Erm.

I spent quite a few hours yesterday and a bit this morning as well on this piece and I for some reason can't grasp the common thread. I feel like there are a lot of different themes going on in this piece, but they don't want to be sewn together in my head and I can't get why. What I get from this piece is merely reiteration of the fact that Pope John Paul, 350 years after the fact, says the exact things that Galileo was saying and that if the church had allowed this 'elbow room' in the first place instead of letting personalities get in the way (I got that little bit from Koestler...), the whole situation probably could have been avoided.

What little of Sharratt's assessment of Catholics I found (not that it isn't there, probably that I just missed it...) is interesting (that they are a bit embarrassed about the whole thing when they ended up quietly "overturning" the ruling)... I don't know who he's talking about though because I know when I was in Catechism School, they read the Bible pretty literally, but perhaps that speaks more to the Catholic company I kept back in the day as opposed to who's really out there on the Catholic front. I mean, how could you not be sheepish about that sort of thing?

The bit I don't get is how the Church can be embarrassed about that sort of thing without trying to avoid it in the future. The whole gay marriage thing is really going right in that direction, what with interpretation of scripture and all.

I don't know how I feel about this piece. Right now it's not settling well and I am having difficulty seeing what light he chose to portray them in post lesson learning, or what have you. I'll come back to it.