Errr...
I know that everyone since about oh, I guess a few hundred years ago now, are of the opinion that Galileo = good scientist and the Church = bad anti-scientists. However, the Chruch WAS science at that time. Universities were not controlled by the church, Universities (and the studies that happened with in them)
were the church. To view it otherwise is IMnotsoHO simply a post-modern recreation of the social reality of that time.
That said, the "church fathers" who condemned Galileo were not condeming without reason. Their challenge was that his data was simply not rigourous enough to overthrow the overwhelmingly accepted science of the era, which indicated that the earth was indeed the centre of the universe. If his data had only been massaged the right way, it might have even been convincing (however, this is not to say that the other scientists/church fathers would have accepted or denied the data - that would be so hypothetical that it would only amount to hopeful interpretation or even slander either way).
It did happen later, that someone (his name eludes me at the moment)
did massage the data in an approriate way. By attaching said Galilean data to
eliptical orbits rather than Galileo's circular orbits, did the concept of a helio-centric solar system finally make good scientific sense. Until that point, helio-certrism was accepted on the basis of a faith that the simpler (though unsubstantiated) system was more likely to be correct. Note: this is not an Occam's razor arguement, because Occam's says that "all things being equal, the simplest Version is likely the more accurate". In this case, the simplest Version was not equal, because the math was way to difficult preceding the elipse.
Of course, it's easier to just say that church = bad, Galileo = enlightened in those Jr/Sr Highschool text books
