The docuмent is 71 pages long. Can you give me a short version?
On 18 July 1870, Pope Pius IX’s Vatican I defined the dogma of the infallible magisterium of the Roman Pontiff. This dogma clarified when and how a pope is guaranteed freedom from error by God when defining matters of faith and morals. Outside of these conditions a pope is not infallible, and his opinions have no guarantees of divine guidance or correctness. With this dogmatic Council’s ruling came a new crisis of faith arising from the Galileo affair. One by one Vatican I’s teachings on infallibility ostensibly confirmed the authority of Pope Paul V’s 1616 decree and Pope Urban VIII’s ratification of it in 1633 as an irreversible act of the ordinary magisterium. In 1870, a priest, the Rev. Roberts, based on the Council’s ruling on infallibility and the newly released records of the Galileo case from the secret archives, asserted the 1616 decree and its confirmation in 1633 by Pope Urban VIII, was an infallible act, but that as geocentrism was proven false, this showed the dogma of infallibility itself was proven false or that God was not the Author of the Church’s Bible.
Fr Roberts, a Catholic priest, who wrote the above in 1870 and republished it again in 1885, was one more unfortunate soul who believed heliocentrism was proven, and was aware that Biblical heliocentrism was conceded to by popes in 1820-35. Alas, this led him to conclude these passages of Scripture could not have been written under the inspiration of God. Heliocentrism then, caused Fr Roberts to reject Vatican I’s dogma of infallibility, another heresy in itself.
‘I found it laid down by such distinguished representatives of the Ultramontane school as Cardenas, La Croix, Zaccaria, and Bouix, that Congregational decrees, confirmed by the Pope and published by his express order, emanate from the Pontiff in his capacity of Head of the Church, and are ex cathedrâ in such sense as to make it infallibly certain that doctrines so propounded as true, are true.’--- Fr W. Roberts.
Father Roberts writes: ‘How in the name of common sense can what a book really signified in the past be altered, or its then truth be saved, if what it then signified was false, by an interpretation the legitimacy of which depends solely on the production of evidence that did not then exist? If for centuries, according to every known sound and received principle of exegesis, and all the cognisable data that could throw light on the matter, the language of Scripture was so expressed on the subject as to forbid its being understood otherwise than geocentrically, if nothing short of overwhelming scientific evidence supporting heliocentrism would justify the opinion that Scripture does not contradict that theory, plainly geocentricism is what the written Word really signifies, and no astronomical discovery can alter the fact. Is it reasonable to say that while a certain sense is not too much opposed to the letter for the author to mean it, its very opposition to the letter makes it un¬lawful for those he addresses to suppose him to mean it? Can we, simply by the laws of the language used, be bound to ascribe a meaning to a writer’s words that he - by those laws under the circuмstances - is not bound to give them? Can we call a writer truthful and trustworthy whose words, by themselves, and according to their one legitimate interpretation, oblige us to believe what is false? Is it, then, less than blasphemy to say that God caused Scripture to be so worded [and phrased] as to bind men to error by the force of its terms? That God demanded faith in His Word, and spoke in what theologians call morally undiscoverable equivocations? Who can fail to see that acceptance of the [Galilean] interpretation of Scripture is tantamount to a confession, that such an interpretation is a mere makeshift, that the dicta of the sacred writers, properly understood, are really at variance with what we now know to be the truth, and that, there¬fore, God could not have been their author? And thus it appears that Rome’s ill-judged attempt [in 1820-35] to save the authority of Holy Scripture was an implicit denial, of her own dogma on inspiration, and a virtual surrender of the whole position into the enemy’s hand. I say an implicit denial of her own dogma on inspiration, for the Vatican Council I has defined it to be a matter of faith that God is the author of the whole of Scripture, and of every part of it—meaning by Scripture all the books enumerated by the Council of Trent as sacred and canonical. Cardinal Franzelin has shown that this doc¬trine obliges us to hold that God not only caused the human writers of the books named to conceive, with a view to writing them down, those truths, and those truths only, that he meant them to communicate; but further, that God so controlled them in their use of lan¬guage, that they chose, and chose infallibly, terms fit to express the divinely intended meaning. In Galileo’s time, when heliocentrism was condemned, the objected passages of Scripture either were, or were not, adapted to express a meaning not at variance with the theory: if they were, the opinion that they were was reasonable and defensible, apart from any scientific evidence whatever that the earth moved; if they were not, the evidence we have that the earth moves is evidence that God was not the author of those passages. Thus, giving the judgment the very meaning apologists insist is the right one [a heliocentric one], it implicitly denies the intrinsic reasonableness of the only exposition that can bring certain assertions of Scripture into harmony with science, and in so doing, it implicitly denies that Scripture in all its parts is the written Word of God. The doctrine, there¬fore, of the decision is not only false, but opposed to what the Roman Church holds to be a dogma of the faith.’
