Author Topic: THE EARTHMOVERS (Read 123116 times)

cassini · « **Reply #540 on:** November 27, 2014, 02:28:09 PM »

Chapter Forty

1962-65:
Vatican Council II

‘The revolution of modernity was primarily an intellectual revolution. As the English politician and philosopher Francis Bacon proclaimed at a very early stage, knowledge is power. And in fact science proved to be the first great power of rising modernity. What Bacon proclaimed, but still hardly provided any empirical or experimental basis for, was initiated methologically by Galileo, Descartes and Pascal who were followed by Spinoza, Leibniz, Newton, Huygens and Boyle… The new truly revolutionary world system which the Catholic cathedral deacon Nicolas Copernicus presented, purely theoretically, only as a hypothesis, seemed at first to pose a threat to the biblical world view when the Italian Galileo Galilei irrefutably confirmed it with experiments.’ --- Hans Kung: The Catholic Church, Phoenix Press, 2001, p.153.

In a departing speech to the parish priests and clergy of Rome by Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) on the occasion of his resignation from the papacy in February of 2013, the retired pope said the following:

‘For me it is a particular gift of Providence that, before leaving the Petrine ministry, I can once more see my clergy, the clergy of Rome. It is always a great joy to see the living Church, to see how the Church in Rome is alive; there are shepherds here who guide the Lord’s flock in the spirit of the supreme Shepherd. It is a body of clergy that is truly Catholic, universal, in accordance with the essence of the Church of Rome… For today, given the conditions brought on by my age, I have not been able to prepare an extended discourse, as might have been expected; but rather what I have in mind are a few thoughts on the Second Vatican Council, as I saw it...
So the Cardinal [Frings] knew that he was on the right track and he invited me [Fr Joseph Ratzinger] to go with him to the Council, firstly as his personal advisor; and then, during the first session – I think it was in November 1962 – I was also named an official peritus of the Council. So off we went to the Council not just with joy but with enthusiasm. There was an incredible sense of expectation. We were hoping that all would be renewed, that there would truly be a new Pentecost, a new era of the Church, because the Church was still fairly robust at that time – Sunday Mass attendance was still good, vocations to the priesthood and to religious life were already slightly reduced, but still sufficient. However, there was a feeling that the Church was not moving forward, that it was declining, that it seemed more a thing of the past and not the herald of the future. And at that moment, we were hoping that this relation would be renewed, that it would change; that the Church might once again be a force for tomorrow and a force for today. And we knew that the relationship between the Church and the modern period, right from the outset, had been slightly fraught, beginning with the Church’s error in the case of Galileo Galilei; we were looking to correct this mistaken start and to rediscover the union between the Church and the best forces of the world, so as to open up humanity’s future, to open up true progress. Thus we were full of hope, full of enthusiasm, and also eager to play our own part in this process.’ ---L’Osservatore Romano, Feb 14, 2013, page 4, and Libreria Editrice Vaticana website.

It seems to Fr Ratzinger, from priest to Pope Benedict XVI, and others, the Church, although ‘still fairly robust at that time (1962),’ - which it was with churches all over the world brimming with informed Catholics attending Masses, devotions, retreats and confessions - needed renewal based on a ‘feeling.’ Now whereas ‘the Church in Rome’ in 2013 may have looked ‘alive and well,’ with all the pilgrims and visitors filling St Peter’s Square, the Church in Europe and America had collapsed as an influence in the lives of those countries and indeed as an influence on the flock still calling themselves Catholic. Knowledge of the Catholic faith has disappeared and adherence to the dogmas and doctrines of tradition is now considered optional with Catholics now even voting for liberal legislation such as contraception, ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity and even abortion in their respective countries.
Vatican II was to be used as a public Church confession, unloading all the ‘traditional’ sins of the past, followed by a promise of renewal, sins that supposedly began ‘with the Church’s error in the case of Galileo Galilei.’ The ‘progressives’ wanted to make the Church comply with modern times, modern thinking and of course modern science. They wanted to take it ‘out of the dark ages into the real world.’ Many of these Modernists are well known and included Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, Yves Congar, Cardinals Suenens and Cardinal Frings.
Reading all this in the light that science never came within one of their ‘light-years’ to showing the Church wrong in the Galileo case, few would know they had all been duped, not even the elect. But such was the influence of the Copernican heresy throughout the centuries, now a Council was to be used to promulgate the illusion further among the flock. It seems one theme that constantly surfaced at Vatican II was that it was not enough for the 1960s Catholic Church to declare its regard for modern culture; it must also prove this by deeds. As a sure way to prove their ‘intentions decisively,’ Monsignor Elchinger, auxiliary bishop of Strasbourg and other cardinals and bishops suggested that there should be a full rehabilitation of Galileo. A petition from many European intellectuals and scientists was sent to Pope Paul VI asking for a solemn rehabilitation of Galileo. He in turn asked the Holy Office if they approved. They replied that by approving the publication of Paschini’s book on Galileo they had already signified their approval. At another session on the fourth of November 1964, Bishop Elchinger expressed the following opinion:

