and though this earth on which we live may not be the centre of the universe as at one time was thought, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ.

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In a sense this is true, but this does preclude the possibility that it is heretical to say the earth is not the center of the universe.

Pope Benedict 15th is not saying one way or the other, but he is certainly saying it's possible that the earth may not be the center.

If this were heretical, it would be like a pope saying in an encyclical, "It may be possible that there are four Persons in God rather than three." Such a thing could not be taught magisterially to the whole Church even under simply the teaching authority of the Church, i.e. even if it is not taught infallibly, since it is heretical. And that is true even if the pope were only holding out the possibility that there are four Persons in God.

St Robert Bellarmine's complete letter, from https://quizlet.com/ca/523181016/ccc-18-st-cardinal-robert-bellarmine-astronomer-and-doctor-of-the-church-flash-cards/

To the Very Reverend Father Paolo Antonio Foscarini, Provincial of the Carmelite Order of the Province of Calabria:

My Very Reverend Father,

I was pleased to read the letter in Italian and the treatise in Latin which Your Reverence sent to me. I thank you for both of them, which indeed are quite full of ingenuity and learning. And since you have asked for my reactions, I will state them very briefly, for you now have little time to read and I have little time to write.

Firstly, I say that it appears to me that Your Reverence and Sig. Galileo have acted prudently in being satisfied with speaking in terms of assumptions and not absolutely, as I have always believed Copernicus also spoke. For to say that the assumption that the earth moves and the sun stands still saves all the appearances better than do eccentrics and epicycles is to speak well, and contains nothing dangerous.

But to wish to assert that the sun is really located in the center of the world and revolves only on itself without moving from east to west, and that the earth is located in the third heaven and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only because it irritates all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also because it is damaging to the Holy Faith by making the Holy Scriptures false. Although Your Reverence has clearly exhibited the many ways of interpreting the Holy Scriptures, still you have not applied them to particular cases, and without doubt you would have encountered the very greatest difficulties if you had tried to interpret all the passages which you yourself have cited.

Second, I say that, as you know, the Council [of Trent] has prohibited interpretation of Scripture contrary to the common agreement of the Holy Fathers. And if Your Reverence will read not only the Holy Fathers but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find that they all agree on the literal interpretation that the sun is in heaven and rotates around the earth with great speed, and that the earth is very far from the heavens and stands immobile in the center of the world.

Ask yourself then how could the Church, in its prudence, support an interpretation of Scripture which is contrary to all the Holy Fathers and to all the Greek and Latin commentators. Nor can one reply that this is not a matter of faith, because even if it is not a matter of faith because of the subject matter [ex parte objecti], it is still a matter of faith because of the speaker [ex parte dicentis]. Thus anyone who would say that Abraham did not have two sons and Jacob twelve would be just as much of a heretic as someone who would say that Christ was not born of a virgin, for the Holy Spirit has said both of these things through the mouths of the Prophets and the Apostles.

Thirdly I say that whenever a true demonstration would be produced that the sun stands in the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not rotate around the earth but the earth around the sun, then at that time it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in interpreting the Scriptures which seem to be contrary, and it would be better to say that we do not understand them than to say that what has been demonstrated is false. But I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown to me.

To demonstrate that the assumption that the sun is located in the center and the earth in the heavens saves the appearances is not the same thing as to demonstrate that in truth the sun is located in the center and the earth in the heavens. The first demonstration, I believe, can be given; but I have the greatest doubts about the second. And in case of doubt one should not abandon the Sacred Scriptures as interpreted by the Holy Fathers.

Let me add that the words, 'The sun rises and sets, and returns to its place...' were written by Solomon, who not only spoke as inspired by God, but who also was a man more wise and learned than all others in the human sciences and in the knowledge of created things, and all this wisdom he had from God. Thus it is not likely that he would assert something which was contrary to demonstrated truth or to what could be demonstrated. 59 You might tell me that Solomon spoke according to appearances, since it appears to us that the sun revolves* when the earth turns, just as it appears to one on a ship who departs from the shore that the shore departs from the ship.

To this I respond that, although to him who departs from the shore it does seem that the shore departs from him, nevertheless he knows that this is an error and he corrects it, 60 seeing clearly that the ship moves and not the shore. But in respect to the sun and the earth, there has never been any wise person who felt a need to correct such an error, because one clearly experiences that the earth stands still, and the eye is not mistaken when it judges that the sun moves, just as it is not mistaken when it judges that the moon and the stars move.

And this is enough for now. With cordial greetings, Reverend Father, and I pray for every blessing from God.

Signed, Roberto Cardinal Bellarmino.

