Eventually I'll complete my study of the Church Fathers, who were grossly misrepresented and distorted by Dr. Sungenis (applying his own "eisegesis" to them), but by and large when they refer to a "sphere", they're almost always clearly talking about the shape of the entire world, including the firmament.

This idea that they believed in a ball-shaped earth that people walked on as it floated through space is absurd, and we can't read the "NASA ball" into every reference to a sphere (and even once time a circle), as Sungenis does.

What is clear is that they all universally believed in a solid firmament and that it was solid enough to hold real physical waters from the face of the earth.  There were debates (some recounted by St. Augustine) regarding the shape of this firmament.  There were debates (recounted by another Father, whose name slips my recall right now) about what it was made of, i.e. how the heavenly luminaries move if the firmament is solid enough to keep water out.  Some argued that the heavenly bodies to not move within the firmament (since it's solid) but that the entire firmament rotates, others that it was made of some substance in between solid and liquid (perhaps like a plasma) where things could move through it, even though it was solid enough to keep waters out.  We also have to recall that they did not have a concept of "gravity", so the notion of things sticking to the bottom of something would be strange and bizarre.  In fact, some of the Father who believed the world to be shaped like a hemisphere believed that because they felt that the heavier elements would sink to the bottom of the cosmic water, while St. Ambrose made a case for how it might be suspended amid the waters.  So they understood density, not gravity.  St. Augustine chimed in by saying it would be acceptable to hold that the earth was at the bottom center of the cosmos (and therefore shaped like a hemisphere), since bottom center is still center.

So this idea of a ball floating around the vacuum of space at no point entered the minds of any Church Fathers, despite the fact that some try to read it into them.

Not to get into another argument with you about this, but don’t you think that all of this FE stuff would have been exposed during the Galileo trial? To put it another way, if the Church Fathers believed in some sort of FE model, this would have been front and center during the trial, but to my knowledge, FE wasn’t even considered.

Non sequitur.

But I would agree that if Bellarmine et al. believed in some sort of FE model then that would have been front and center during the trial.

However, Divine Providence required the globular theory to spread in order for the present atheistic apostasy to come about, just as Baptism of Desire was allowed to spread as a foot in the door for Vatican II.

If one honestly reads just the Fathers instead of second-hand accounts or modern scientists and theologians one will invariably reject both the globe and BoD.

Great points. The Great Apostasy had to happen. 

No, it didn't come up.  They were specifically examining Sacred Scripture and the Fathers with regard to the contention that the earth moved.  Regardless, no determination was made regarding the shape of the earth ... one way or the other.

Utter nonsense. The Church condemned what it condemned, nothing less, nothing more. If the inquisitors meant to condemn the globe they would certainly have said so explicitly at least once in the official acts. But we not only don't see any mention of the issue in the official condemnation, but even private correspondence is completely free of the globe theory.

However much I wish FE was addressed and the consensus of the Father pointed out to the doubters, it wasn't.

You're conflating the two concerns.  Simply because the Church did not hold the book to be inspired Scripture does not meant it was not "written by the Patriarch of that name".