known and experienced among human beings. It
may well put a gradual end to a great deal of blind prejudice, unpleasant
rhetoric and moral obtuseness, and thank God, indeed, if it does.
All that those of us who hold this view ask is simply that
the Church this time should not take 360 years to acknowledge that it
has been wrong: that in its age-long rejection and brutalisation of a
whole section of humanity, it has been excluding from that salvation many
people whose hearts and minds have truly been fixed on the love of God.
And if this is heresy, then I am the first to subscribe to it.
Brian Williams
Rome 28.10.2003
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