1921: In Praeclara Summorum
 
Few today are even aware that Pope Benedict XV, on April 30th, 1921, just one year after his teaching encyclical on how the Scriptures reveal all truth, wrote a different kind of papal letter, this one praising the writings of the Catholic poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), famous for his The Divine Comedy, sometimes called ‘the Summa in verse,’ a poetry divided into a journey of three parts, Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Heaven). Dante’s writings reflect medieval Catholicism, when the Catholic faith had reached its peak of blessed understanding. This of course included the doctrine of geocentrism, revealed in Scripture and visible to all as the Creation that God chose so that man might have greater evidence of Him. Pope Benedict XV’s Praeclara Summorum begins with this introduction:

‘Beloved Children. Among the many celebrated geniuses of whom the Catholic faith can boast who have left undying fruits in literature and art especially, besides other fields of learning, and to whom civilization and religion are ever in debt, highest stands the name of Dante Alighieri, the sixth centenary of whose death will soon be recorded. Never perhaps has his supreme position been recognized as it is today. Not only in Italy, justly proud of having given him birth, but all the civil nations are preparing with special committees of learned men to celebrate his memory that the whole world may pay honour to that noble figure, pride and glory of humanity.’

Having written in his Spiritus Paraclitus of the dangers ‘physical science’ can cause if it is not the truth, read now as the Pope himself addresses ‘the progress of science’ to Dante’s most famous work The Divine Comedy. Written after the acceptance of heliocentrism, and unwilling to downgrade the Catholicity of Dante’s description of a geocentric Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, Pope Benedict XV feels he has to rescue all this even ‘if science’ has failed to confirm which order, is certain. The apparent conflict between the Pope’s faith and ‘science’ in this encyclical does not endorse heliocentrism, nor does it dismiss the authority of the 1616 decision, as some apologists would have us believe, it merely discusses it in regard to Einstein’s relativity that includes geocentrism as scientifically true as heliocentrism.

Encyclical on Dante, to Professors, Students of Literature and Learning in the Catholic World:

‘And first of all, inasmuch as the divine poet throughout his whole life professed in exemplary manner the Catholic religion, he would surely desire that this solemn commemoration should take place, as indeed will be the case, under the auspices of religion, and if it is carried out in San Francesco in Ravenna it should begin in San Giovanni in Florence to which his thoughts turned during the last years of his life with the desire of being crowned poet at the very font where he had received Baptism. Dante Alighieri lived in an age which inherited the most glorious fruits of philosophical and theological teaching and thought, and handed them on to the succeeding ages with the imprint of the strict scholastic method. Amid the various currents of thought diffused then too among learned men Dante ranged himself as disciple of that Prince of the school so distinguished for angelic temper of intellect, Saint Thomas Aquinas. From St Thomas he gained nearly all his philosophical and theological knowledge, and while he did not neglect any branch of human learning, at the same time he drank deeply at the founts of Sacred Scripture and the Fathers. Thus he learned almost all that could be known in his time, and nourished specially by Christian knowledge; it was on that field of religion he drew when he set himself to treat in verse of things so vast and deep. So that while we admire the greatness and keenness of his genius, we have to recognize, too, the measure in which he drew inspiration from the Divine Faith by means of which he could beautify his immortal poems with all the lights of revealed truths as well as with the splendours of art….. It is indeed marvellous how he was able to weave into all three poems these three dogmas with truly wrought design. If the progress of science showed later that that conception of the world rested on no sure foundation, that the spheres imagined by our ancestors did not exist, that nature, the number and course of the planets and stars, are not indeed as they were then thought to be, still the fundamental principle remained that the universe, whatever be the order that sustains it in its parts, is the work of the creating and preserving sign of Omnipotent God, who moves and governs all, and whose glory shines in a part more or less elsewhere: and though this Earth on which we live may not be the centre of the universe as at one time was thought, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the divine poet depicted the triple life of souls as he imagined it in such a way as to illuminate with the light of the true doctrine of the faith the condemnation of the impious, the purgation of the good spirits and the eternal happiness of the blessed before the final judgment.’

It has been asserted by men, like the Dimond Brothers and David Palm, that the above encyclical shows the 1616/1633 edict was not an irreversible binding decree because Benedict XV did not confirm a geocentric universe. But like Pope Leo XIII, hadn’t Benedict confirmed the teaching of the Fathers in his earlier Spiritus Paraclitus one of them being that when all the Fathers agree on an understanding that cannot be changed. Moreover, given the fact that in Benedict XV’s time geocentrism was considered falsified by the Jesuits surrounding him, one surely would have expected the Pope to write the Earth ‘is not at the centre.’ But he did not, nor that the sun does not orbit the Earth, leaving the 1616 decree as defined and declared. One could also say Pope Benedict XV, with his words ‘may not be,’ did not accept the physical heliocentrism ‘of modern astronomers’ held in Church and State in his time.

I'm curious what the earth's foundation is set on? We set our foundations on the earth, or better yet on or driven into rock. So if what we build our foundations on has a foundation, what does it rest on for support? Do the pillars rest on the bottomless pit?

Reminds me precisely of what Pius XII later wrote about evolution.

How does flat earth make hell the center of the universe?  When you look at the sketch, hell is clearly at the bottom, at the lowest part of the universe. Reasonably, hell is logistically the furthest from heaven. In reality on a flat earth, up is up and only up.  Down is down, and only down.  On a ball, up is out in every direction and for those on the opposite side, up is down because everyone is upside down to everyone else. What logistical chaos! Hell would be at the center of the ball and literally at the center of everything created, if earth is a globe.