I think it's more fair to say that he contradicted their "interpretation" of the bible at the time. Even Catholic church doesn't maintain those old beliefs any more.
> He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (NIV):
> The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
A literal interpretation of the bible has the earth standing still while the sun moves. Of course you can interpret any text any way you like, and if somebody wants to make a contrived argument that Moby Dick was really about a shark rather than a whale then there's nothing I can do to convince them otherwise, but the text seems quite clear.
True, but the catholic church did not base their worldview purely on a literal reading of the bible. This was the case for protestants ("sola scriptura"), but the catholic church often favored allegorical readings and did not consider the bible the only authority on truth.
> if somebody wants to make a contrived argument that Moby Dick was really about a shark rather than a whale then there's nothing I can do to convince them otherwise, but the text seems quite clear.
Some have even gone so far as to claim that the stuff in the book didn't actually happen but the book can be read as an allegory of something or other!
As the people you are arguing against are 16th century clergy, you can't really convince them of anything - they are long dead. The best one can do is try to understand how they were thinking.
Most protestants aren't a fan of an excessively literal interpretation either. Modern biblical literalism, where an overly literal interpretation trumps even common sense and observation, is a fairly recent invention (late 18th century, I think), and I, as a Christian, consider it the largest threat to Christianity today. And a heresy, I suppose; it doesn't do justice to what the bible is actually trying to tell us, and focuses only on superficial, nonsensical interpretations that often end up contradictory.
