Science and the Catholic Church

Common card · No. 423185

The relationship between science and the Catholic Church has included both extensive institutional patronage and support as well as periods of censorship and sharp conflict. The influential Latin Church theologian, philosopher and bishop St. Augustine (354-430) taught that God revealed Himself through the created world, which is like a "book" that is accessible to every human being regardless of literacy. In the Early Middle Ages, Catholic clergy had a near monopoly on literacy in Western Europe and were the leading scholars of natural philosophy in the Latin West. During the High Middle Ages, the Church founded Europe's first universities. During the Renaissance, a high-ranking Church official - Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) - proposed that the earth circled the sun. Historians of science have documented important continuities between pre-modern Christian ideas and the birth of modern science. During the Scientific Revolution, the Papacy and the Jesuits initially promoted the observations...

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