The Catholic Church suppressed rational science for centuries.

Evidence

It is also significant that the Pope, in denouncing Islam for lacking reason, failed to bring up the Catholic Church’s hostile opposition to the scientific revolution and to the birth of nonreligious and rational ways of understanding the world. The scientific revolution and, more broadly, the Enlightenment stood in opposition to Christian dogma and were viewed as a threat by the Church. Scientists who employed reason and rationality to explain the physical world were severely punished. Giordano Bruno, who championed the Copernican system of astronomy, was imprisoned for eight years by the Roman and Venetian Inquisitions for refusing to recant his beliefs. He was later burned at the stake. Galileo was similarly brought before the Inquisition and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 189

Categorization

• XREF: Inverts the Pope’s rational-West/irrational-Islam binary — Christianity’s own anti-rational history — a core ‘dismantled myth’ the reader seeks. — connects to: The Church prioritized its authority over scientific inquiry. — Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, 351; The Pope feared Copernicanism would undermine the Church’s authority. — Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, 353; The Catholic Church condemned Modernism in 1907 for engaging modern science and sociology

Broader Connections

• The Church prioritized its authority over scientific inquiry. #corroborates (0.75) — Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, 351
• The Pope feared Copernicanism would undermine the Church’s authority. #corroborates (0.70) — Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, 353