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Just to be clear then, you're saying the "irreversible" decree is the one about the Index?

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the 1616 decree has never been officially reversed.  That is not to say that great attempts have not been made by Churchmen including Pope "St." Paul VI and Pope "St." John Paul "the Great" to create the impression that it has been.

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 at Vatican II. 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.

Vatican Council II (1962-65), of which Pope Benedict XVI admitted was called to update a ‘slightly fraught’ period ‘beginning with the Church’s error in the case of Galileo Galilei.’ It seems one theme that constantly surfaced at the Council was that it was not enough for the 1960s Catholic Church to declare its regard for modern culture; it must, they felt, also prove this by deeds. As a sure way to prove their ‘intentions decisively,’ Monsignor Elchinger, auxiliary bishop of Strasbourg, and other cardinals, bishops and periti 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. After much consultation and debate, the following compromise passage appeared on 7th Dec. 1965 in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

‘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.

Gaudium et spes, as agreed, was referenced with Fr Pio Paschini’s book Vita e Opere di Galileo Galilei, a work Fr Paschini, in 1945 refused to re-edit for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 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 re-edited first. The PAS, 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 re-edited, or rather altered, to the extent that it was. ‘In Paschini’s work everything is said in the true light’ they claimed. But in truth this was a distorted version of Paschini’s book. Indeed, after reading and comparing the two scripts, 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.

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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. Remember this is the guy who preferred his own exegesis to that of the Church. 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, Virgin birth, the Resurrection, the Ascension or whatever, that is normal Catholic faith, 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 falsified by science; now that is something different, perhaps the ultimate test of faith in Revelation ever undergone by Catholics, a faith the churchmen of the seventeenth century had.