Galileo and the Church

The well-known contradictions among the documents of Galileo's trials are reread as expressions of the contradictory nature of the Counter-Reformation church. A flashback into the formative years of Tridentine Catholicism demystifies its monolithic and brutally coercive tendencies. Rather, the church appears to have been torn between different cultural orientations and divided institutionally as well as theologically. The traditional intellectual elite of the Dominicans adopted an orthodox Thomist allegiance and refused innovation in the name of Thomist rationalism. Their reaction to the challenge raised by the Counter-Reformation consisted in dogmatic Thomism. The Jesuits reacted to the same challenge by developing their vocation as educators of the entire Catholic society. In that role they reconstructed the Thomist synthesis by assimilating new scientific contents and reinterpreting its theology. Theirs was a pragmatic Thomism