Fr Roberts’s arguments on the authority of the 1616 ruling: ‘It is satisfactory to obtain so frank an acknowledgment from my opponent that the terms of the [1616] condemnation meant “heresy,” and nothing short of it; that the Pope and the ecclesiastical authorities considered, and in effect said, that heliocentricism is a heresy. Now, I submit that, no matter who says it, ‘whether a ‘Pope speaking ex cathedrâ, or a mere layman, whoever says categorically that an opinion is “heresy,” ipso facto says that the contradictory of that opinion has been revealed by God with sufficient certainty to oblige a Catholic to accept it by an act of divine faith. To generate an obligation of faith, it is by no means necessary that the witness to the fact of revelation should claim for his testimony infallible certainty, but only such certainty as will exclude all prudent fear, ne non locutus sit Deus…. It is important to bear in mind that in the case before us the Index was called into action to give effect to the decision of the Congregation of the Holy Office, a Congregation that is in a very special way under Papal direction. The Pope as pope is its president. He is present at its meetings every Thursday. He has in¬formed the Church that he reserves the presidency of this Congregation to himself, because of the intimate connection of its decisions with the preservation of the faith. But if the Pope when he acts as its president never intends to act in the capacity wherein he is divinely secured from making mistakes, how delusive is this assurance! What good does the Church get from his presidency? The Pope not divinely assisted is likely, nay, in a vast number of cases, far more likely, to decide erroneously than some of his Cardinals. And as to his superior authority, the more authoritative an erroneous decision is, the more harm it is likely to do. Either, then, the judgments in question are ex cathedrâ; or the Pope claims to decide doctrinal questions for all Catholics in a capacity in which he is liable to make mistakes, and so the Holy See may be a source of error to the Church Universal; or the Pope’s prerogative of inerrancy be¬longs to him even when he is not speaking ex cathedrâ. Of course there was not, and there could not have been, the remotest intention of making geocentricism a matter of faith by the mere force of a definition; but the question the Copernican controversy raised was whether the doctrine of the sun’s diurnal movement was not already of faith in virtue of the plain state¬ments of Holy Scripture [and judgments of previous popes in early centuries of the Church]. The Roman church, as John De Lugo says, propounds the whole of Holy Scripture, and every part of it, to be received as the Word of God, so that to contradict the express assertion of a sacred writer is not less heresy than to contradict the definition of a general council. To say that Abraham had not two sons is not less heresy than to say that our Lord had not two wills. Unquestionably the sacred writers, in terms, ascribe diurnal movement to the sun; therefore, urged the anti-Copernican theologian, the theory that denies that movement is false and heretical. The conclusion is irresistible, if the language objected is so expressed as to forbid the supposition that not real, but only apparent movement may be meant. And that it is so expressed is what Rome [in 1616] in effect decided, when on the one hand she pronounced the heliocentric theses false, and altogether adverse to the divine Scriptures and on the other condemned as destructive to Catholic truth the advocacy of an opposite opinion. After this, the thoroughly submissive Catholic had no alternative but to recognise the heretical character of the new system; yet the decision plainly proceeded on the assumption that the matter was not open to legitimate doubt before its issue; and therefore, however clearly ex cathedrâ, it would be a judgment of a very different kind from that by which the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was defined. On turning to Marie Dominique Bouix’s Tractatus de Curia Romana we learn that there are three kinds of Congregational decrees; (1) Those that the Pope puts forth in his name after consulting a Congregation; (2) Those that a Congregation puts forth in its own name with the Pope’s confirmation, or express order to publish. (3) Those that a Congregation with the Pope’s sanction puts forth in its own name, but without the Pope’s confirmation or express order to publish. Decrees of the first and second class, we are told, are certainly ex cathedrâ, and to be received with unqualified assent under pain of mortal sin. According to Fr Antonio Zaccaria, a very great authority, even decrees of the last class are not fallible, in the sense that they can ever condemn as erroneous a doctrine which is not so.
