McFiggly, the ignorance and presumption in your reply to me compound the sin of willfully distorting (by deliberate omission) the words of the two popes you cite in defense of your 100 percent uninformed and misleading ramblings.
Have an equally distorted day.
Sorry, I did not mean to be ignorant, presumptuous or misleading.
Did God ever intend to have His Church so complicated that one would have to be an St Augustine or a St Thomas to understand it all.
I'm not sure that the Church or the Faith is that complicated, even in light of the current Modernist darkness which hangs over the Church and the world.
[11] That the house of Israel may go no more astray from me, nor be polluted with all their transgressions: but may be my people, and I may be their God, saith the Lord of hosts. [12] And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: [13] Son of man, when a land shall sin against me, so as to transgress grievously, I will stretch forth my hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof: and I will send famine upon it, and will destroy man and beast out of it. [14] And if these three men, Noe, Daniel, and Job, shall be in it: they shall deliver their own souls by their justice, saith the Lord of hosts. [15] And if I shall bring mischievous beasts also upon the land to waste it, and it be desolate, so that there is none that can pass because of the beasts:
[16] If these three men shall be in it, as I live, saith the Lord, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters: but they only shall be delivered, and the land shall be made desolate. [17] Or if I bring the sword upon that land, and say to the sword: Pass through the land: and I destroy man and beast out of it: [18] And these three men be in the midst thereof: as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they themselves alone shall be delivered. [19] Or if I also send the pestilence upon that land, and pour out my indignation upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast: [20] And Noe, and Daniel, and Job be in the midst thereof: as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter: but they shall only deliver their own souls by their justice.
[21] For thus saith the Lord: Although I shall send in upon Jerusalem my four grievous judgments, the sword, and the famine, and the mischievous beasts, and the pestilence, to destroy out of it man and beast, [22] Yet there shall be left in it some that shall be saved, who shall bring away their sons and daughters: behold they shall come among you, and you shall see their way, and their doings: and you shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, in all things that I have brought upon it. [23] And they shall comfort you, when you shall see their ways, and their doings: and you shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it, saith the Lord God.
Doesn't this summarize the current situation perfectly? It's not that we have to be St. Augustine's or St. Aquinas' to understand the Church intellectually, it's that we have to have the faith and sanctity of Noah, Daniel, Job; not that those men weren't wise, because they were exceedingly wise, but I think the Lord here is more referring to their piety as opposed to the impiety of their many peers.
You say the Pythagorean/Copernican heresy was not one of the 'more important truths pertaining to religion.' I would question Pope Pius VI's words here: are there more important and less important truths pertaining to religion?
The Copernican heresy was designed by Satan to destroy one of the fundamental rocks of Catholicism, Faith and reason. It was designed to get Catholics to begin a metaphorical interpretation of Genesis in particular. Copernicanism was designed to destroy the dogma of Trent, that the unanimous interpretation of the Fathers cannot be contradicted.
For me then, the 1616 decree was one of the more important decrees in the history of the Church. It was the first defence against Modernism. Once popes destroyed this defence the gates of modernism were opened up and we are now where we are.
You ask me: 'Are you saying that the popes and cardinals were heretics for not condemning Copernicanism and not excommunicating those that preached the error/heresy pertinaciously?
Of all the heresies ever defined and declared by way of decree, probably none was more known or famous in history than Galileo's heresy. Trouble is, from the very beginning there were those Catholics who really believed that heliocentrism was a scientific fact. In other words their faith in reason was greater than their faith in Catholic tradition. Moreover, because of the subject matter of the Scriptural interpretation that they denied was the created order of the creation, they believed it wasn't a REAL HERESY, more a scientific heresy, that they could deny it and ignore it. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine had already said to deny this interpretation was no different than denying the Virgin Birth, as they are BOTH revealed by the word of God. Now does that make them heretics? Does believing in what their predecessor defined as heresy, not make them heretics? I do not define and declare what is heresy, popes do. If I believe what a pope defined as heresy, can I say that one who freely adheres to that heresy is not a heretic? Wouldn't that make me a heretic?
