This bears more than a passing resemblance to this [emphasis added]
On Tuesday the pontiff canceled a speech scheduled for today at Sapienza University of Rome in the wake of a threat by students and 67 faculty members to disrupt his appearance. The scholars argued that it was inappropriate for a religious figure to speak at their university.
This pope’s specific sin was a speech he gave nearly 20 years ago in which, they claimed, he indicated support for the 17th-century heresy trial against Galileo. The censoring scholars apparently failed to appreciate the irony that, in preventing the pope from speaking, they were doing to him what the Church once did to Galileo, stifling free speech and intellectual inquiry.
One of Benedict’s favorite themes is that European civilization derives from the rapprochement between Greek philosophy and religious belief, between Athens and Jerusalem. In the speech he wasn’t allowed to give, the pope planned to talk about the role of popes and universities.
It is a pope’s task, he wrote, to “maintain high the sensibility for the truth, to always invite reason to put itself anew at the service of the search for the true, the good, for God.” La Sapienza — which means “wisdom” — was founded by one of the pope’s predecessors in 1303. Another unappreciated irony.
It is ironic also that the word ‘university’ literally means the search for unity in diversity. Apparently, to paraphrase Orwell, some kinds of diversity are more equal than others.
Good post, and good comments all. What gets me about the academic left is that despite all their protestations about intellectual freedom, they can’t see how totalitarian they are.
By: Scooper on January 25, 2008
at 11:13 pm
The WSJ article to which you linked was right to note the irony of the situation, but wrong to suggest that the church silenced Galileo. The punishment he got was “house arrest.”
And Frank Stallone could not be more wrong in assuming that the church has a record of being indifferent to or hostile toward science. Copernicus, remember, was a Catholic cleric whose science inspired Galileo. Even today, the Vatican maintains an observatory.
The problem with the Galileo story is that most people don’t actually know it– they just recycle myths learned from people with an axe to grind. Several good books explain what actually happened, including Philip Sampson’s “Six Myths About Christianity and Western Civilization” and Vincent Caroll and Dave Shifflett’s “Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry”.
By: Patrick on January 21, 2008
at 2:01 am
Great points and links, quickbeam. Readers: all are worth checking out.
One of the most interesting things at the ncrcafe site is a quote from the physics professors opposing the pope’s visit, describing themselves as “indignant as scientists faithful to reason, and as teachers who dedicate our lives to the advancement and diffusion of knowledge. These [the pope's] words offend and humiliate us…”
indignant
offend
humiliate
It’s an interesting series of words to use in trying to show that they’re the bastion of reason.
Neither the pope nor anyone else is responsible for the emotional reaction a listener may choose to have to a particular remark or argument. While some kinds of remarks may be generally regarded as offensive in society, it remains true that their impact is completely under the hearer’s control.
In choosing to feature their own emotional reaction as justification for not listening to the pope, the ‘scientists’ are essentially engaging in emotional blackmail. That kind of behavior is as corrosive to public discourse as it is to the interpersonal kind.
By: ultraguy on January 19, 2008
at 2:11 pm
Actually what amazed me is that the professors simply didn’t do their homework and investigate the source of the popes comments back in 1990 on Galileo. He was quoting a agnostic-skeptic philosopher P. Feyerabend.
“In a nutshell, therefore, Benedict is being faulted by the physics professors for quoting somebody else’s words, which his full text suggests he does not completely share.”http://ncrcafe.org/node/1542
So while the students and professors will sit feeling self-righteous defending their honor and claim “Benedict XVI is hostile to modern science” it’s simply not true.
What I found insightful was an article by a Jewish professor at the university
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/186421?eng=y
WHEN RATZINGER DEFENDED GALILEO AT “LA SAPIENZA”
By: quickbeamoffangorn on January 19, 2008
at 11:43 am
Frank – Thanks for stopping by. The issue is not whether the church would or should invite a scientist to speak (speculation at best) but whether, having already invited the pope to speak on a specific subject and in the context of open dialog/inquiry, it is laudable or disappointing that Sapienza University should withdraw said invitation in deference to a highly vocal minority who would rather not hear other views.
The church at least does not claim to stand for totally open inquiry, diversity and tolerance (in that it lays claim to eternal, non-negotiable truths). The university (i.e., as a class of institution) does. I.e., what’s their excuse? Where are their ideals? Why should they even exist if the retort is “unless you meet our pre-set standards, we won’t even listen to your argument”?
But since you brought it up…
Far from being indifferent to scientific inquiry, the current pope is a very strong advocate for it. That clarity seems to bake peoples’ noodles, so to speak, especially if they’ve already decided that Al Gore’s “truth” is more valid than God’s. See this for example — a post I made concerning the pope’s New Year’s Day remarks. Excerpt:
“The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.
It begs the question: this pope is very clear. Recent popes have been very clear. This church, right now is extremely secure in its skin. How long will it take before we can move beyond the Galileo thing?
Furthermore, as Paul Davies (among others) has pointed out, it is only within the context of an increasingly unacknowledged and taken-for-granted God-centric, biblically-grounded context that rational scientific inquiry can even exist. As Paul Davies has written:
“[scientific] laws are an extraordinary and unjustified idealization. How can we be sure that the laws are infinitely precise? How do we know they are immutable, and apply without the slightest change from the beginning to the end of time? Furthermore, the laws themselves remain unexplained. Where do they come from? Why do they have the form that they do? Indeed, why do they exist at all?”
I.e., it is only by assuming rationality that science can even exist. Those who would choose to focus exclusively on the unfortunate Galileo episode miss the point: for every case in which the church on earth was holding science back, the larger set of assumptions that the church represents in society have enabled it to flourish.
By: ultraguy on January 17, 2008
at 10:14 pm
It is as inappropriate for the pope, who represents an institution that has historically been at best indifferent to scientific inquiry and has often strenuously harshly suppressed it, to speak at at institution like Sapienza University. Consider the obverse: Would the pope invite an outstanding scientist to speak at a religiouis forum to explain how science has improved the lot of humankind, especially in the last hundred years, and that it has done so without the support of the Catholic Church (or any other religious institution) and often over their objections and efforts at obstruction?
By: Frank Stallone on January 17, 2008
at 9:50 pm