‘But it is almost as easy to show that the condemnation of Copernicanism was not in this sense a safe judgment, as to show that it was not a true one, to prove that it was a mistake at all. For what was the doctrine of that judgment as it was authoritatively interpreted by Rome? This: that heliocentricism is false and altogether contrary to the divine Scriptures, meaning by the phrase, as the monitum (1620) explained it; “repugnant to the true and Catholic interpretation of Scripture.” In other words, according to the ruling of Pope Urban VIII and the Pontifical Congregation of the Inquisition [in 1633], the decision taught that heliocentrism is a heresy to be abjured, cursed, and detested with the other heresies opposed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church. Now, it is as clear as daylight that if all Catholics had embraced this doctrine with unreserved assent, “plene, perfecte, et absolute,” all Catholics would have held it to be of faith that heliocentrism is false, and thus the whole Church would so far have been in error in its faith. But for the whole Church to be in error in any point it holds to be of faith is plainly irreconcilable with the passive infallibility claimed for it by theologians, or even with its claims to be infallible in its ordinary magisterium, for what it believes it will surely teach “credidi propter quod locutus sum.” And apart from this consideration, ob¬viously it must be against the cause of the Christian faith for all Christians to be persuaded that its teachings conflict with, and demand the suppression and complete elimination from thought of, opinions that are on their way to be proved true…..
W. G. Ward writes: “We fully admit that an unobvious interpretation of the apparently anti-Copernican texts is possible; and indeed is, as we now know, the true one. We admit that our Blessed Lord, when He looked up to heaven and when He spoke of ascending to the Father, did but accommodate Himself to existing physical beliefs. We admit that the Holy Ghost, for wise purposes, as, for instance, that He might not violently interfere with the healthy slow progress of physical science permitted the sacred writers to express themselves in language which was literally true as understood by them, but was figurative in the highest degree as intended by Him. We only say, in accordance with our first proposition, that such an exposition of Scripture would be grossly irreverent, unchristian, and uncatholic, unless there was some overwhelming scientific probability to render it legitimate.”
Fr Roberts answers Ward: ‘According to these words of Ward’s, the Copernican inter¬pretation of Scripture, the true one [no, never proven true], the one intended by God, is intrinsically considered non-reasonable. It is inadmissible on its own merits, and by every sound canon of exegesis. It is so violently opposed to the general drift and implication of Scripture, and to the obvious meaning of particular texts, that nothing short of an express assurance from the Author of Scripture Himself that He really did mean [a fixed sun] would render it legitimate. Such an assurance having been given in these latter days through the conclusions [no, false theories] of science, the unobvious and forced character of the exposition is no longer any bar to its reception; on the principle that a man may interpret his own words as he pleases. “God,” says Dr. Ward, “surely has the right to interpret His own Word, for you would not deny this right to an ordinary mortal” (Authority of Doctrinal Decisions, p. 143). But in Galileo’s time God had given no hint that He had meant anything so extremely improbable. Heliocentrism [a long-condemned heresy] at that time was “a random scientific conjecture,” with “no leg to stand on.” The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore only doing their duty in declaring it was altogether contrary to Scripture.
