The Church was the truth and if you disagreed you died. After you died the church took everything you had, land, money, wives, family, everything. How do you think the Catholic Church became so wealthy? It wasn't from helping the poor. Life was pretty simple back then.

They not only tried to stifle the truth, they claimed the church has exclusive access to the truth. That is in direct conflict with empirical science and everything it stands for.

Their instincts were right though. Science is the death knell of mumbo jumbo superstition. It's a shame more people aren't able to grasp why.

The issue with religion is that it sees virtue in faith rather than doubt, and has historically found scientific discoveries true only when they agree with dogma rather than vice versa.

Any move away from burning individuals at the stake or drowning them in the local duck pond is a move away from dogmas previously held as the absolute truth for centuries, rather than being reflective of religions being compatible with the scientific method.

An excerpt from "Astronomy The Evolving Universe", author Michael Zelik, 1976.
page 75

Galileo had publicly declared himself a Copernican in 1613. His intellectual inclinations were well known before then from his heated conversations and debates.His vehemence and enthusiasm irritated many of his opponents, some of whom exerted substantial power in the Church. In 1616 an official of the Inquisition apparently warned Galileo to stop teaching the Copernican theory as truth rather than as a hypothesis (as Osiander had done in his preface to "De Revolutionibus"). Galileo's position was held to be contrary to Holy Scripture. At the same time De Revolutionibus was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books until "corrections" had been made. (Only a few copies were actually changed.) These two events, whose implications Galileo did not grasp, initiated a complex chain of events that historians have yet to unravel completely. Galileo, a faithful and obedient Catholic, avoided teaching the Copernican theory as true. At the same time he entered into arguments about scientific truth versus revealed truth. His argumentative spirit helped his downfall.

In 1632 Cardinal Barberini - a friend of Galileo and a patron of the sciences - was elected Pope Urban VIII. Galileo thought he saw his chance and had a long audience with the new pope during which Urban discussed the decree forbidding the heliocentric teachings. Feeling that he had the support of the pope and also of the Jesuit astronomers (many of whom adhered to the Copernican system), Galileo wrote the "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems". With the approval of the Vatican censors, the book was published in 1632, after a few corrections had been made. The book supposedly relates an objective debate about the relative merits of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, with the judgment being rendered in favor of the traditional world view. In reality, the text is a thinly veiled polemic supporting the Copernican cosmos, Galileo cites both the observational arguments (mostly the work of his telescope) and some of the physical ones ( which he expanded in the "Discourses"). Immediately, Galileo found himself in trouble, for his opponents swiftly countered his claims with theological arguments. The pope himself was incensed because his favorite arguments had been put in the mouth of Simplicio, the supporter of the scholastic viewpoint in the "Dialogue". (Galileo did not draw Simplicio kindly.) Copies of his book were seized before they left the printers, and Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition and forced to recant his scientific beliefs. His friends were afraid to come to his support. As punishment, he was placed under perpetual house arrest and denied the Church sacraments. The "Dialogue" remained forbidden to Catholics until 1835, when the works of Galileo, Copernicus,and Kepler were finally removed from the Index.