Galileo and homosexuality

Brendan Muscat of the Malta Gay Rights Movement (The Sunday Times, January 13) sees an analogy between the attitude of the Catholic Church in the Gallileo case and its teachings about homosexual behaviour. This is incorrect. The Galileo case has nothing to do with faith and morals, but homosexual behaviour has.

The former was the unfortunate case of a great scientist who put forward a theory which went against all that was believed in those days concerning the movement of the earth and the sun and which he could not prove. Indeed, when he tried to do so by referring to the moon and the tides, his arguments turned out to be fallacious. Thus, he unfortunately had the disapproval not only of the Catholic Church, but also of the Protestant churches and the scientific community of the time.

The Church has now rightly apologised for its condemnation of Galileo's theory and forcing him to live in a villa in the beautiful Tuscan hills where he continued to write and receive friends and academics till the end of his life.

On the other hand, in matters of faith and morals, the Church cannot and will not change its teachings since these, as for example those concerning homosexual behaviour, form part of the natural law "the Creator's very good work", which, according to the Catechism of the Church, "is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history".