Desperate indeed must be the cause that stands in need of such monstrous doctrine [That God allowed a heretical wording in Scripture]. Disregarding for the present the grotesque misrepresentation of the scientific status of heliocentrism in Galileo’s time, who admits for a moment that an ordinary mortal may deter¬mine retrospectively the meaning of his words, and be quit of responsibility for their deceptive effect, on the strength of a subsequent declaration, that he meant the very reverse of what he said or wrote? So far as the Bible professes to teach, and contains assertions that demand belief, assuredly it cannot differ from all other books in this, that its meaning must not be held to depend on the, so to say, objective significance of its language, but on the reserved and unexpressed intention of its author. How in the name of common sense can what a book really signified in the past be altered, or its then truth be saved, if what it then signified was false, by an inter¬pretation the legitimacy of which depends solely on the production of evidence that did not then exist? If for centuries, according to every known sound and received principle of exegesis, and all the cognisable data that could throw light on the matter, the language of Scripture was so expressed on the subject as to forbid its being understood otherwise than geocentrically, if nothing short of overwhelming scientific evidence in favour of heliocentrism would justify the opinion that Scripture does not contradict the theory, plainly geocentricism is what the written Word really signifies, and no astronomical discovery can alter the fact. Is it reasonable to say that while a certain sense is not too much opposed to the letter for the author to mean it, its very opposition to the letter makes it un¬lawful for those he addresses to suppose him to mean it? Can we, simply by the laws of the language used, be bound to ascribe a meaning to a writer’s words he, by those laws under the circuмstances, is not bound to give them? Can we call a writer truthful and trustworthy whose words, by themselves, and according to their one legitimate interpretation, oblige us to believe what is false? Is it, then, less than blasphemy to say that God caused Scripture to be so worded as to bind men to error by the force of its terms? That He demanded faith in His Word, and spoke in what theologians call morally undiscoverable equivocations? Who can fail to see that estimate of the Copernican interpretation of Scripture is tantamount to a confession, that such an interpretation is a mere makeshift, that the dicta of the sacred writers, properly understood, are really at variance with what we now [think we] know to be the truth, and that, there¬fore, God could not have been their author? And thus it appears that Rome’s ill-judged attempt to save the authority of Holy Scripture was an implicit denial, of her own dogma on inspiration, and a virtual surrender of the whole position into the enemy’s hand. I say an implicit denial of her own dogma on inspira¬tion, for the Vatican Council I has defined it to be a matter of faith that God is the author of the whole of Scripture, and of every part of it—meaning by Scripture all the books enumerated by the Council of Trent as sacred and canonical. The Jesuit Cardinal Franzelin (1816-1886) [author of many books on theological questions] has shown that this doc¬trine obliges us to hold that God not only caused the human writers of the books named to conceive, with a view to writing them down, those truths, and those truths only, that he meant them to communicate; but further, that God so controlled them in their use of language, that they choose, and choose infallibly, terms fit to express the divinely intended meaning. In Galileo’s time, when Copernicanism was condemned, the objected passages of Scripture either were, or were not, adapted to express a meaning not at variance with the theory: if they were, the opinion that they were was reasonable and defensible, apart from any scientific evidence whatever that the Earth moved; if they were not, the evidence we have that the Earth moves is evidence that God was not the author of those passages. Thus, giving the judgment the very meaning apologists insist is the right one, it implicitly denies the intrinsic reasonableness of the only exposition that can bring certain assertions of Scripture into harmony with science, and in so doing, it implicitly denies. The doctrine, there¬fore, of the decision is not only false, but opposed to what the Church holds to be a dogma of the faith.’--- pp.39-44.
‘Moreover, the judgment of Rome must outweigh the judgment of individual theologians; and the point I insist on is, that the minimising interpretation of the decree, the interpretation advocated by Dr. Ward and the apologists, is precisely the one that stands empha¬tically repudiated and denounced by a Pontifical Congregation as involving the gravest error. Before the Inquisitorial sentence of 1633 it might perhaps have been plausibly urged that the decree of the Index was only disciplinary in its scope, that the censures “false and repugnant to Scripture” belonged to the preamble, and not to the decree itself. But to say this in the face of the sentence on Galileo is to say that Rome did not know her own mind, and could not interpret aright her own decisions. The minimising and apologetic view of the decree is, that the Church did not thereby mean to say that it is quite certain, but only highly probable, that helio¬centricism is contrary to Scripture; and that she did not intend to deny that the progress of science might change the theological aspect of things. So understood, it is as clear as the sun at noonday that the decision could not, seventeen years afterwards, have shown that it was impossible for the censured opinion to be in any way probable. But this is the very thing Rome, in 1633, declared the decision did show, and pronounced it a most grave error to suppose that it did not – “since in no manner can an opinion be probable that has already been declared and defined to be contrary to the divine Scripture.” And it must be noted that the Congregation is expressly referring to the kind of probability Galileo claimed for Copernicanism in Galileo’s Dialogo, intrinsic probability based on scientific considerations. Did the Congregation mean to say, “Since this opinion has been pronounced contrary to Scripture by a judgment that was not meant to be final, a judgment possibly erroneous, a judgment open to correction by the progress of science, it involves the gravest error to suppose that it can in any manner, even scientifically, be probable.” Yet this is just the non¬sense it did mean to talk, if it did not mean its state¬ment in a sense that excludes the apologist’s version of the decree. And in the actual sentence the Congre¬gation showed its mind still more plainly, for it implicitly classed the decision with those definitions of the Church, the truth of which it would be heresy to challenge: “We say, pronounce, and declare that you, the said Galileo, on account of the 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, that you believed and held a doctrine false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures, to wit, that the sun is in the centre of the universe, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth moves and is not in 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.” Such language was, of course, ludicrously inapplicable to the case, unless the decision ought to have been taken as the Church’s judgment, and as absolutely true.’