‘The rehabilitation of Galileo on the part of the Church would be an eloquent act, accomplished humbly but correctly. Such a decision, if enacted by the supreme Authority of the Church, could not fail to redound to the Church’s own credit, since with such an action it would reclaim the trust of the contemporary world and would perform a great service to the cause of human culture.’ -- M. A. Finocchiaro: Retrying Galileo, p.329.

Providentially, no official retrial happened, the supreme authority of the Church does not contradict itself. Instead it was decided to merely acknowledge the belief that a mistake was made. Three months later, a draft of what would be inserted into the docuмents of Vatican II was discussed.

‘Finally, a compromise was worked out: the explicit mention of Galileo in the text would be dropped, but a footnote reference to Paschini’s book would be added. The minutes of that meeting contain the following abbreviated notes that reveal the rational underlying the compromise: “Galilei. – Inopportune to speak of this in the docuмent – Let us not force the Church to say: I made a mistake. The matter should be judged in the context of time. In Paschini’s work all is said in the true light.”’ --- M. A. Finocchiaro: Retrying Galileo, p.329

cassini · « **Reply #541 on:** November 27, 2014, 02:35:53 PM »

This ‘occurred on the 7th December 1965 in their Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The text reads like so:

‘… The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are. We cannot but deplore certain attitudes (not unknown among Christians) deriving from a short-sighted view of the rightful autonomy of science; they have occasioned conflict and controversy and have misled many into opposing faith and science.’ --- Gaudium et spes, # 36.

The above, as agreed, is referenced with Fr Pio Paschini’s Vita e Opere di Galileo Galilei, a book Fr Paschini in 1945 refused to edit for the PAS right up to the time of his death in 1962. In his will he left his work to an assistant Fr Michele Maccarrone, a diocesan priest and medievalist who in 1963 tried to have it published once again, even agreeing to its being edited first. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who wanted to publish the book back in 1945 in conjunction with Galileo’s death in 1642, were still interested, but this time to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Galileo’s birth due in 1964. The Jesuit Fr Edmond Lamalle was assigned to make the changes, even meeting with the then Pope Paul VI who again approved its publication as he had with the original unedited book back in 1945 when he was Deputy Secretary in Rome. On October 2 1964, the manuscript was finally published under the name of its original author Pio Paschini with not a mention that it had been edited, or rather altered, to the extent that it was. ‘In Paschini’s work everything is said in the true light’ they said. But in truth this was a distorted version of Paschini’s book. Indeed, after reading and comparing the two editions, one scholar described the book referenced in the docuмents of Vatican II as ‘intellectually dishonest if not simply a forgery.’ (Richard Blackwell: Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998, P.364.)
All this of course is nothing new merely in keeping with their behaviour after the infamous 1741-1835 Galileo U-turn. So who, according to Vatican II, were/are led by the hand of God and who were/are the troublemakers? Well Copernicus, Kepler. Galileo, Newton, Bradley and Foucault among others, must have been led by the hand of God; and the troublemakers must have been Pope Paul V, St Robert Bellarmine, Pope Urban VIII and the many senior theologians involved in the censure of a fixed sun as formal heresy because it contradicted the unanimous geocentric interpretation of the Bible held by all the Fathers. Yes, Vatican II was here openly criticising the authority of the Church itself, the same authority upheld in its Dei verbum as speaking in the name of Christ.
Shortly after the Council, at a Mass in Galileo’s hometown Pisa in June 1965, the then Pope Paul VI continued the charade by paying a ‘striking tribute’ to Galileo’s faith as well as his science. There was however, no such accolade for the members of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office of Galileo’s time who placed their faith in a biblical revelation of a fixed earth and moving sun. That is real faith; that was real faith, pure and absolute. Now it is one thing proclaiming faith in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Ascension or whatever, as even the Copernicans do; that is normal faith for Catholics, and while impossible in science, has never been doubted or abandoned by any of them because of it. But what about faith in something that most thought could be tested, even proven or falsified by science; now that is something different, perhaps the ultimate test of faith in revelation ever undergone by Catholics, faith in the Fathers interpretation of the Bible, faith in a papal decree, faith in the Church’s divine guidance? That kind of Catholic faith Galileo did not have. Nor did very many have such a faith when Newton and his followers claimed their gravitational falsifications for a moving sun and fixed earth. After them, science was considered a greater vehicle of truth in such matters than simple Catholic faith. Finally, when science falsified their heliocentric consequents in 1871 and 1887, not one of them bothered to see the consequences of this and reinstate the truth of the matter.

