I refuse to be drawn into this, as the actual historical truth of these matters takes some serious study --- casual listening to someone claiming something will not do it.
I will say these few things, knowing that my status here is no better than anyone's [despite being a PhD in the History of Science, and having taught all this stuff --- you do not know that as I'm just electronic marks on your computer screen].
1). Bruno was not arrested and killed because of his philosophy of many worlds. Bruno was a force pushing the idea that Jesus Christ wasn't God, and maybe didn't even exist, and about a dozen other anti-Church doctrines which he refused to shut up about --- yes, he still shouldn't have been killed, but it had nothing to do with anti-science. Also, this was an act taken by the Spanish authorities unilaterally, not the full Church. Many Church authorities were pursuing the same "many world hypothesis" at the time. This is also true of Galileo. Any responsible book by an actual historian will delineate this for the reader. Continuing to bring up this story in "science" contexts is intellectually dishonest and manipulative.
2). There was no science in "The Dark Ages". In those centuries anything resembling proto-science was labeled "Natural Magic." This in its best form meant attempting to find the patterns or "recipes" in Nature which, if followed, would allow a person to elicit predictable "action"/behavior from Nature, and therefore give one a "power" of a sort. The Church had nothing against this unless the participant attempted to include the demonic or paranormal within those recipe/rituals. Once proto-science began to separate itself clearly from magic, Church figures all over the continent were engaging in elements of it.
3). Though almost undeserved, the Church took such a beating over Galileo [again despite that several high Church authorities were sympathetic to his laws of motion work and supported that --- remember also that Galileo served only "house arrest" and his books got "silently distributed" all over Europe --- his problem was that he insisted on shouting his ideas in a combative fashion in public, whereas Copernicus just went the spread the science around quietly and let people get used to it route], that when a much more challenging scientist {Darwin} came along, the Catholic Church was the first religious institution to say that scientific fact would have the say on the theory and not doctrinal pronouncements.
4). I saw Sagan do the same thing. He was unapologetic about it. What irritated me [outside of the Church-bashing] was that this is not only completely unnecessary, historically wrong, but, in offending a significant portion of citizens, causes science itself great harm. We live in a world/country teetering on the edge of denying if not hating science as it is. As a science teacher, it really angered me to see these Crown Princes of Science pouring gasoline on that ammo dump. We barely keep Kansas [almost yearly] from demanding that the theory of natural selection no longer be taught in high school science classes. A little humility and friendliness out of the Crown Princes would help.