‘Is it reasonable to say that while a certain sense is not too much opposed to the letter for the author to mean it, its very opposition to the letter [from a moving sun to a fixed sun] makes it un¬lawful for those he addresses to suppose him to mean it? Can we call a writer truthful and trustworthy whose words, by themselves, and according to their one legitimate interpretation, oblige us to believe what is false? Is it, then, less than blasphemy to say that God caused Scripture to be so worded as to bind men to error by the force of its terms? That He demanded faith in His Word, and spoke in what theologians call morally undiscoverable equivocations? Who can fail to see that estimate of the [fixed-sun] interpretation of Scripture is tantamount to a confession, that such an interpretation is a mere makeshift, that the dicta of the sacred writers, properly understood, are really at variance with what we now know [claim] to be the truth, there¬fore, God could not have been their author?’- Fr Roberts, Pontifical D.
At the end of his booklet, Fr Roberts summarises the situation that prevailed within Catholicism in the wake of the infamous acceptance of a ‘non-violent’ heliocentrism, consequences that all who continue to defend to this day must subscribe to, ramifications that no true Catholic could possibly accept:
‘I will now sum up the conclusions which the Galileo case seems to me to teach in direct opposi¬tion to doctrine that has been authoritatively inculcated in Rome: —
1. Rome, i.e. a Pontifical Congregation acting under the Pope’s order, may put forth a decision that is neither true nor safe.
2. Decrees confirmed by, and virtually included in a Bull addressed to the Universal Church, may be not only truly false, but theologically considered, danger¬ous, i.e. calculated to prejudice the cause of religion, and compromise the safety of a portion of the deposit com¬mitted to the Church’s keeping. In other words, a Pope [Alexander VII in 1664], in and by a Bull addressed to the whole Church, may confirm and approve, with Apostolic authority, deci¬sions that are false and perilous to the faith.
3. Decrees of the Apostolic See and of Pontifical Con¬gregations may be calculated to impede the free progress of Science.
4. The Pope’s infallibility is no guarantee that he may not use his supreme authority to indoctrinate the Church with erroneous opinions, through the medium of Congregations he has erected to assist him in protecting the Church from error.
5. The Pope, through the medium of a Pontifical Congregation, may require, under pain of excommunica¬tion, individual Catholics to yield an absolute assent to false, unsound, and dangerous propositions. In other words, the Pope, acting as Supreme Judge of the faithful, may, in dealing with individuals, make the rejection of what is in fact the truth, a condition of communion with the Holy See.
6. It does not follow, from the Church’s having been informed that the Pope has ordered a Catholic to abjure an opinion as a heresy, that it is not true and sound.
7. The true interpretation of our Lord’s promises to St. Peter permits us to say that a Pope may, even when acting officially, confirm his brethren the Cardinals, and through them the rest of the Church, in an error as to what is matter of faith.
8. It is not always for the good of the Church that Catholics should submit themselves fully, perfectly, and absolutely, i.e. should yield a full assent, to the decisions of Pontifical Congregations, even when the Pope has con¬firmed such decisions with his supreme authority, and ordered them published.
Are not all these propositions irreconcilable with Ultramontane principles? If so, can it be denied that those principles are as false as it is true that the Earth moves?’
Topic: New Geocentrism Book by Robert Sungenis (Read 12412 times)