Christ the Cornerstone

Robert Bellarmine, a saint for our time

Today, Sept. 17, is the Feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, the patron saint of Bellarmine University, my alma mater in Louisville, Ky. A Jesuit scholar and Cardinal, Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) became a leading figure in the Counter-Reformation, the effort to defend the Church against the charges leveled against it by the Protestant reformers. He was canonized a saint in 1930 by Pope Pius XI, and one year later was declared a doctor of the Church.

Robert Bellarmine is a saint for our time because of his ability to argue forcefully, but respectfully, with those who disagreed with the teaching and practice of the Catholic Church. Two striking examples can be given among many that might be chosen. These are: 1) Bellarmine’s role in the Church’s case against Galileo; and 2) his position on the pope’s authority as a temporal ruler.

Most people are familiar with the Catholic Church’s dispute with the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who taught the Copernican theory that the Earth is not stationary but revolves around the sun. At the time, this teaching seemed to contradict sacred Scripture as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church. Pope Paul V asked Cardinal Bellarmine to inform Galileo that a forthcoming decree of the Congregation of the Index would condemn the Copernican doctrine of the mobility of the Earth and the immobility of the sun. Galileo was ordered to abandon this teaching.

What is significant is the way Cardinal Bellarmine approached this difficult assignment. Rather than ridiculing a theory the Church disagreed with, or demonizing the man who argued in favor of it, Bellarmine calmly and thoughtfully presented the Church’s position. When rumors began to spread claiming that Galileo had been mistreated and forced to abandon his teaching, Bellarmine wrote out a certificate denying the rumors, stating that Galileo had merely been notified of the decree and informed that, as a consequence of it, the Copernican doctrine could not be “defended or held.”

Twelve years after Bellarmine’s death, when Galileo was brought before the Inquisition and charged with heresy, Bellarmine’s certificate was used as evidence in his defense.

Many years later, Pope St. John Paul II commissioned a study by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences which declared that Galileo was correct in his teaching. On Oct. 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, but revolves around the sun. The Holy Father said the theologians who condemned Galileo did not recognize the formal distinction between the Bible and its interpretation. Therefore, he said, “This led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith, a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation.”

While he was teaching in Rome, Robert Bellarmine wrote a major compilation in three volumes of the controversies of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. This work, known as the Disputationes and published in 1596, is distinguished by the calm, fair way that he went about analyzing the differences between Catholic and Protestant teaching. Once again, Bellarmine refused to mistreat those who disagreed with the Catholic position. He stated the Church’s views with clarity and conviction without demeaning his opponents or rejecting their arguments out of hand.

As a consequence of his explanation of the Catholic understanding of papal authority, Bellarmine found himself at odds with Pope Sixtus V, who disagreed with his statement that the pope is not the temporal ruler of the whole world and that temporal rulers do not derive their authority to rule from God but from the consent of the governed. Pope Sixtus was so unhappy with this teaching that he threatened to place the first volume of Bellarmine’s Disputationes on the Index, a list of publications determined to be heretical.

The point here is that disagreements—even very serious ones—can be handled with dignity and respect. And when one side or the other is proved wrong, if the arguments have been conducted civilly, apologies can be offered and amends made.

St. Robert Bellarmine is a saint for our time because we often seem to be overwhelmed by controversies and because far too often our disagreements are uncivil, ugly and offensive. As Christians, we need civility and compassion in our dealings with people we disagree with, and the deeper the divisions among us are, the more important it is to establish common ground.

Let’s ask St. Robert to intercede for us and to help us learn to disagree without being disagreeable. Let’s also pray that we will be open to points of view that challenge our previously held ideas while, at the same time, being forthright in stating our own firmly held beliefs. †