roscoe · « **Reply #542 on:** December 05, 2014, 12:27:44 AM »

:smoke-pot:

cassini · « **Reply #543 on:** December 05, 2014, 10:57:43 AM »

Pope John Paul II (1978-2005)

Next emerged the existentialist mystic, phenomenologist, modernist, ecuмenist and apologist supreme, Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), ‘the Copernican Cannon’ as he used to describe himself when Bishop of Krakow, and the pope due to be named ‘De Labore Solis’ (About the Work of the Sun) according to St Malachy to Pope Innocent II in 1139. As a contributor to Gaudium et spes in 1965, this pope, when elected, decided he would further champion Galileo’s rehabilitation as one of his first acts of apology for the ‘sins’ of the Church in the past. This began on the 10th Nov. 1979, when the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a meeting to commemorate the centennial of Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) birth. At this gathering the Pope gave a talk, later published under the title ‘Deep Harmony Which Unites the Truths of Science with the Truths of Faith.’ The Pope began by saying: ‘The Apostolic See wishes to pay to Einstein the tribute due to him for the eminent contribution he made to the progress of science, that is, to knowledge of the truth present in the mystery of the universe.’ Einstein by the way is the Pantheist who once said that ‘great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds’ (Albert Einstein; quoted in New York Times, March 19, 1940)/ No doubt, topmost on his list of ‘mediocre minds’ would have been the popes and theologians of the seventeenth century who opposed the biblical heresy of a fixed sun. What Einsteinian ‘truths of science could be harmonised with the truths of faith’ the Pope didn’t say, but one truth ignored by him was the one re-established by Einstein himself in 1905, that science was never capable of determining the order of the universe and never would be. The Pope went on:

‘On the occasion of this solemn commemoration of Einstein, I would like to confirm again the declarations of the Council on the autonomy of science in its function of research on the truth inscribed by the finger of God. The Church, filled with admiration for the genius of the great scientist in whom the imprint of the creative Spirit is revealed, without intervening in any way with a judgment which it does not fall upon her to pass on the doctrine concerning the great systems of the universe, proposes the latter, however, to the reflection of theologians to discover the harmony existing between scientific truth and revealed truth.’

‘The Church, filled with admiration for the genius of Einstein?’ Well maybe himself and members of the Pontifical Academy of Science, but surely not the ‘Church.’ With Einstein’s ‘dirty old man’ character and his Pantheism in the public domain at the time, we cannot see the ‘Church’ going public in admiration of this man. As for his ‘truths of science,’ well science is a long way off being a provider of ‘truths?’ All this of course was leading up to the Galileo case. ‘Galileo,’ he said, ‘had to suffer a great deal at the hands of men and organisms of the Church.’

‘The pope was admitting that Galileo had been treated unjustly and that an injustice had been committed. To be sure, the pope was making the usual and important distinction between the Church as such on the one hand and ecclesiastical persons and institutions on the other; and of course, he was attributing the injustice not to the former but the latter.’

Given popes were directly involved in the 1616 decree and 1633 Church judgement, the above assessment is puzzling. Perhaps a better example of this ‘important distinction’ of an official Church act and one that is not, is when a pope gives a personal opinion to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as Pope John Paul II was doing then and popes issuing decrees defining formal heresy through the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Church to be obeyed by all Catholics in 1616 and 1633. Surely the latter is the Church, the former the mere prescribed opinions of an ecclesiastical person.

‘The pope’s statement was more than an admission of error, and seemed to be an admission of wrongdoing. Even an admission of error would have been significant since it was completely unprecedented for a pope to make such a statement. Although error had been admitted by many churchmen before; but the admission of wrongdoing signalled a new open-mindedness and sensitivity. To speak of Galileo’s “suffering” as the pope did implies that his treatment was undeserved or illegitimate. Moreover, the pope implicitly called his treatment an instance of unwarranted interference. And John Paul was implicitly “deploring” Galileo’s treatment by recalling that the Second Vatican Council had “deplored” such interferences. Indeed such expressions (suffering, unwarranted and deploring) suggested that the pope was not merely admitting some unpalatable fact but also condemning it. In fact the condemnation of Galileo was itself being condemned. The reference to the Second Vatican council was in part an appeal to authority to help John Paul II justify what he was saying and doing about Galileo. On the other hand, for this appeal to have the desired probative function, the pope had also to interpret the previous action of that council in the desired manner.’ --- M. A. Finocchiaro: Retrying Galileo, p.340.

