That wasn’t quite it. The church believed the natural sciences fit within a framework of metaphysical doctrine. The church engaged in all sorts of research and experiments because they believed it would prove the truth. People like Darwin and Copernicus and such were all commissioned by the church to develop and research their work.

What happened was there became a growing body of work that did not align with the church that could not be reconciled. They did the science, they were just subject to the demands of political power of their time.