"The story of Galileo Galilei, on closer inspection, was not an exegetical dispute but a great philosophical and cultural confrontation, which had a positive influence on the Catholic Church, spurring it to distance itself more and more from an instrumental and unenlightened use of the Scriptures.... If they are true knowledge of the world, Catholic theology has nothing to fear from scientific knowledge: it may be rightly challenged by it, but, for the sake of the one truth, it must accept the challenge with intellectual honesty and epistemological rigor."