Sixty Ways to Refute a Catholic Heliocentrist

Robert Sungenis (geocentrist) versus Walter Cardinal Brandmüller and Eric Sammons (heliocentrists)...

Contents:

The Claims of Walter Brandmüller and Eric Sammons

1,3 ) The true “traditional doctrine of creation.”

2,5) “Young earth and geocentrism are pseudo-scientific.”

4) “Darwinian evolution is not scientific.”

6,8) “Literal interpretation and consensus of the Fathers are inadequate.”

7) There is only “purported” scientific evidence defending a young earth & geocentrism.

9) “Traditionalists are receptive to a young earth & geocentrism.”

10) “Cardinal Brandmüller’s new book shows that the Church already settled the case of Galileo two hundred years ago.”

11) “Many Catholics accepted Copernicus’ heliocentrism in his day.”

12) “Copernicanism was a valid scientific theory that just happened to be opposed to Scripture’s literal interpretation.”

13) “Galileo’s 1633 trial provided fodder for anti-Catholics because geocentrism was wrong.”

14) “Cardinal Brandmüller shows the proper and traditional way to look at science.”

15)“Bellarmine said that if science proves heliocentrism, the Church will change her interpretation of Scripture.”

16) “By the 19th century there were sufficient proofs for heliocentrism.”

17) “By the 18th century, the ban on Copernican books was relaxed.”

18) “Benedict XIV rescinded the ban on Copernican books.” 3 Sixty Ways to Refute a Catholic Heliocentrist

19) “No one had asked for an imprimatur before Settele did.”

20) “Anfossi didn’t care about scientific proofs.”

21) “The Church of Galileo’s day refused to accept what was scientifically proven.”

22)“The ecclesiastical condemnations of Galileo’s day are untenable today.”

23) “Galileo’s 1633 recantation did not necessarily acknowledge anything wrong with the Copernican system.”

24) Galileo’s recantation could have accepted that the sun was one of two foci of the heliocentric system.”

25) “Galileo knew the sun was not the center of the stars.”

26) “All that Galileo had to confess was that the sun was not immobile.”

27) “The Earth is the center for the water and air only.”

28) “The Earth is immobile for all that happens on it.”

29) “An unchangeable regularity is equal to immobility.”

30) “The 1620 decree over-rides the 1616 decree.”

31) “Galileo was not condemned because he believed in a ‘false and philosophically absurd’ teaching.”

32) “Hugh Owens argues just like Fr. Anfossi – only from Scripture and the Fathers.”

33)“It is harmful to teach things that have nothing to do with piety.”

34) “Because heliocentrism had been proven, the Church had to reject her previous interpretations of Scripture.”

35) “Biblical passage stating a non-moving Earth have to be interpreted colloquially.” 4 Sixty Ways to Refute a Catholic Heliocentrist

36) “The Fathers depended on Ptolamaic geocentrism.”

37) “Bellarmine taught that geocentrism was not a matter of faith or morals.”

38) “Pius VII accepted Olivieri’s arguments and set a precedent for the Church.”

39) “We cannot reject scientific theories if they contradict Scripture or the consensus of the Fathers.”

40, 41, 42) “We only accept scientific theories if they are proven.” 43) “The old age of the universe has been scientifically proven.”

44) “Fr. Lemaitre invented the Big Bang.”

45,46,47) “Arguing for a young earth denies legitimate scientific proofs.”

48,49) “To reject long ages or heliocentrism due to Vatican II is wrong.”

50) “Catholics should always be open to new theories.”

51) “Olivieri was a great exegete of Scripture.”

52) “Scripture speaks only in colloquial language; in appearances.”

53) “1 Chronicles 16:31 and Psalm 93:1-2: ‘The Earth does not move,’ do not teach the Earth does not move.”

54) “Joshua 10:10-14: ‘The sun stood still,’ does not teach the sun stood still.”

55) Genesis 1:1: ‘God made the heavens and the earth,’ does not teach the Earth was in the center.”

