Author Topic: THE EARTHMOVERS (Read 123121 times)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #20 on:** January 23, 2014, 04:56:39 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: The courtship between Catholic faith and modern science reached a high point on Nov. 22, 1951 when the same pope once again addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The title of the Pope’s address was ‘The Proofs for the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Natural Science.’ What followed was an endorsement of a litany of every scientific theory on offer at the time, theories that conflicted with the literal order of creation, that is, denied the geocentric order of the universe held by the Church until 1741; denied the biblical age of 6.000 years for the universe; denied the global flood as recorded in Genesis and its effect on the topography as we find it today. Here then is the Pope making God’s creation concur with the dictates of science:

44. It is undeniable that when a mind enlightened and enriched with modern scientific knowledge weighs this problem calmly, it feels drawn to break through the circle of completely independent or autochthonous matter, whether uncreated or self-created, and to ascend to a creating Spirit. With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty "Fiat" pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter bursting with energy. In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial "Fiat lux" uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies.

But let us now return to Fr. Pio Paschini who died in 1962, never having edited his book as requested. According to Finocchiaro’s Retrying Galileo, he left his work to an assistant, Michele Maccarrone, who in 1963 tried to have it published once again, but this time agreeing to its being edited. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who wanted to publish it back in 1945 in memory of Galileo’s death in 1642, were interested, but this time to use the book 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 Pope Paul VI who again approved its publication as he had with the original back in 1945 when he was Deputy Secretary in Rome. On October 2 1964, the manuscript was finally published under the name Pius Paschini with not a mention that it had been edited, or rather altered, to the extent that it was.

Eleven years later the pastoral council Vatican II (1962-1965) began. It too wanted to make the Church comply with modern times, modern thinking and of course modern science, to take it ‘out of the dark ages into the real world.’ Of huge importance to the Earthmovers’ story is what appeared in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - Gaudium et spes, 7 Dec. 1965.

. . . 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.

Now who, according to Vatican II, were/are led by the hand of God and who were/are the troublemakers? Well Gaudium et spes, # 36 has a footnote reference to Pius Paschini, Vita e Opere di Galileo Galilei, 2 vol., Vatican Press, 1964, so they were obviously alluding to the Galileo case. Accordingly, Copernicus, Kepler. Galileo and Newton, 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 Copernicanism. Yes, Vatican II was here openly criticising the old Church itself, the same authority upheld in its Dei verbum as speaking in the name of Christ.

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 the book they had already signified their current position. At another session on 4 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.

As it happened, no official retrial took place. Instead it was decided to merely acknowledge 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 rationale 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 everything is said in the true light. (M. A. Finocchiaro: Retrying Galileo, p.329)

‘In Paschini’s work everything is said in the true light.’ This of course is the book referenced by Gaudium et spes #36. But in truth this was an altered version of Fr Pio Paschini’s Vita e Opere di Galileo Galilei. Indeed, after reading and comparing the two books, 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 University Press, 1998, P.364.) Such is the level of deceit widespread in the Catholic Church for many years in the aftermath of the infamous U-turn.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #21 on:** January 23, 2014, 05:01:45 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: At Vatican II the strategy of the modernists and their revisionism of the Galileo case had become clear. What was a matter of faith for the 1616 and 1633 Church, was now made to look like a matter of science. That is why they allowed outsiders to deny the authority of this papal decree and sanctioned the humiliation of the popes and theologians who defended the geocentric reading of Scripture in the 17th century. That is why they permitted all to assert that there was no Divine Providence involved, that it was a mere disciplinary decree, valid until proof for an opposite interpretation was found.

That achieved, the next step was to make sure the Church came out on the winning truth side, on the side of the Earthmovers. How could this ‘mistaken heresy’ be made to look Catholic? To do this Galileo had to be ‘canonised’ as the victimised Catholic defender of the Church’s proper exegesis and hermeneutics, and the ‘theologians’ of 1616 depicted as little more than troublemakers interfering in the harmony between faith and science with their insistence on a literal reading of the Creation.

On their shoulders Vatican II placed the centuries of ‘conflict and controversy’ that followed. Thus the rehabilitation of Galileo from heretic to ‘man of deep Christian faith’ was absolutely crucial. The more he is presented as a saint, as the one God was with as he protected the true interpretation of Scripture, then the more Catholic the once Copernican heresy becomes, and the more Catholic Galileo’s hermeneutics and exegesis becomes also.

Another ploy was to try to make Catholic the idea that the Bible is not intended to teach us the ways of nature, only the way to eternal salvation. By crediting even this aberration to a cardinal, it could be made look like it was always standard Catholic teaching, allowing the 1616 decree and the 1633 judgement to be ignored as a revealed truth.

