Corpus Mysticum versus Corpora Terrestria. Kościół rzymskokatolicki wobec Mikołaja Kopernika XV-XXI wiek.

Abstract

Corpus Mysticum versus Corpora Terrestria. Roman catholic Church on Nicolas Copernicus: 15^th-21^st Century

Nicolaus Copernicus was a man of the Church. His views on the structure of the cosmos aroused resistance from the Church as early as the 16^th century. Criticism and rejection combined with inclusion in the Index of Forbidden Books occurred in 1616 in connection with the issue of Galileo Galilei's views. The Church's condemnation of Copernicus' theory subsided in the course of the eighteenth century. Finally, his book De revolutionibus (1543) was taken off the Index in 1822. The question of the Church's relationship to Copernicus' theory was part of a broader problem: the relationship between the Church and science, which had been particularly alive since the Enlightenment and in the nineteenth century. On the part of the Church, an important step in this discussion is the Encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998). The dispute between the representatives of science and the teaching of the Church in the 20^th-21^st centuries takes on new forms, although it does not die down.