Question of semantics is mixing up your conversation here I think. Is "the church" the religious authority (i.e. the Vatican), or just simply anyone religious?
Because the Vatican has not persecuted people for their scientific views for a long time, but I agree with you that it's not that complicated to find examples of religious people being anti-scientific. The question is : how many are there, and how representative are they.
Good point, now that I re-read the comment I replied to. This comments section is talking about church in general, but he specifically wrote "the Church".
Anyway, what I'm mainly referring to is evolution and the age of the Earth and the universe. Around 40% of people in the US are Young-Earth Creationists.
In the U.S. it's strict creationism that's the biggest anti-science aspect of many of the protestant religions. Snopes monkey trial was so divisive that very few people I have met in Georgia are aware that intelligent design is a thing. Each of these people more or less accepts that their church doesn't believe in Dinosaurs.
YEC on its own isn't anti-science as much as about metaphysics. The main objections are more about why God would create fossils that look millions of years old. That is an interesting point, but it is a theological point, not a scientific one.
That being said, there are a lot of folks who are bad at metaphysics involved in the discussion that tend to drown out the more coherent takes on the subject.
But this is a broad and diverse area of discussion. It's not fair to say "The Church" is anti-science with respect to a metaphysical subject.
I think it's fair to recognize the diverse group of people in the "church" and to be careful casting ire around. There are quite a few scientists and intellectual heavyweights involved, for instance.
