Sir, - With reference to Dr William Reville's "Science Today" column (March 24th), Pope John Paul's book Agenda for the Third Millennium is very relevant. Under the section headed "The Galileo case: science and faith" the Holy Father states:
"From the century of the Enlightenment down to our own day, the Galileo case has been a kind of myth in which the account of what happened has been very remote from the facts. Culturally speaking, this myth has played a considerable role it has helped to wed many a scientist, acting in good faith, to the idea that the scientific spirit and its research ethic are incompatible with the Christian religion.
"A tragic mutual incomprehension has been construed as reflecting a constitutive opposition between science and faith. Clarification afforded by recent historical studies, allows us to state that this unhappy misunderstanding is now a thing of the past.
"The error of the theologians of the day, in upholding the centrality of the Earth, was that of thinking that our knowledge of the structure of the physical world is in some way imposed by the literal sense of the Holy Scripture. But we should remember the famous quip attributed to Baronius: Spiritui sancto mentem fuisse nos docere quomodo ad coelum latur non quoniodo collum gradiatur. For the fact is, scripture is not concerned with the details of the physical world, knowledge of which is entrusted to human experience and reasoning.
There are two fields of knowledge that which has its source in Revelation, and that which reason can discover by its own efforts. The two sectors are not at all alien to one another, but have points of contact. . . science and faith are both gifts from God... In God, despite their differing paths, science and faith find their unifying principle."
Dr Reville states that Pope Urban VIII was a friend and supporter of Galileo and that Galileo suffered only a nominal imprisonment after his trial, a sort of house arrest in the palace of a friend. It would appear that a few theologians were at the root of the error In misinterpreting scripture and disagreeing with the Pope. Isn't there something familiar about that in our day?
It would appear that Agenda for the Third Millennium and Celebrate 2000 are following Pope John Paul's other book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, into the bestsellers' list. It was impossible to track down a copy of either earlier this week. - Yours, etc.,
Glen Lawn Drive,
Cabinteely,
Dublin 18.