But all this was not enough, Pope John Paul II wanted ‘to go beyond this stand taken by the Council’ and expressed the wish that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences conduct an in-depth study of the Galileo case to ‘right the wrongs, from whatever side they come’ as he put it. Most important of all of course was that the Pope wanted this investigation to confirm that all the apologetics and sophistry amassed since 1741 was solidly founded, and that it all ended happily for Catholic hermeneutics in that there was really no conflict between faith and science after all. As a result, a study commission of scholars for this purpose was set up in 1981, a thorough examination that was to take as long as it took to find the truth. With regard to the objectivity of this commission, a glimpse into the mind of one of its ‘experts,’ Fr William Wallace O.P., a former electrical engineer and physicist, should suffice. Lecturing in March 1982 at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, he made the following comment.

‘The total content of revelation was not available for authoritative definition with the death of the last Apostle. Only through slow and painstaking scientific investigation were the literary genres of the Bible uncovered and the rules for its interpretation ascertained. The example is simple, but illustrates well the true complementarily of science and religion, of reason and belief. Were such rules known to Rome in 1615 and 1633, Galileo would have been spared the indignity, had he not been motivated by that passionate desire for truth that brought it about, scriptural studies would never have achieved the status they enjoy today.’ --- As quoted by Solange Hertz in her Beyond Politics, Veritas Press, 1992, p.67

In other words, before ‘science’ established the ‘facts,’ not even a reigning pope could interpret the Holy Scriptures correctly. With modernist ideas like this in the mind of one of the chief ‘experts’ on the commission and the prior criticisms of the 1616 and 1633 ‘theologians’ at Vatican II, and then Pope John Paul II references to Galileo in his many speeches to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; plus the selected alterations in Paschini’s edited book; the chance of an unbiased investigation into the Galileo affair by this commission was zero.
Over the course of the next ten years a small number of different papers on the subject resulted. Finally, considering he had given the commission enough time, the Pope ordered it to finish. On October 31 1992, eleven years after it began in 1981, Cardinal Poupard presented the findings of the commission to Pope John Paul II in the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palace. Present also were members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, high-ranking officials of the Roman curia and members of The PAS.

cassini · « **Reply #544 on:** December 05, 2014, 11:04:57 AM »

The Vatican newspaper L’osservatore Romano, on 4th Nov. 1992, published a summary of the commission’s findings given by Cardinal Poupard. It was followed by Pope John Paul II’s acceptance speech. Under the wishful headline ‘Galileo case is resolved,’ the world was subjected to yet another rendition of the affair that tried to make the history of the Galileo case and the U-turn comply with Catholic norms and make the false heliocentric reading of Sacred Scripture look orthodox. First, some authority had to be found to confirm that the 1616 decree ‘decided next to nothing’ as Henry Newman phrased it. This was done by selecting and misrepresenting the words of that private correspondence from Bellarmine to Foscarini in 1615 that went thus:

‘Third. I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the centre of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the sun, then it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in explaining the passages of Scripture which seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say that we did not understand them than to say that something was false which has been demonstrated. But as for myself, I do not believe that there is any such demonstration; none has been shown to me.’

In 1615, when the above paragraph was written, Galileo was touting the idea that he had proof for a fixed sun and orbiting earth. Bellarmine was here responding to this suggestion, rejecting it outright, ending the claim in the present tense. But here now is the version of the same letter conjured up after the U-turn by the apologists and re-used by this commission to make it appear Bellarmine was of a view that the matter was one to be left as an open question.

‘Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, in a letter of 12 April 1615 [said]: If the orbiting of the earth were ever demonstrated to be certain, then theologians, according to him, would have to review their interpretations of the biblical passages apparently opposed to the new Copernican theories, so as to avoid asserting the error of opinions which had proved to be true: In fact Galileo had not succeeded in proving irrefutably the double motion of the earth…. More than 150 years still had to pass before the optical and mechanical proofs for the motion of the earth were found.’