56) “Moses did not intend to teach an ‘astronomical system.’”

57) “The Church Fathers were incompetent because they believed in a flat earth.”

58) “The Fathers did not teach geocentrism in consensus.”

59)“The case of Nicholas of Cusa means the Church already accepted heliocentrism.”

60)“No official condemnation of heliocentrism occurred after 1633.”

61) “Newton was never condemned by the Church.”

62) “The Church of Galileo’s day did not know how to interpret Scripture.”

63) “Olivieri’s reasoning shows that someone can teach Copernicanism without contradicting the Catholic faith.”

Introduction

Like almost all critics of geocentrism and young Earth creationism, the adherents firmly believe they know the facts of both the history and the science, and in their minds they have become experts. Having studied these issues intensely for the last 50 years, I would tend to agree with Alexander Pope who said in his An Essay on Criticism: “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” A superficial understanding of a subject can lead to overconfidence and poor decisions, as the person might think they know more than they actually do. This is the case with both Eric Sammons and Walter Cardinal Brandmüller when they are dealing with the subjects of creationism and geocentrism. The knowledge they think they have—which is almost always incomplete, half-correct or all wrong—leads them to make various and sundry conclusions that are also almost always wrong. Essentially, all writers dealing with the Galileo issue have the same disease: they think it has been scientifically proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. The reality is, it has not been proven—not by a long shot. Modern science— at least the kind that is not cherry-picked—explains this to them, if they will only listen. But they don’t. They go by popular opinion, which leads to all kinds of false conclusions and twisting of the evidence. In fact, I don’t know one pro-Galileo historian who has studied the science of geocentrism.

For example, Eric Sammons, a convert from Methodism and now chief editor of Crisis magazine, wrote an opinion article on March 12, 2025 titled: “A Truly Traditionalist Approach to Science Isn’t What You’ve Been Told,” with the secondary title: “Advocates for a ‘young earth’ and even for geocentrism claim their views are consistent with traditional Catholic Scriptural interpretations. Are they correct?”1 which question, of course, is rhetorical. Hence although creationists and geocentrists base much of their conclusions on what Catholic tradition has taught them—which tradition begins from the Fathers and medievals, including what the official papal, conciliar and catechetical statements say for at least the last 1800 years—Mr. Sammons claims that all this history has recently been set aside by the Church and we should all be following Her lead. According to Sammons, when it comes to questions of science, only science can answer, and the Church has come to recognize her minimized role (although Sammons draws the line at Darwinian evolution, since he thinks it is “not scientific”).

Although creationists and geocentrists might concede a lot of territory to science, there are certain questions it cannot concede, such as:

(1) how the universe and man came to be. (2) what goes around what in in celestial mechanics. The answers are: (1) God created the universe and man, ex nihilo, in six literal days. (2) the sun and stars revolve around the Earth, not vice-versa. We cannot concede these two questions to science alone because Scripture has already given the answer and science can never trump Scripture. The reason is, the Church says Scripture is infallible; but science is fallible. Moreover, the Church teaches that Scripture is to be interpreted literally, unless it leads to an absurd conclusion, but a six day creation and a sun that revolves around the Earth certainly aren’t absurd. Notice, however, we say that we “cannot concede these two questions to science alone,” because, as we will see, science, rightly divided, teaches and supports both geocentrism and creationism. But the reason Mr. Sammons wrote his article is that he believes science has proven the Earth revolves around the sun and has proven the universe is billions of years old. He states he has proof five times in his article.2 Although proof is touted as the foundation for Sammons’ belief in heliocentrism and long ages, he doesn’t reveal even one proof in his article! This becomes especially egregious when we find that Sammons’ new approach to tradition comes from his biased evaluation of a dispute in the Church in the early 1800s on whether heliocentrism is proven science or not. As the story goes, Canon Giuseppe Settele wants an imprimatur for his 1814 book, Elements, that teaches heliocentrism as a fact. Fr. Filippo Anfossi, who is the Master of the Sacred Palace and the only one who can give imprimaturs, says no to Settele on the basis that the 1616/1633 magisterium declared and defined heliocentrism as a formal heresy that was opposed to Scripture, and thus the Church convicted Galileo of being suspected of that heresy. Since many scientists had, by this time, accepted heliocentrism based on Newton’s Principia Mathematica that said the smaller body, the Earth, had to revolve around the larger body, the sun, Settele was disturbed by Anfossi’s rejection. So Settele went to the Commissioner of the Index of Forbidden Books, Cardinal Maurizio Olivieri, a closet heliocentrist, for help. Olivieri tried every which way he could think of, including lying to Pius VII, to get an imprimatur for Settele, which finally occurred after a long and arduous battle with Fr. Anfossi and other stalwarts for the Church’s tradition.