So, what I do say is that popes from 1741 failed to uphold the decree of their predecessor and worse, some of they actually allowed in one way or another the flock to accept that heresy as a fact of science, and facts of science cannot be heresies according to modernism.
Now according to Olivieri and Pope Pius VI that makes me a heretic for believing a truth. And that is why I put up this thread, to see what others think about this absurdity.
I agree the Copernicanism has been extremely harmful. However, I'm not convinced that the popes did believe in Copernicanism or teach it. I would only go as far as saying that they did not condemn this heresy enough, but this was a judgement that the Churchmen made for the sake of prudence because they were cautious of creating further scandal, as in the eyes of the world Galileo had embarrassed the Church. Now, this did indeed set a very dangerous precedent: it started the trend of the Church negotiating with the modern world, which would eventually culminate in Vatican II. However, the Churchmen themselves DID NOT negotiate with / sell out to the world until Vatican II; it was only the Modernists within the Church who had fully imbibed Copernicanism and all its consequences who were doing this selling out, and these Modernists were thoroughly condemned by the popes. In other words, the polluted streams of Modernism had entered into the sewers of the Church through Galileo, but the Church itself was still completely sound until the sewer monsters that had been breeding throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries leaped out of the sewers and usurped the Church. I hope that makes sense. Pope Pius X looked into the sewers and saw the Modernist Monsters down there and was disgusted by them, and utterly and totally condemned them . . . but they kept breeding.
This is the problem, I think: the Church had two options: they had either to take a strict stance and say NO, Copernicanism was wrong as per the infallible decree of the Church and that the modern scientists were in error, or they had to concede to the modern scientists and either engage in weak apology for or simple silence on the Galileo fiasco.
The first option -
pros: it sets a strong precedent that the Church is never going to concede to the world, that it will remain faithful to what it is always taught, that it will maintain its right to teach not only correct theology but also correct philosophy and science.
cons: the Church comes across like Protestant "biblical fundamentalists" who champion "Faith over Reason", because the world has been bamboozled by the scientists with their deceptive "proofs".
The second option
pros: the Church has a chance to remain the protector of both Faith and Reason in the eyes of the world by seeming to accommodate for the scientists who had become the champions of Reason.
cons: it sets a precedent where scientists and philosophers will begin to claim that they don't need the Church's approbation to teach what they please, that the Church's condemnations are false and superstitious, etc.
See, what happened is that the Church's commitment to Faith AND Reason as opposed to the Protestant Faith Alone worked to its disadvantage. By conceding to the modern scientists more rights than they deserved the Churchmen were unfortunately lead to believe that they were simply giving Reason its rights, when the truth is that we allowing rights to unreason and error. They wanted the world to believe that the Church was still the protector of Reason, but this was foolish: they should have known that once the scientists had seemingly won one victory over the Church they'd use it as an excuse to win many more until they had established Reason Alone in the world.
It's a really ingenious trap set up by the Devil that they fell into. It's the same trap that Catholics fall in today when they falsely believe that they have to defend Evolution because, "we Catholics aren't anti-Reason like those Fideist Protestants!", well, it turns out that those "fundamentalist Protestants", those "bible thumpers", are actually right when it comes to Evolution, that - irony of ironies - it's the Protestants, of all people, that are defending Reason and the Church that is upholding the Fideism of the modern scientists. The Church bought the scientists propaganda that the scientists were the patrons of Reason. The whole world still believes that scientists are disciples of Reason, when their empiricist philosophy/metaphysics and their assertion of unjustified dogmas like Evolution are the height of unreason. It really is a shame that many of the Protestants have shown more resistance to these disgusting errors that scientists have been putting out over the years, and the reason for it is the Devil has been playing off of the Church's commitment to Faith AND Reason, the false perception that scientists are the champions of Reason, and the hobgoblin of "backwards, superstitious, dark-ages, bible thumpers". Look at Sungenis' film about geocentrism and how angrily some Catholics have responded to it because they want so much for the world to believe that Catholicism is the friend of Reason as opposed to those dimwit Protestants.