Author Topic: THE EARTHMOVERS (Read 119060 times)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #10 on:** January 23, 2014, 03:41:21 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: On February 24th 1616, the two propositions submitted were qualified in virtue of Pope Paul V’s order:

(1) “That the sun is in the centre of the world and altogether immovable by local movement,” was unanimously declared to be “foolish, philosophically absurd, and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the declarations of Holy Scripture in many passages, according to the proper meaning of the language used, and the sense in which they have been expounded and understood by the Fathers and theologians.”

(2) The second proposition, that is, “That the earth is not the centre of the world, and moves as a whole, and also with a diurnal movement,” was unanimously declared “to deserve the same censure philosophically, and, theologically considered to be at least erroneous in faith.”

Galileo left Rome, cautioned, silenced and frustrated. In 1621 Cardinal Bellarmine and Pope Paul V died. In the meantime Galileo returned to his experiments on motion (inertia). Three year later, in 1624, Galileo met with Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) in Rome, an old friend, to see if he could open the question for debate once again, promising the Pope he would simply compare the merits of the geocentric and heliocentric systems in the science of astronomical investigation.

In 1632 Galileo’s long awaited book Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems was published. Upon reading it, Pope Urban VIII saw it depicted the heliocentric system as more than a mathematical ‘hypothesis,’ indeed more than a theory, but as the true order of the world. He immediately ordered all copies possible to be seized and commanded Galileo to come to Rome to answer the charge of heresy, heterodoxy he said, that ‘puts the Catholic faith in danger.’ The Pope knew of course that if the Church’s authority, exegesis and hermeneutics were ignored or tampered with in this particular case, then no Catholic doctrine was safe thereafter.

Galileo was then ordered by the Pope to come to Rome to face a charge of heresy. Months later, after delays on health grounds, pleading of innocence and a long journey undertaken, Galileo arrived at the Holy Office in Rome where he denied that he meant his presentation of heliocentrism as a truth in his Dialogue and certainly did not hold that belief himself since the 1616 decree was made known to him.

Nevertheless, the evidence showed the opposite and the Pope ordered that Galileo be found guilty accordingly. As a result of Pope Urban VIII’s judgement, made through the Holy Office, Galileo was sentenced to house-detention at the behest of the Inquisition and was ordered never to hold, speak or write about the heresy again under threat of being condemned as a relapsed heretic, a very serious offence in those days. His Dialogue was banned altogether. On the 2nd July 1633, the definition and condemnation were made universal, not just confined to Galileo alone as some apologists would argue. Copies of the sentence and abjuration were sent to all vicar nuncios and inquisitors who were told to make them known to professors of philosophy and theology throughout the Catholic world. On 10th August 1634, the Dialogue was put on the Index of forbidden books.

Needless to say the reaction to all the above events was twofold; some were delighted that the Church made a stand to protect the Bible from personal interpretations, while others, on various grounds, were not happy with the Church’s condemnation of heliocentrism or Galileo’s conviction. These reactions, from clerics and laity, both in private and in public, by way of oral disseminations, letters, newspapers and dozens of books, carried inaccuracies of all sorts, mostly because few had access to the original records and thus relied on varying accounts of the story second or third hand. Such factual errors have prevailed to this very day.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #11 on:** January 23, 2014, 03:42:27 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: For the rest of his life Galileo was not held in prison, fasting on bread and water as Voltaire (1694-1778) insinuated in 1770, or having his eyes gouged out to blind him as another wrote, but was allowed live in relative comfort in his own home and elsewhere at times, corresponding with and meeting friends, including his son, daughters and sympathetic admirers, studying physics with others while writing up his findings that culminated in the book Two New Sciences.

Apart from some references in private letters, the record shows Galileo adhered to his ban on discussing heliocentrism. That said, up until his death at Arcetri on 8 January 1642, many influential people, both clerics and laity, tried without success to get him pardoned or released from house arrest. But, as we have seen, Galileo’s condemnation was absolute, not provisional or reversible. This resolve persisted in that Galileo was buried in an obscure grave in some backroom at the church of Santa Croce in Florence, a proposed monument to his honour having been refused by the Inquisition of the day.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #12 on:** January 23, 2014, 03:45:38 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: As regards the universal ban on books etc., treating heliocentrism as a truth or potential truth, while it was a Church edict and could be imposed in those places where the Church ruled, in other states where the Church had no such power, it needed the consent of the secular rulers for its [implementation]. In many such states the ban was refused or ignored. Indeed, even in some Catholic areas the ban was not met with enthusiasm given its subject matter had a connection with ongoing science and astronomy. As regards the fixed-sun, moving-earth belief being defined and declared as heretical, well while it remained as decreed, there slowly began an attack on its authority because of its effect on those involved in science.