Sammons believes that the new book by Watler Cardinal Brandmüller, The Case of Galileo and the Church, provides, bar none, a superlative treatment of the Settele affair that sets the precedent for the only “truly traditional approach to science” that should be used by Catholics when conflicts between science and religion appear. This promotion of Brandmüller’s book as the definitive guide will require us to give it thorough review to determine whether it fulfills the endorsement given to it by Sammons. I normally would not give a ‘spoiler alert’ so early in a book, but in this case it is needed. Brandmüller’s book is just another in a long line of Catholic pro-Galileo historians who assume a rotating and revolving Earth has, more or less, been proven by science,3 which then leads Brandmüller on a futile excursion that analyzes all the events in the Settele affair from that prejudicial standpoint, which includes stating that the Catholic Church of 1616/1633 really didn’t know what it was doing and thus seriously erred. Unlike Sammons, Brandmüller does manage to mention a few “proofs” of the heliocentric system but they are nothing more than the ‘usual suspects’ that have already been discredited, apparently unbeknownst to Brandmüller. He mentions Newton’s gravity, Bradley’s stellar aberration, Bessel’s stellar parallax, and Guglielmini’s falling objects. We will deal with each of these alleged proofs later in the book. Suffice to say for now, none of them prove the heliocentric system. If they prove anything, they prove the inability of science to prove its cherished system of cosmology; and thus prove once again the invincibility of Scripture.

The Major Combatants of 1820

Eric Sammons:4 Later this month [March 29, 2025] a conference promising to lead Catholics from “diabolical deception to [the] restoration of truth” will be held in Wisconsin. The headline speaker is Fr. Chad Ripperger, predictably leading Where Peter Is founder Mike Lewis to pen another unhinged rant against Fr. Ripperger, this time calling him “wildly heterodox, superstitious, and conspiratorial.” Last week we published an excellent article by Michael Hitchborn demolishing a previous Lewis article attacking the well known priest. Though it always feels right to disagree with Lewis, I do have serious reservations about this “Restore Truth Conference.” Other speakers at the conference include Hugh Owen, director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, and Robert Sungenis, longtime Catholic apologist. The Kolbe Center advocates for a “traditional doctrine of creation”, by which it means it supports the “young earth” hypothesis (i.e., the earth was created only around 6,000 years ago), and Sungenis is a vocal proponent of geocentrism. (Owen and many people associated with the Kolbe Center also support geocentrism, although not as dogmatically as Sungenis does.)

R. Sungenis: Notice how Mr. Sammons puts “traditional doctrine of creation” in quotes, which implies that it is some ancient relic of Catholic belief at which right-minded people shook look askance. But in regard to the issue at hand, the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission under Pius X, which was then an authoritative arm of the Church, in responding to a question whether the “traditional doctrine of creation” can be held by Catholics, said that the “Day” of Genesis 1 can be understood as “either in its proper sense as a natural day, or in the improper sense of a certain space of time; and whether with regard to such a question there can be free disagreement among exegetes,” the reply of the PAS was: “In the affirmative.” Has the Catholic Church after 1909 told us, in any official sense, that the “Day” of Genesis can no longer be 24-hours? No. And since the Catholics of the upcoming conference are, indeed, going to teach that the “Day” of Genesis is 24 hours, and there is no statement from the Church that officially opposes such a teaching, then who is Eric Sammons to inhibit or prohibit whether Catholics can believe it and teach it?

