a victim of the Roman Church than of the Protestant—which fails to remove the blame of either. The most recent position is that the condemnation of the doctrine by the popes was not as popes but as men simply, and the Church was not committed to their decision since the popes had not signed the decrees. But two noted English Catholics, Roberts and Mivart, publicly stated in 1870 that the infallibility of the papacy was fully committed in these condemnations by what they termed incontrovertible evidence.[1]
One present-day Catholic calls the action of the Congregations "a theoretical mistake;"[2] another admits it was a deplorable mistake, but practically their only serious one;[3] and a third considers it "providential" since it proved conclusively "that whenever there is apparent contradiction between the truths of science and the truths of faith, either the scientist is declaring as proved what in reality is a mere hypothesis, or the theologian is putting forth his own personal views instead of the teaching of the Gospel."[4] Few would accept today, however, the opinion of the anonymous writer in the Dublin Review in the forties that "to the Pontiffs and dignitaries of Rome we are mainly indebted for the Copernican system" and that the phrases "heretical" and "heresy" in the sentence of 1633 were but the stylus curiæ, for it was termed heresy only in the technical sense.[5]
The majority of Protestants, with the possible exception of the Lutherans, were satisfied with the probable truth of the Copernican doctrine before the end of the 18th century. Down to the present day, however, there have been isolated protests raised against it, usually on technical grounds supported by reference to the Scriptures. DeMorgan refers to one such, "An Inquiry into the Copernican System … wherein it is proved in the clearest manner, that the earth has only her diurnal motion … with an attempt to point out the only true way whereby mankind can receive any real benefit from the study
