Claudel; posted the following:
Finally, flat-earthism calls to mind geocentrism, and geocentrism calls to mind Cassini (whom I have called an arrogant blockhead with formal purpose and intent) and Cassini's scandalously and culpably ignorant misrepresentation of the entirety of the Galileo affair and, far worse, his blasphemous attacks on every orthodox pope from Benedict XIV through to Pius XII (and obviously, beyond Vatican II into our own degenerate times) as apostates for "rehabilitating" heliocentrism after it had been infallibly declared heretical. The problem for Cassini and other roll-your-own-dogma Catholics, of course, is that no pope ever formally declared heliocentrism heretical, and to claim that Paul V or any pope did so is to promote mortally sinful scandal. For this alone, Cassini should have been banned from this site, as he already has been from several others.
Before I begin, does anyone know if Claudel is a heliocentrist. I think he is as he compares it with flat-earthism above, a ploy used many times by others. If he is, then his view is no doubt based on this illusion, as were all those who got me banned on other 'Catholic' forums. No heliocentrist can see the damage done to the Catholic faith and the Church itself throughout the history of this affair from 1546 to 2018.
Let me now comment on the above, I must tell you readers that throughout my long investigation of the Galileo case, knowing that the truth that the 1616 decree of Pope Paul V was never falsified, not once did God allow any pope to deny the 1616 decree of his predecessor officially. Not once did any pope deny or abrogate the authority of the 1616 decree, nor give Galileo a retrial wherein it would have meant him having to deny the 'irreversibility' of the same 1616 decree. This is so important, as it showed me that even within a matter so complex as the Galileo case, with everyone bar a few believing heliocentrism was proven right, God still managed to prevent any official direct denial of that 1616 decree in keeping with His promise to be with His Church until the end of time and the gates of Hell would not prevail. And that is why it is imperative to know the difference between an official teaching of a pope and an unofficial comment or act or opinion of a pope. Straight away my faith was strengthened by this 'miracle' when understood over three centuries of popes being under the illusion that heliocentrism had been proven correct. Finding out that the 1616 decree every history book on the Church and science says was an error, was not an error at all was a revelation, but seeing no pope ever challenged this decree elevated my faith even more.As the years went by and I pondered on the Creation, I found God in everything created, all perfect and beautiful, all literally according to Genesis. Few would know that the first dogma in Ott's book on Catholic dogmas is 'God can be known through the things He has made.' This is not only for Catholics but for all mankind. In history even the pagans found god and gods in His creation. This meant that when Jesus revealed the true God to the world, so many pagans could accept Him as Creator and the Trinity as a personal God. My wonder of creation has grown and grown over the years as I became aware of this Earthly creation. The beauty of the Earth and sky all admit to, atheist and theist alike. Only recently I was in my house and I realised that every single item I could see had its origin from the Earth God created. Every item in a church, building, city in the whole world, was created in and in the Earth for that purpose, to sustain mankind for as long as he is to be left on Earth. Look around you now, this instant and all you see, a 1000 different things made up of so many materials, and think that God placed the ingredients for all these in the Earth for man’s use and benefit. Today, billions of humans are sustained with food, drink, lodgings and places to pray, work and play. That showed me the omnipotence of God, His ability to provide all these ingredients in a natural way on Earth for man’s use and benefit.
Perhaps now you see the reason Satan chose to blind mankind to the evidence of their eyes. The Freemasons who fathered heliocentrism went about to convince mankind their senses were playing tricks on them, that 'the celestial things that can be seen' were illusions. Reality was now decided 'in the mind' not in the senses. First the Devil convinced most in Church and State that heliocentrism was the reality. Then came the evolution of heliocentrism which set the evolution train going, from the age of the Earth, to the evolution of all flora and fauna, and finally the mother of all evolution theories, the BIG Bang. Bye, bye God as Creator, as millions of atheists and agnostics will demonstrate. When churchmen (as distinct from the Church) came on board the heliocentric train, then the long ages one, then the evolution one, and finally the Big Bang of Pope Pius XII as he admitted to the PAS, we now had Catholics defending the exact same ‘scientific’ creation as the Atheists do. Who credits God any more with the things that he made. Nowadays, in the Church, Catholics are told it was evolution, but with God as manager of that absurdity. Yes, put God in charge of the evolution of a creature from a single cell, and anything is possible, no matter how ridiculous. How any creature - that needs so many limbs, organs and systems to survive – can survive while they evolve has to be an insult to human intelligence? Yet churchmen, from Cardinal Newman to Pope Pius XII, encouraged the flock they were supposed to protect to believe God works that way. God will get evolution past these impossibilities you are meant to believe. How much more Catholic to believe the traditional ex nihilo, creation of everything complete according to their kinds in the order of six days? Oh yes, I hear them now, there were no days until day 3, so that’s out, as though the God of their evolution could not draw out his first creations over a similar period of a day.