The problem, of course, is that Mr. Sammons has already decided that the Big Bang is the only “proven” view (his words), which automatically disallows him from considering the “Day” of Genesis as 24-hours. The same is true of geocentrism. On the first day of Genesis, the earth is made, while the sun and stars don’t come until the fourth day. Mr. Sammons, purporting to know the “science” by following the SSPX priest, Fr. Paul Robinson, who claims in his book that the Big Bang came f irst and that stellar parallax prohibits geocentrism,5 has decided there is no possibility that geocentrism could be true, and therefore, anyone teaching it, based on the science, Mr. Sammons is going to do his best to dissuade you. In reality, Mr. Sammons is as ignorant of the science as Fr. Paul Robinson. Since neither of them seem to be able to understand the reciprocity between the Keplerian heliocentric and Neo-Tychonic geocentric systems from a simple experiment (stellar parallax), how are they going to understand the more complex issues?

Mr. Sammons calls me a “vocal proponent of geocentrism.” Indeed I am; and have been for the last 22 years. But my vocality also includes my written works, having published twelve books on the subject. Unfortunately, Mr. Sammons has read none of them, at least in the subject matter on cosmology about which he chooses to write in this article. If he did read them, then he would know the other side of the story and he would be able to see that his present article is so riddled with errors that he should be ashamed to publish it. In my rebuttal, I will point out each and every error he has made, and then you can judge for yourself who is telling the truth.

2) Eric Sammons: This conference, then, promises to push both young earth and geocentrism points of view as Catholic truth. This is as pseudo-scientific as many of the atheist attempts to use scientific f indings to push a purely materialistic outlook.

R. Sungenis: Mr. Sammons doesn’t like the fact that we are going to “push both young earth and geocentrism points of view as Catholic truth,” yet we saw that the Catholic Church herself, as of 1909, officially allowed both and has never disallowed either. If Mr. Sammons thinks otherwise then he should cite a Church mandate that says young earth and geocentrism cannot be taught as Catholic truth. And thus this means that it is Mr. Sammons, by himself, that is making the decision that they cannot be taught as Catholic truth.

His reason is that he thinks geocentrism is “pseudo-scientific.” In saying so, it shows that Mr. Sammons himself is the “pseudo-scientific” since modern science conceded quite a while ago that geocentrism is a valid scientific position, and that can be proven very easily. All we need to do is quote from a few of the most famous scientists in the world. Even Isaac Newton believes so:

Albert Einstein: “…to the question whether or not the motion of the Earth in space can be made perceptible in terrestrial experiments. We have already remarked that all attempts of this nature led to a negative result.”6

Lincoln Barnett (foreword by Albert Einstein):

“We can’t feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.”7

Stephen Hawking:

“So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true….one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.”8

Astronomer, Fred Hoyle:

“…we can take either the Earth or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center of the solar system. This is certainly so for the purely kinematical problem of describing the planetary motions. It is also possible to take any point as the center even in dynamics, although recognition of this freedom of choice had to await the present century.”9

Physicist, Hans Reichenbach:

“It makes no sense, accordingly, to speak of a difference in truth between Copernicus and Ptolemy: both conceptions are equally permissible descriptions. What has been considered as the greatest discovery of occidental wisdom, as opposed to that of antiquity, is questioned as to its truth value.”10

Physicist, Dennis Sciama:

“Whether the Earth rotates once a day from west to east, as Copernicus taught, or the heavens revolve once a day from east to west, as his predecessors believed, the observable phenomena will be exactly the same. This shows a defect in Newtonian dynamics, since an empirical science ought not to contain a metaphysical assumption, which can never be proved or disproved by observation.”11

Physicist, I Bernard Cohen:

