ARE OTHER PLANETS INHABITED?
Saint Boniface (the Apostle of Germany), never failed to keep in close touch with Pope Zachary, and each was to the other a reserve of strength and inspiration. There is among their correspondence a docuмent of especial interest to us in the light of all the conjecture there has been over the past few years on the possibility of “inhabited planets” other than our own.
Saint Boniface complained to the Pope that an Irish priest named Virgilius was disturbing men’s minds by teaching “that there was another world, other men on another planet beneath the earth, another sun, and another moon.”
“If it is well proved that Virgilius has spoken thus,” Saint Zachary wrote, “you must convene a council and expel him from the Church. We are addressing to this same Virgilius letters of evocation, so that he may be minutely questioned in our presence and, if found guilty of holding false doctrine, he may be sentenced to canonical punishment.”
It transpired that in the end it was not necessary for Saint Zachary to condemn Virgilius, for the priest completely yielded to the correction and counsel of his Holy Father and went on, in the light of pure and chaste theology, to sanctify himself. He became bishop of Salzburg, and, glorious to relate, lived a life of such holiness and heroism that he was canonized by Pope Gregory IX.
But Pope Saint Zachary did denounce in this connection, “certain heretics who maintained the existence of a race of men not descended from Adam and not ransomed by Christ.”
It should be added, because of the controversy which later centered around it, that this condemnation of Pope Zachary’s was not intended to mean that he condemned the opinion that the world was round and that men might easily be living on the other side of it – as some have tried to make out – for both Pope Zachary and Saint Boniface were well acquainted with the fact that the earth was round and one of the Doctors of the Church, the Venerable Bede, had expressly taught so. But he did condemn, and we have his words for it, the teaching of the existence of a race of men – on another planet – who were not, and who could not have been, descended from Adam and who were not ransomed by Christ.
- Fr. Feeney/St. Benedict Center
Topic: Pope Leo XIV and secret files about aliens (Read 365 times)