Pope scraps university visit after protests
Posted: Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 11:54 (GMT)
Pope Benedict cancelled a speech at Rome's most prestigious university on Tuesday after student and faculty protests, the first time demonstrations had forced him to scrap an appearance since he became Pontiff in 2005.
The protest began with a petition by 67 professors who portrayed the German-born Pope as a backward theologian who put religion before science and should not be allowed to speak.
After resisting calls by protesters to scrap his speech at La Sapienza university, the Vatican said on Tuesday the Pope had decided to postpone the visit.
"I deeply regret Pope Benedict's decision," Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said, inviting him to reconsider.
"No voice should be silenced in our country, and all the more so when it comes to the Pope."
The protesters cited a speech he gave nearly two decades ago, saying it showed he would have favoured the Church's 17th century heresy trial of Galileo for teaching that the Earth revolved around the sun. The Pope's supporters denied that.
The controversy ballooned into a fierce debate that divided Italians, protesters questioning the Church's role in secular society and the Church and free-speech advocates accusing the protesters of censorship.
"I think the Pope's visit is not a good thing because science doesn't need religion. The university is open to every form of thought but religion isn't," said Andrea Sterbini, a computer science professor and one of the signatories.
One student protest banner read: "The Pope is holding La Sapienza hostage. Free the thinkers".
CLIMATE OF INTOLERANCE
The debate drew unusual allies for the Pope. Dario Fo, a Nobel prize winner and outspoken critic of the Church, defended the Pope's right to speak.
"I'm against any form of censorship because the right to (free) speech is sacred," the writer told La Repubblica daily.
Politicians including Prodi complained of a climate of intolerance in Italy, but Prodi's opponents said the government should have done more to guarantee free speech. "It's a very painful surprise that injures and humiliates ... the state, which couldn't ensure freedom of expression," said former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
La Sapienza was founded by a pope 705 years ago, and the chancellor who invited Pope Benedict to speak said the incident was food for thought for "believers and non-believers".
Much of the debate centred on a speech the Pope gave in 1990, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher saying the Galileo trial was "rational and just".
The Pope's defenders say the quotation did not reflect his own position, but that failed to quell the protests.
By arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun, Galileo had clashed with the Bible, which read: "God fixed the earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever."
Another quote the Pope used in 2006 upset Muslims around the world. In a speech at a university in his native Germany, he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying Islam had only brought evil to the world and that it was spread by the sword.
The Pope said he was misunderstood and has several times expressed his esteem for Muslims.
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Added: Tuesday, January 22, 2008, 11:24 (GMT)
Having studied the Galileo case for 15 years now I am not surprised that 67 professors believe it was not a reasonable and just trial, causing them to object to a pope's visit to their university. Nor am I surprised that the same Galileo case caused a pope to cancel his appointment, a pope who went to Turkey under a similar ploy (thesis-antithesis-compromise) last year.
Why am I not surprised? Well the professors believe they are safe in their illusion that Galileo was eventually vindicated by science to have been correct all along, and - thanks to that infamous U-turn of 1741-1820 when Pope Benedict XIV and Pius VII accepted the consensus of scientists and contradicted their predecessors – no pope thereafter can claim credibility in the area of faith and science.
Let me explain. Because of the nature of space there is no empirical method of determining scientifically whether the earth orbits the sun or if the sun orbits the earth. Relativity prevails. This means that every observation can be explained heliocentrically or geocentrically. The trouble with modern man is that after 300 years of brainwashing into believing the earth orbits the sun, we are no longer capable of objective thought. Like a magic spell, the stand of these 67 professors renders it impossible for any group of students to work out relative thinking. If this were done it would soon become clear that because no proof is possible the suggestion that heliocentricism is true and geocentrism is false is arrived at by consensus, not science. Heliocentrism is but a preferred system, preferred because it gave anti-Catholic forces a powerful instrument to use against the dogma that the Church is divinely guided and against the Bible as a book of truth in everything it says. Thus the 67 professors can assert Galileo was right all along when science prohibits their making this claim. Indeed, if you dear reader, had the time to study two empirical tests, the Airy experiment and the Mitchel & Morely experiment, it would be found that science favours a geocentric explanation. In other words, the world has been hoaxed into believing the Church was wrong in its defence of the Bible and in its defence of a geocentric reality. But after centuries of experiment, observation and thought, the fact remains that the Church has never been shown by science to be in error.
The hoax - that it has been proven that the earth orbits the sun - received the stamp of approval by Churchmen from 1741. Once Churchmen capitulated to the consensus of scientists, they granted Baconianism a grand victory. Faith and science were now completely separated and no amount of theological invention has been able to bring them back into Wisdom, that is, a compatibility including sense perception, empirical discoveries, philosophical and theological truths. By backing the Copernican heresy as orthodox faith and true scientifically, they plunged the whole world now into false science and false faith. Had the 1741/1820 Churchmen had faith in the Church’s ruling of 1616, as was their duty, and not followed the fickle changing opinions of scientists, they could have saved both faith and science. Alas they did not, and now they have to make the Bible fit the vagaries of scientific opinion, theories and assumptions. What a way to biblical exegesis. Mostly however, they have sought for centuries to explain the Galileo case in the light of their U-turn. Two thousand books and one Church commission have failed to do so. Why, because faith and false science never produces good fruit.
Then there is the flock, following their popes into a falsity of both faith and science. How many of those 100,000 who came out to support the position of faith and science under the auspices of this pope knew that their shepherds especially, had led them down a false path?
It is no surprise to me then that it was the Galileo case that undermined the position of a pope and caused him to indulge in one of the most public retreats in modern history, something the threat of Muslim assassination failed to do. The signs are there to be seen, but with the blind leading the blind, few will see them.
Redmond O\'Hanlon, Churchtown, Dublin 14, Eire
Added: Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 15:36 (GMT)
The problem is that scientists aren't the most tolerant people either. Obviously the earth-centered thing is wrong, everyone knows that. What I'm getting at is that Instead of accepting the possibility that the scientific evidence may not after all support the old-earth model they cling to, they insist on suppressing and blackballing anyone who disagrees with them. It's time to stop being so close minded and let the evidence speak for itself,even if it does point to a young earth rather than an old one.
mm, Illinois, USA
