Cassini, you seem to be defending the infallibility of the condemnation of the heliocentricism by attributing error to subsequent popes. I find this approach unacceptable.
One of the main reasons I liked the John Daly paper so much is because it rejected this approach. He accepted the legitimacy of all the papal teachings and actions and tried to reconcile them.
I think we agree that there are some apparent contradictions, but from there our positions diverge dramatically. You treat them as real contradictions and our task as deciding which popes were right and which wrong. I, like Daly, accept that all the popes involved are correct and look for ways to reconcile them.
I question how much communication is possible between us when we are coming at the problem with such different assumptions. I don't even have a framework for judging popes to decide which one is right.
The language of the 1633 condemnation suggests that it concerned a matter of faith but the later removal of the condemnation treats it as if it were a matter of discipline. I liked how Daly systematically went through various ways to deal with this problem, considering their strengths and weaknesses.
My opening post in this thread was my own attempt to solve it. Since it is a problem that even expert theologians disagree on, I am certainly not going to insist that my solution is the correct one. But, like Daly, I am not prepared to entertain solutions that pit one pope against another and involve deciding which were right and which were wrong.
OK Jaynek, stick with your Daly thesis, I will stick with the truth based on Church teaching and the facts having studied the records of the Holy Office concerning the Galileo case from 1741-1835, facts Daly did not have access to. For others who may be open to the truth I will give it now, a truth that I have predicted will have the Jayneks of this world rejecting because they think no pope can do wrong. Since Vatican II we have a popes saying and doing things that previous popes have condemned, but when it comes to popes prior to them such a thing cannot happen. Accordingly they will look for the Daly's of this world (John Daly and Cardinal Daly) to find a way out for all, deny the irreformability (infallibility) of the 1616 decree and then their Galilean popes can be let off the heretical truth. John Daly as I said cannot have a heretic pope until Vatican II or his sedevacantism goes out the door.
Since I was a child first hearing about the Galileo case I wondered how the Catholic Church I belonged to could get things so wrong. Searching through the many books, articles, Catholic encyclopaedias and years later the internet, I satisfied myself with the account made up by in the wake of the 1835 U-turn, that the 1616 condemnation of heliocentrism was not papal merely disciplinary, open to correction if proof for that solar system was found.
Then along came a man called Paul Ellwanger who sent me evidence that the earth does not move. That falsifies the assertion that the 1616 decree was proven wrong. THUS the first step to the truth.
As a Catholic that wondered for so long how my divinely guided Church could get a decree defining formal heresy wrong, I had my answer, it was not wrong, I knew it, I knew it. My faith was endorced, God's Church does not get things wrong. I then discovered these proofs that supposedly falsified a Church teaching were actually accepted by some churchmen since 1741 and nearly all churchmen by 1820 under Pope Pius VII and in 1835 when Pope Gregory XVI took heliocentric books out of the Index and allowed the flock to believe heliocentrism.
So, the evidence concluded, the error did not occur in 1616 or 1633, but in 1741, 1820 and 1835. In other words popes did not uphold the DEFINITION of their predecessor based on an ILLUSION. They actually lost their faith in their own Church and succuмbed to the lie of human REASON. This I thought is WORSE than the supposed Church error of 1616 and 1633. Again I had to search for a Catholic explanation, or Catholicism was not as it teaches:
‘The Roman Pontiffs, moreover, according to the condition of the times and affairs advised, sometimes by calling ecuмenical councils… sometimes by particular synods, sometimes by employing other helps which divine providence supplied [Holy Office of 1616?], have defined that those matters must be held which with God’s help they have recognised as in agreement with Sacred Scripture and apostolic tradition. For, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but that by His help they might guard sacredly the revelation transmitted through the apostles and the deposit of faith, and might forcefully set it out…’ --- Vatican I (1869-1870) (Denz. 1836.)
I will continue in my next post.