But ere long it was seen that this triumph of the Church was in reality a prodigious defeat. From all sides came proofs that Copernicus and Galileo were right… (Andrew D. White: A History, p.153.)

With the Renaissance there came a huge shift in philosophical thought, described as a rational study of all or some of the problems arising from our attempts to explain the universal order of things by their causes or principles, a move away from the traditional metaphysics of St Thomas towards secular thinking alone. These new philosophies started with the French Catholic Rene Descartes (1596-1650), one of those 17th century philosophers known as the Rationalists who followed the thinking of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626). By relying exclusively on human reasoning, and wherever this led, they endeavoured to free philosophy from ‘the straightjacket of scholastic thought’ as Bacon had put it.

Next came the Empiricists, founded by John Locke (1632-1704), they [were] influenced by Isaac Newton. Empiricism was then taken to extremes by the Scotsman David Hume (1711-1776), who held nothing exists but sensations. Next were the German philosophers Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georg Hegel (1770-1831). Kant said reason could only know those things experienced by the senses. Hegel held matter is only an illusion, the only reality being ‘Absolute Spirit,’ which expresses its nature in an historical process of struggle and conflict that results in a perfect society, a philosophy of evolutionism adopted later by Darwin and Marx.

And so it was when Sir Isaac Newton’s famous Principia was published in the year 1687. Even before its release, this ‘masterpiece’ was hailed and applauded by the Royal Society of London for its ‘Law of Gravitation,’ the maths and physics that supposedly showed our earth – because of its smaller size (mass) - has to be moving around a fixed sun as a planet in a solar system.

After that, in 1726, came the discovery of stellar aberration by James Bradley (1693-1762), claimed as the first observable proof that the earth orbits the sun. Supporting these were two more proofs accepted by churchmen at the time, those of two little-known Italian astronomers Giovanni Guglielmini and Giuseppe Calandrelli. These claims quickly brought cries that Galileo had been right in his science and exegetics all along.

As a result, there were many in the Church who now believed that the anti-Pythagorean decree and bans were a disastrous mistake. In 1741, under Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758), there began an unprecedented ‘U-turn’ on the 1616 decree banning all books etc., with churchmen now accepting heliocentrism as a truth and compatible with the Scriptures.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #13 on:** January 23, 2014, 04:20:56 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: In 1741, in the face of optical proof [stellar aberration] of the fact that the earth revolves round the sun, Benedict XIV had the Holy Office grant an imprimatur to the first edition of the Complete Works of Galileo. - - - Papal Study Commission, 1992.

In 1798, the freemasonic-led French army again invaded the Papal States and occupied Rome. In 1810, Napoleon (1769-1821) deported Pope Pius VII to France and ordered all docuмents pertaining to the papal government of Rome be transported to Paris. Most of these were carted off in bulk but there were exceptions that Napoleon directed to be detached and guarded in their journey. One of these was the Galileo compilation, put together in Rome after the 1741 capitulation to science. It seems the intent of the freemasons was to publish them in Paris so that the world could read what actually happened in 1616 and 1633. It was 33 years later, in 1843, before the Galileo files were returned to Rome. Nevertheless, even in their absence, the U-turn continued:

In 1820, Canon Settele lodged an appeal [to treat heliocentrism as a thesis] with Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) . . . in 1822 a favourable decision was given. This papal decision was to receive its practical application in 1835 [under Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846)] with the publication of a new and updated index. - - - Papal Study Commission, 1992.

Never in the history of the Church was or is there a case like it. The Church, as Trent confirmed, has always held that when the whole Church, and all the Fathers agreed on a matter of faith, and the correct reading of Scripture is such, no matter the subject involved, then it was considered a truth and immutable in virtue of the fact that this understanding has been constantly preserved and held by tradition since the Apostles. Add to this the fact that the Church also holds and teaches that when a pope defines and condemns a belief as formal heresy, as Pope Paul V did in 1616, it too is supposedly guaranteed true. How in God’s name then could the Church confirm a false reading of Scripture, and condemn Galileo as suspect of heresy if its claims of divine protection and guidance are true? Nevertheless, in this instant, the first real test of Catholic faith that many believed could have been confirmed or falsified by science, nearly everyone agreed science falsified Catholic faith in geocentrism.

Who then could deny that what was needed was an official Church clarification in 1741, 1820 or 1835 by way of abrogation as to how the 1616 papal decree, the doctrine of geocentrism, the Lord God’s footstool, could have been discarded like an unwanted family heirloom? Seventeen centuries of that bond between heaven and earth, God and mankind, abandoned as having been nothing more than an illusion.

