The Church did hold the consensus opinion, and accepted the minority opinion, Copernicanism, as a hypothesis. At that time, the epicycic systems made better predictions than Heliocentrism with round orbits. Kepler's later elliptical models did fit and won out after Galileo's day. Also, while Galileo presented some compelling evidence from astronomical observations, he was the only one able to make them, which made his claims difficult to confirm. He stated that Copernicanism was not a hypothesis, the Church tried to get him to walk that back, but Galileo bitterly feuded with an initially sympathetic, but ultimately hostile Pope Urban VIII enough to get himself in trouble. He was persecuted for defying the pope, the science was only a proximate cause to the root cause of his problem which was that he was rude to the pope.

That points to a bad system, but one that has nothing to do with the modern world we live in, and which if applied by analogy will fit so poorly as to be a bad analogy.

Also the Church conducted scientific experiments regularly, since a number of priests through the ages were scientists, and it was a result of priests taking observations in later, better telescopes that updated the Church's position on heliocentrism.