Anachronism, bias and the Odd Couple: Gerson's appalling Galileo column

Regarding Michael Gerson's biased and anachronistic column conflating the 17th-century saga of Galileo with 21st century populist Italian opposition to vaccination against infectious diseases (AZ Republic, 2/12/18), Galileo's problem wasn't populism.   For many years after he was publicly denounced in Florence by Dominican priest Caccini in 1613, Galileo continued to live free and conduct scientific research, such as it was at the time.  In 1620,  Cardinal Maffeo Barberini honored his friend Galileo and Galileo's pioneering book on scientific method The Assayer, which argued that mathematics is the language of science.   Barbarini became Pope Urban VIII in 1623 and, in 1624 as Pope, Barbarini told Galileo he could continue to write about Copernican theory (the Earth revolves around the Sun) as long as Galileo treated it as a mathematical hypothesis.  It wasn't until 1633, that the Inquisition condemned and imprisoned Galileo ... with the blessing of Galileo's friend Pope Urban VIII.   What changed?   Galileo wrote a thesis, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, on Copernican theory whose argument went beyond hypothesis,  further embroiled Galileo in church politics and disputes over scripture,  personally insulted Galileo's friend Pope Urban, but worst of all, did not prove Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun.   As historian Michael Hoskins points out:  observed motion of Jupiter's moons only proves that those moons revolve Jupiter and the phases of Venus only tell us that Venus revolves around the sun ... these tell us nothing about the relative motion of the Earth and the Sun ... and neither did Galileo's argument that the tides proved the Earth revolves around the Sun.   Galileo would have been on firmer scientific ground if he had cited Kepler's observation-based, mathematical theories of planetary motion, but Galileo didn't.   It wasn't until years later that Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principias Mathematica drove a stake into the heart of the idea that the Sun revolved around the Earth.   It was still later in 1728-29,  working with instruments far more powerful than Galileo's small telescopes, that James Bradley discovered the "aberation of light" and conclusive observational proof of the Earth's movement around the Sun.   Ironically,  the Catholic Church was the mother of this, despite often ghastly family quarrels.  The church gave us the universities.   Copernicus was a Catholic cleric.   The odd couple,   Galileo and Pope Urban VIII, shared an interest in astronomy and science.   Galileo's friend and mentor,  Christopher Clavius,  through a massive observational effort chronicled in J.L. Heilborn's The Sun in the Church:  Cathedrals as Solar Observatories,  gave us the calendar we use today.    The Vatican's Advanced Technology Telescope on Mount Graham (AZ), which often operates in cooperation with University of Arizona observatories, demonstrates that science and religion can coexist when they respect each other's place in society ... something that Galileo and the Pope couldn't master in their day long ago.