But Rome remained silent and there was no official abrogation forthcoming, no explanation, nothing but an Index emptied of those books that were once condemned for asserting formal heresy. [Abrogate it; that is, abolish it completely. But for a law to be abrogated, new legislation must accompany it, stating this clearly, and in justice should say why this is being done.]

This is exactly the technique employed at the Second Vatican Council, which had for its effect the nearly absolute suppression of the True Mass and the True Theology of the Mass, concomitant with the nearly universal loss, on the part of Catholics, of supernatural Faith in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Sacred Species.

The True Mass was never abrogated. This was weakly admitted by Benedict XVI in 2007, with qualification upon qualification. But the effect of the conciliar legerdemain was to abrogate Catholicism, in the temporal order, in the minds and hearts of men, de facto. The same applies to the Church's indispensable teaching on the Cosmology. The inherent and necessary geocentrism of the Roman Catholic Faith has never been juridically abrogated, yet this is almost irrelevant, due to its de facto abrogation, resulting in a pandemic and universal intellectual deception, otherwise known as the operation of error, the belief in lying.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #14 on:** January 23, 2014, 04:24:51 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: Given the situation in 1835, with no abrogation or even ‘comment’ from the Church, leaving everyone ignorant of the facts, if ever there was just cause to question the claims of divine protection this was one of them. The Church’s enemies were here handed a powerful contradiction to use to destroy the credibility of the Church among thinking people. ‘Crush the infamous thing’ once cried Voltaire, ‘where the “thing” to be crushed was everything that was “irrational,” and primarily the stand of the Catholic Church.’ With Rome silenced by the acceptance of the scientific proofs offered, the enemy could crush with impunity, all the facts and truth seemingly on their side.

As an example of the type of things said against the Church after their U-turn, we give one passage from an article that appeared in the Journal des Savants written in 1841 by Guglielimo Libri, a man who also wrote a version of the Galileo case that was widely circulated in French, Italian and German:

Scholastic philosophy was unable to ever recover from the blows Galileo gave to it, and the Church, which unfortunately became the instrument of the Peripatetics’ [Aristotelians] hatred, shared their defeat. In fact, how can one dare claim infallibility after declaring “false, absurd, heretical, and contrary to Scripture” a fundamental truth of natural philosophy, a fact that is incontestable and now admitted by all scholars? The persecution of Galileo was odious and cruel, more odious and cruel than if the victim had been made to perish during torture…. This ill-fated vengeance, which Galileo had to endure for such a long time, had the aim of silencing him; it frightened his successors and retarded the progress of philosophy, it deprived humanity of the new truths which his sublime mind might have discovered. To restrain genius; to frighten thinkers; to hinder the progress of philosophy, that is what Galileo’s persecutors tried to do. It is a stain which they will never wash away. (M. A. Finocchiaro: Retrying Galileo, p.226.)

Thus began the never ending assertions that the Church hated science, was afraid of science, was falsified by science etc. As a result of such attacks on the Church, Catholics - both lay and clerics - began a propaganda exercise second to none in the history of religion to portray the impression of orthodoxy for that heliocentric U-turn so that the Catholic faith and science could be reconciled. Numerous theologians, scholars, historians, authors, and even a Church commission (1981-92), Copernicans all, tried hard to expurgate the Church from the responsibility and consequences of having defined, and declared belief in a fixed sun/moving earth as formal heresy and for condemning Galileo accordingly.

For many years now, in answer to those who claim the proofs for the movement of the earth did compromise the teaching authority of the Church and its decisions, there has been a desperate attempt by Catholic apologists to try to present the condemnations in the Galileo case as the mistaken waffling of ignorant theologians, declarations carrying no real authority at all, rulings that could be ignored as non-events and forgotten in time. That then is why the Galileo case was elevated into one of the most discussed and written about episodes in the intellectual and cultural history of the western world. Literally thousands of books were written about the case from 1633 and continue to be written, each offering a different synthesis on the subject as accepted, that is, addressing what is perceived as disastrous mistakes by the Catholic Church. Similarly, every book on the history of the Church, theology, philosophy and the empirical sciences has to address this victory of Galileo over scholastic tradition.

The philosophical, metaphysical and religious consequences of the demise of geocentrism have never been measured by the Church or anyone else. Once scientific heliocentrism became the new belief system, the geocentric unification of God, man, the earth and universe was lost. This massive elimination of the doctrine of geocentrism and all it meant to Catholicism was thereafter ignored, as though it never existed within the Catholic faith. Nowhere will one find a word of regret uttered by any post-1741 pope, theologian nor Catholic philosopher, as though such physical and metaphysical beliefs can be jettisoned at will without doctrinal consequences.