In the popular imagination, historical relations between the Roman Catholic Church and modern science are best epitomized in the case of Galileo Galilei. Condemned in 1633 for advancing the theory of a moving earth and a stationary sun, he was only exonerated in 1992. Yet apart from relatively few and specialized studies, there have been no extensive historical treatments of Catholic attitudes toward science after Galileo. Roman Catholicism and Modern Science is the first general history of the reactions of the Roman Catholic Church to developments in the natural sciences from about 1800...