Let us recall the celebrated saying attributed to Baronius [Cardinal Baroneous (1538-1607)] "Spiritui Sancto mentem fuisse nos docere quomodo ad coelum eatur, non quomodo coelum gradiatur.” In fact, the Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning. - - - Pope John Paul II: speech 1992, par.12.

In truth however, this pro-Copernican quip was in fact invented by a Protestant, Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574):

Before he left Varmia in 1541 [when Baroneous was 3 years-old] Rheticus had composed his own small tract to demonstrate the absence of conflict between heliocentrism and the Bible….He went on to make a distinction that is still part of the faith-science dialogue: In the Bible the Holy Spirit’s intention, declared Rheticus, is not to teach science but to impart spiritual truths “necessary for Salvation.” Moreover, whatever descriptions of nature that do appear in the Scriptures are “accommodated to the popular understanding.” (Dennis Danielson: The First Copernican, Walker & Co., 2006, p.108.)

Then the Copernicans had to retrieve that loss of reputation for their beloved Catholic Church? How could they now defend it as a Copernican-compliant Church? Admitting errors by ignorant churchmen is one thing, but how could they get rid of the stigma? Well, resurrecting Galileo’s scientific academy as the Church’s very own Pontifical Academy of Sciences secured that. And as for the supposed conflict between faith and science, well that can be fixed too, simply where necessary, make all Catholic belief either conform to the assertions of science as they did with Copernicanism, or state that Catholic belief did not necessarily reject any of the accepted theories of modern science, without actually explaining theologically how this can be done. This way of course, all conflict between faith and science could be avoided and the truism that there can be no conflict between faith and science is thus preserved.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #22 on:** January 23, 2014, 05:05:42 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: Shortly after the Council, at a Mass in Galileo’s hometown of Pisa in June 1965, 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 faith of the members of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office of his time: Cardinal Bellarmine, Pope Paul V, Pope Urban VIII, and all those cardinals and theologians who placed their faith in a biblical revelation of a fixed earth and moving sun. That is real faith; that was faith, pure and absolute.

Now it is one thing proclaiming faith in the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or whatever, as even the Copernicans do; that is normal faith for Catholics, and while impossible in science, has never been doubted or abandoned 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, Bradley, Bessel and Foucault claimed their proofs for a fixed sun and moving earth. After them, science was considered a greater vehicle of truth than blind Catholic faith. The rest is history.

The Words of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on the subject of the faith of Christians:

Which Jesus hearing, marveled: and turning about to the multitude that followed him, he said: Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith, not even in Israel.

Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?

Be of good heart, thy faith hath made thee whole.

According to your faith, be it done unto you.

O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt? He said this to St. Peter.

But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.

O woman, great is thy faith!

Amen, I say to you, if you shall have faith, and stagger not, not only this of the fig tree shall you do, but also if you shall say to this mountain, Take up and cast thyself into the sea, it shall be done. Perhaps Our Lord was here alluding to the great faith in the entire deposit of Revelation needed to move the mountain of sin and heresy that sits atop and oppresses and smothers the Catholic Religion.

Why are you fearful? have you not faith yet?

Have the faith of God.

Whose faith when He saw, He said: Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.

And He said to them: Where is your faith?

And the Apostles said to the Lord: Increase our faith.

But yet the Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?
[/i]

cantatedomino · « **Reply #23 on:** January 23, 2014, 05:11:40 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: 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, (J. Reston Jnr.: Galileo A Life, New York: Harper Collins 1994.) and the pope named ‘De Labore Solis’ (About the Work of the Sun) by St Malachy to Pope Innocent II in 1139.

As a contributor to Gaudium et spes in 1965, this pope decided he would further champion the cause of Galileo’s rehabilitation as one of his 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 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 [that] could be harmonised with the truths of faith’ the Pope didn’t say, but one ignored was the one re-established by Einstein in 1905, a truth we will get back to later. 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. - - - Einstein Centennial Speech, 1979.

‘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 ecclesiastical person.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #24 on:** January 23, 2014, 05:18:47 PM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: 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 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 sophistry amassed since 1741 was solidly founded, [and] that it all ended happily for Catholic hermeneutics in that, as it turned out, 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's 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 papal commission was zero.

On October 31 1992, eleven years after it began in 1981, Cardinal Poupard, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, 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 the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

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 1741-1835 U-turn comply with Catholic norms and make a 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 Cardinal Bellarmine to Foscarini in 1615. In this letter, which we will present in full later, Bellarmine states:

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 discovered.

In the above wording, Bellarmine’s comment is presented as referring to the future tense rather than the present tense. So, by misrepresenting the Cardinal, the 1616 papal decree could be presented as provisional, not absolute. Thus the way was cleared to justify a U-turn.