Leaving aside the fact that earthmoving was never demonstrated for certain as the commission would have us believe, in the above wording, Bellarmine’s comment is presented as referring to the future tense rather than the present tense. So, by misrepresenting his words, the 1616 papal decree could be presented as provisional, not absolute, thus justifying the U-turn later.
Searching for some real meat in the commission’s findings as summarised by Cardinal Poupard, one expected to find an official or even semi-official explanation as to how a defined heresy could become an orthodox teaching within the parameters of Catholic understanding. But the above referred to the 1633 sentence on Galileo only, not the 1616 decree. Such a lengthy study commission would surely explain how the Church could define a matter formal heresy; charge Galileo with this heresy, find him guilty of suspicion of the heresy, affirm this heresy was unreformable in 1633 and 1820, and then ignore such judgments since 1741? What investigation into the Galileo affair by Rome with access to all the records could overlook that contradiction? These were some of the important aspects of the case that needed to be clarified by this Galileo papal study commission, questions that cried to heaven for answers for centuries. What emerged however was yet another pathetic exercise in ‘giving plausible standing-grounds for nearly every important sophistry ever broached’ as Andrew White put it a century earlier; to justify the U-turn and the hermetic heliocentric based hermeneutics adopted thereafter and confirmed at Vatican II.
Following Cardinal Poupard, Pope John Paul II gave his address to a packed and attentive assembly. He thanked the commission and said:

‘Thus the new science, with its methods and the freedom of research which they implied, obliged theologians to examine their own criteria of scriptural interpretation. Most of them did not know how to do so. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. “If Scripture cannot err,” he wrote to Castelli, “certain of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways.” We also know his letter to Christine which is like a short treatise on biblical hermeneutics.’

So, once again, who were the incompetent ‘theologians’ alluded to above? Why none other than the popes, cardinals, and theologians of 1616 and 1633, all of who were at the time magnificently engaging in face-to-face combat with the Protestant rebellion, with their reform theology and their reform exegesis and hermeneutics in the seventeenth century. Yes, these are the ‘theologians’ here accused above of ignorance when it came to interpreting the Bible.
But then came another demonstration of hypocrisy in their Copernican apologetics. Having taken licence to alter Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter from the present tense to the future tense, Pope John Paul II then uses the Cardinal to support their Copernicanism.

‘In fact, as Cardinal Poupard has recalled, Robert Bellarmine, who had seen what was truly at stake in the debate, personally felt that, in the face of possible scientific proof that the earth orbited round the sun, one should “interpret with great circuмspection” every biblical passage which seems to affirm that the earth is immobile… Before Bellarmine, this same wisdom and same respect for the divine Word guided St Augustine… A century ago, Pope Leo XIII echoed this advice in his Encyclical Providentissimus Deus.’

Indeed, but so wrapped up were they in their attempts to justify that U-turn, they had to ignore the fact that the same Robert Bellarmine, whom they quote to get all to ignore the 1616 papal decree, was the one directly responsible for advising Pope Paul V to define and declare a fixed sun/moving earth formal heresy in 1616, and this one year after the 1615 letter to Foscarini they quote above as leaving it an open question. Of all the theologians responsible for having Copernicanism condemned as formal heresy, Bellarmine stood out above the others. Accordingly, as chief theologian to the Church at the time he has to be placed top of Pope John Paul II’s list of incompetent exegetes, a theologian who, in spite of having ‘seen what was truly at stake in the debate,’ supposedly didn’t know the difference between faith and science when stating it was formal heresy. Why then did the Church make him a Doctor of the Church in 1931? His allotted feast day is May 13th, and it has a collect in the Mass that reads as follows:

‘O God, who didst fill blessed Robert, Thy Bishop and doctor, with wondrous learning and virtue that he might break the snares of errors and defend the Apostolic See; grant us by his merits and intercession, that we may grow in the love of truth and that the hearts of those in error may return to the unity of The Church. Through our Lord. They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament’

That is the way Saint Robert Bellarmine should be remembered by all and not as portrayed in Gaudium et spes, by the Galileo commission and personally by Pope John Paul II, ultimately as a troublemaker and interpreter who could have taken lessons in learning from a first-year Vatican II seminarian. This is the level the Vatican II apologists went to in order to bring Catholicism into the modern world as they saw it. It is propaganda like this, propaganda that goes unnoticed by the vast majority of trusting Catholics worldwide, propaganda that few would question for the simple reason that such a query would look like one doubted or challenged a pope going about Church business. Thankfully it is not, and a speech prepared for him by his Galileo Commission carries no authority as an official Church teaching or clarification, and it is canonically and morally legal to scrutinise it critically to establish where the real truth lies.