It had been this way since the very beginnings of the Church. More importantly, Catholics had always assumed that there would never be any reason to question the Church on the grounds that the Church was incapable of being wrong in the first place. As the Church grew increasingly more influential over the years, its infallibility began to apply to all matters religious and non-religious. In other words, if a Catholic had a question about anything, the Church had the correct answer. .
So what made Galileo more of a threat than Luther or Calvin? After all, both Luther and Calvin had not only challenged the Church's infallibility, but had also taken away a significant amount of the Church's members. Furthermore, both men had fought for causes that were specifically aimed at challenging the Church's authority. Galileo, on the other hand, was a faithful Catholic until the day he died, and never willfully set out to try and bring down the Church. However, whereas Luther and Calvin had challenged the mere faults of Church officials, Galileo had inadvertently challenged the Word of God. In particular, Galileo was accused of challenging a verse from the Book of Joshua which stated, " Joshua prayed to the Lord, and said in the presence of Israel: "Stand still, o sun at Gabhaon, o moon, in the valley of Aialon!" And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, while the nation took vengeance on its foe The sun halted in the middle of the sky; not for a whole day did it resume its swift course."* The way that the Church saw it, this Bible verse clearly affirmiated the sun's motion around the earth, in addition to making Galileo a bonified heretic. .
The fact that Galileo had attempted to scientifically disprove something written in the Bible had far reaching implications. For example, if one element of the Bible had been proven wrong, it seemed like it could only be a matter of time before someone else had the nerve to prove something else in the Bible wrong.
