I am sure that everyone would affirm that their life is changing, evolving, and being transformed. The question is whether or not it’s going FAST ENOUGH to make much of a difference in your life before you leave this world? The church is one of the most conservative institutions in the world and we should all be alarmed to the point of doing something about it- personally. Like, don’t resist every new idea, don’t try to hold on to untenable doctrines, and fantasy stories: especially in light of incontrovertable evidence to the contrary. Let me share with you one of the most sad and ridiculous examples.
Galileo was put on trial in 1633 by papal authorities for publishing a book defending Copernicus’s theory that the earth revolves around the sun. Copernicus had died nearly a century before, and his “heliocentric” view of the solar system was already generally accepted by astronomers and even by some theologians. Nevertheless, the Vatican insisted Galileo stop discussing the idea; threatened by the Inquisition with torture, he recanted his views and spent the last nine years of his life under the equivalent of house arrest. The episode became symbolic of religious closed-mindedness, intolerance, antiscientific attitudes.
And what are we Christians holding on to today that’s as wacky? 
In 1979, a year after he became Pope, John Paul II signaled that he wanted the Galileo case set right by giving a speech at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at which he declared in typically elliptical Vatican language that “theologians, scholars, and historians, animated by a spirit of sincere collaboration, will study the Galileo case more deeply.”
Really!
In October 1992Cardinal Paul Poupard presented the Pope with the findings of the Galileo study commission, which declared, “From the Galileo case we can draw a lesson which is applicable today in analogous cases which arise in our times and which may arise in the future. It often happens that, beyond two partial points of view which are in contrast, there exists a wider view of things which embraces both and integrates them.”
It took 13 years to accept the geocentric theory: the earth evolves around the sun? Is there any wonder the world looks at the church with as though they’re living in another world?
The Pope responded by saying that Galileo’s realizations about the sun and earth must have been “divinely inspired“. How about scientific proof! Through its 1992 ceremony, the church finally lifted its edict of Inquisition against Galileo, who went to his grave a devout Catholic, despite the church’s treatment of him, and finally being forgiven 361 years later!
Let’s be a little more sane and responsive. Whatcha say?
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