I digress, back to Claudel. First he talks about my 'blasphemous’ attacks on Pope Benedict XIV to Pius XII, and even those of and since Vatican II. Not for the first time have I been accused of this, what I now call ‘traditional Catholic blackmail.’ Usually it goes like this ‘Are you seriously saying that popes since Pope Benedict XIV have allowed the flock to accept heresy?’ How dare you, that is to promote mortally sinful scandal’ as Claudel says above. Sure it is no wonder I have been banned by two or three Catholic websites for such a sinful blasphemous lie. Trying to defend the teachings of Pope Paul V and Pope Urban VIII from the popes who allowed their heliocentric condemnations to be acceptable within the Church, does not register with critics like Claudel, for these two popes have long been ridiculed within the church and no longer count as ‘orthodox’ popes. Indeed here is how they have been presented within the Church for centuries;
‘… 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.
Yes, Pope Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine and Pope Urban VIII could be portrayed as ‘trouble making fundamentalists’ even in the docuмents of Vatican II. Yet, the popes who allowed the heresy defined by these popes to spread within Catholicism are all described as ‘orthodox’ and not to be exposed for doing this.
Claudel said:
‘The problem for Cassini and other roll-your-own-dogma Catholics, of course, is that no pope ever formally declared heliocentrism heretical, and to claim that Paul V or any pope did so is to promote mortally sinful scandal.’
In the wake of the 1741-1835 U-turn, based on the acceptance that heliocentrism was proven by science, there began an industry within the Church to undermine as best as possible the authority of the 1616 decree defining a fixed sun, orbiting Earth belief formal heresy because it contradicts the opinion of All of the Fathers and their belief that the Scriptures reveal a geocentric universe. Volumes of ploys and tricks have been used by Catholic churchmen and laity over the centuries to get the decree off the ‘formal’ list and into the ‘could have been wrong’ department. For them the credibility of Catholicism being a divinely protected religion was/is at stake. They knew that if ‘formal’ and wrong, then the gates of hell have prevailed. Accordingly, any who even suggest the 1616 decree was a formal one are to be eliminated as traitors to the Catholic faith.Now who decides if a decree is formal or not? For me it is the Church and only the Church. In 1616 a formal decree was deemed to be ‘irreversible.’ If it was not formal and certain, forever a ‘dogma’ that could not be wrong, imagine the Catholic Church, under orders of a pope, putting it forward as a truth of Scripture to be held by all Catholics under pain of mortal sin if not excommunication. Is that how your Church behaves Claudel? Imagine the Church allowing a Pope, even when acting officially, confirming his brethren the Cardinals, and through them the rest of the Church, an error as to what is matter of faith. Does this not sound more like the gates of hell prevailing. On the other hand, knowing the decree was never proven an error, it needs no apologists trying to undermine it.
So, who decides if the 1616 decree was not formal, that is a dogma that could never be changed? Again I say the Church. Bellarmine of course held it as ‘formal’ as he ordered Galileo in the name of his Holiness the Pope to relinquish altogether the opinion in question, namely that the sun is the centre of the universe and immovable and that the Earth moves. Pope Urban VIII confirmed its ‘formality’ when at Galileo’s trial he accused him of heresy in the following way:
“Invoking, then, the most holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that of His most glorious Mother Mary ever Virgin, by this our definitive sentence we say, pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo, on account of these things proved against you by docuмentary evidence, and which have been confessed by you as aforesaid, have rendered yourself to this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having believed and held a doctrine which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures -to wit, that the sun is in the centre of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves, and is not the centre of the universe; and that an opinion can be held and defended as probable after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to Holy Scripture.”
Imagine invoking the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and Mary His mother to be witness to a ‘DEFINITIVE sentence’ that could have been wrong? Now the fact that not one single pope thereafter denied the decree was not formal, is yet another witness to its formality. For me however it was during the drawn out argument in 1820 when the matter was finally acknowledged as an irreversible decree. It is only recently that the record of this admittance was disclosed, when Fr Olivieri, then head of the Holy Office, Wrote ‘In his “motives” the Most Rev. Anfossi puts forth “the unrevisability of pontifical decrees.” But we have already proved that this [the 1616 decree] is saved.
More later.