Interesting to see this question aired on CATHOLICS LIVING IN THE MODERN WORLD. Normally the subject is confined to THE EARTH GOD MADE under FIGHTING ERRORS IN THE MODERN WORLD where only a fraction of readers bother to go.
If the question was put like this 'are there any heretical heliocentrists on CIF' it would have put the question in the right context. Moreover, If Satan himself wanted to undermine the importance heliocentrism in the history of the Catholic faith, he could not have surpassed the way this FLAT-EARTH subject has totally undermined the history of the geocentric V heliocentric clash in the history of the Catholic churchn and history of the world.
Heliocentrism was defined and declared a heresy by the Catholic Church in 1616 and confirmed by Pope Urban VII in 1633 because it contradicted the revelation in the Bible that the sun turns around the Earth. This Pythagorean heresy has been condemned by all the Fathers of the Church and certain Popes since the first century of Catholicism. A flat-Earth has nothing to do with Catholic doctrine or theology so should be kept out of the subject.
As time went by, this geocentric doctrine was developed to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of man and the infinite theology of God, a synthesis of thought found in the reasoning refined and articulated in a Christian way over the centuries by all the Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church, especially Dionysius the Areopagite (1st century AD), St Clement of Alexandria (150-215AD) who held that the altar in the Jєωιѕн tabernacle was ‘a symbol of the Earth placed in the middle of the universe,’ Peter Lombard (12th century), and finally, ‘with great power and clearness,’ wrote Andrew White, ‘St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval Church, the “Angelic Doctor,” who brought the whole vast system, material and spiritual, into its relation to God and man,’ a composite of theology and metaphysics that resulted in ‘a sacred system of cosmology, one of the great treasures of the universal Church.’
Of note is that the Council of Trent upheld the doctrine of geocentrism as can be read in its catechism.
‘I Believe in God, Almighty Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth. He followed no external form or model; but contemplating, and as it were imitating, the universal model contained in the divine intelligence, the supreme Architect, with infinite wisdom and power – attributes peculiar to the Divinity – created all things in the beginning. He spoke and they were made… The words heaven and Earth include all things that the heavens and the Earth contain; for besides the heavens, which the Prophet has called the works of His fingers, He also gave to the sun its brilliancy, and to the moon and stars their beauty; and that they may be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. He so ordered the celestial bodies in a certain and uniform course that nothing varies more than their continual revolution, while nothing is more fixed than their variety…. The Earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundations [Psa. 103:5: You fixed the Earth upon its foundations, not to be moved forever], and made the mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place that He had founded for them…. He next not only clothed and adorned it with trees and every variety of plants and flowers, but filled it, as He had already filled the air and water, with innumerable kinds of creatures…. Not only does God protect and govern all things by His Providence, but He also by an internal power impels to motion and action whatever moves and acts, and this in such a manner that, although He excludes not, He yet precedes the agency of secondary causes.’
More in my next post.