In 'Galileo goes to jail and other myths', non Catholics pay tribute to what the Catholic Church contributed to civilization. The basis of modernity was laid in medieval Europe, there is little to contest that claim. The nexus of faith, science, reason, culture and legacy civilizations, all combined to form a potent reality, never before seen in history. That is not to say that the Church was always holy, it was oftentimes venal, corrupt, bloody, stupid, immoral and profligate. That is the work of men, not the Church. The Reformation was in most ways a deformation, a return to sola scriptura, no free-will, no freedom in many ways, and 130 years of unending civil war.

God inspiring physical investigation and debate about the nature of it all:

“Gassendi, who tried to make Greek atomism compatible with Christian theology, asserted there is in fact a role for final causes in physics-contrary to Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Rene Descartes, both of whom had ruled them out; and Robert Boyle published an entire treatise on the role of final causes in natural philosophy. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) explicitly endorsed the appeal to final causes and argued that natural philosophy, properly pursued, leads to knowledge of the Creator. All of these natural philosophers reinterpreted the term final cause to refer to God's purposes imposed on the creation...“

Theology leading to natural science:

“Boyle, Newton, and the naturalist John Ray (1627-1705) believed that the study of the created world provides knowledge of the wisdom and intelligence of the Creator, and they used the argument from design to establish God's providential relationship to his creation. Newton, whose physics historians have traditionally regarded as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution, shared these concerns. He clearly believed that theology is an intrinsic part of natural philosophy."For all discourse about God is derived through a certain similitude from things human, which while not perfect..”

Mechanical concepts in science long pre-dated the 19^th century and the rise of dialectical-mechanical ideas:

“...mechanical philosophers-such as Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who were all devout Christians-limited the scope of their mechanization of nature by insisting on the existence of God, angels, demons, and an immortal human soul-all of which were spiritual, nonmaterial entities. The particular theories of matter that the mechanical philosophers adopted and their various ideas about the nature and scope of knowledge about the world reflected their theological presuppositions.”

There is plenty which is wrong and incoherent about mechanical theories. They are very simple, do not model reality and are usually metaphysical exercises. But to a modern, they appear to be new, scientific and confirmed. They are none of these.  Only in medieval Europe do we see atomism [materialism, evolution are based on this]; debated and even supported, versus Aristotelian theory, and Church doctrine.  

In the modern world we forget that the Catholic Church was the biggest financier of science in history. We also do not know that considerable evidence was available in the 16^th century against Copernican helio-centricity – even though Copernicus and others working on heliocentricity were funded by the Church.

“...considerable evidence against Copernicanism stemming from direct sense experience, astronomical observation, traditional physics, and scriptural passages. Accordingly,...anti-Copernican arguments far outweighed the pro-Copernican ones.

“...association of Copernicus's ideas with the ancient central fire cosmology of Pythagoras was more than a dismissal of the antiquity of heliocentrism; it was especially damning, inasmuch as it implied other shared heresies, such as the Pythagorean belief in the transmigration of souls. Such teachings were not to be tolerated in post-Tridentine Rome...”

Most of the Church supported Copernicus who waited to publish his ideas [his math was wrong, and had to be solved by another Christian Kepler], due to his fears about the reaction of academics who were invested in the Ptolemaic universe-model. Atheists and Protestants usually make a big deal about Galileo's troubles with the Church – though he was funded by the same -- [the story is a large myth, and quite exaggerated]; and also the non-scientist Bruno, a defrocked Friar who never performed one single experiment [sounds like Dawkins, Hawking et al, and other sci-fi writers, in the modern world]. Bruno was insane and though he should not have been killed, it is difficult to see during a period of endless inter-Christian warfare and threats from Islam [16-17^th centuries], what else could have been done. Yes, people are executed for treason and rebellion.

“Bruno's crimes were clearly of a religious nature, no matter what his views of the structure of the physical cosmos.”

“Bruno was a heretic. His doubts about virgin birth and the identification of God with Christ, whom he regarded as a clever magician, wererepugnant to every major Christian denomination, Protestant and Catholic alike. His refusal to recant these and various other propositions specified in charges brought against him by the Roman Inquisition in the last years of the century led to his conviction and condemnation to death as an unrepentant heretic in January of 1600. On the seventeenth of February he was publicly and ceremoniously burned at the stake, alive, in Rome's Flower Market. His end is brutal.. “

Bruno was no more a scientist than quacks who today claim that plant food causes a rise in sea levels. Yet his myth, among many others persists, in the non-existent charade, that somehow science and reason are opposed. What is science anyways ? Is it fraud, metaphysics, 'models', and screaming ? Or is it about the Catholic conception of trying to find out the truth about God's creation ?