“There is no planetary observation by which we on Earth can prove that the Earth is moving in an orbit around the sun. Thus all Galileo’s discoveries with the telescope can be accommodated to the system invented by Tycho Brahe just before Galileo began his observations of the heavens. In this Tychonic system, the planets…move in orbits around the sun, while the sun moves in an orbit around the Earth in a year. Furthermore, the daily rotation of the heavens is communicated to the sun and planets, so that the Earth itself neither rotates nor revolves in an orbit.”12

Physicist, Arthur Lynch:

“Descartes is, however, doubly interesting to us in the discussion of Relativity, for at one time when the Inquisition was becoming uneasy about his scientific researches, he gave them a reply that satisfied them, or perhaps he merely gained time, which was long, while they were trying to understand its meaning. He declared that the sun went around the Earth, and that when he said that the Earth revolved round the sun that was merely another manner of expressing the same occurrence. I met with this saying first from Henri Poincaré, and I thought then that it was a witty, epigrammatic way of compelling thought to the question; but on reflection I saw that it was a statement of actual fact. The movements of the two bodies are relative one to the other; it is a matter of choice as to which we take as our place of observation.”13

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli:

“The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion…”14

Physicist, Henri Poincaré:

“We do not have and cannot have any means of discovering whether or not we are carried along in a uniform motion of translation.”15

Physicist Ernst Mach:

“Obviously it matters little if we think of the Earth as turning about on its axis, or if we view it at rest while the fixed stars revolve around it. Geometrically these are exactly the same case of a relative rotation of the Earth and the fixed stars with respect to one another.”16

Physicist Julian B. Barbour:

“Thus, even now, three and a half centuries after Galileo’s condemnation by the Inquisition, it is still remarkably difficult to say categorically whether the earth moves, and, if so, in what particular sense.”17

Physicist, Henri Poincaré:

“A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the Earth’s movement. The results were always negative.”18

Physicist, Albert Einstein:

“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate system could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: ‘the sun is at rest and the Earth moves,’ or ‘the sun moves and the Earth is at rest,’ would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems.”19

Physicist, Isaac Newton:

“In order for the Earth to be at rest in the center of the system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, there is required both universal gravity and another force in addition that acts on all bodies equally according to the quantity of matter in each of them and is equal and opposite to the accelerative gravity with which the Earth tends to the Sun….Since this force is equal and opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at rest. And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth at rest, as in the Tychonic system.”20

Science historian, Martin Gardner:

“The ancient argument over whether the Earth rotates or the heavens revolve around it (as Aristotle taught) is seen to be no more than an argument over the simplest choice of a frame of reference. Obviously, the most convenient choice is the universe. Nothing except inconvenience prevents us from choosing the Earth as a fixed frame of reference.”21

Philosopher, Bertrand Russell:

“But in the modern theory the question between Copernicus and his predecessors is merely one of convenience; all motion is relative, and there is no difference between the two statements: ‘the earth rotates once a day’ and ‘the heavens revolve about the Earth once a day.’” 22

Astronomer, J. L. E. Dryer:

“…the Earth-centered system…is in reality absolutely identical with the system of Copernicus and all computation of the places of the planets are the same for the two systems.”23

Physicist James Coleman:

“The easiest explanation [for the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment] was that the earth was f ixed in the ether and that everything else in the universe moved with respect to the earth and the ether….Such an idea was not considered seriously, since it would mean in effect that our earth occupied the omnipotent position in the universe, with all the other heavenly bodies paying homage by moving around it.”24

Physicist Bernard Jaffe:

“The data [of Michelson-Morley] were almost unbelievable. There was only one other possible conclusion to draw — that the Earth was at rest.”25

Physicist Julian Barbour:

“Thus, even now, three and a half centuries after Galileo…it is still remarkably difficult to say categorically whether the earth moves, and, if so, in what precise sense.”26

Physicist Adolf Baker:

“Thus, failure [of Michelson-Morley] to observe different speeds of light at different times of the year suggested that the Earth must be ‘at rest’…It was therefore the ‘preferred’ frame for measuring absolute motion in space.”27

Physicist Albert Michelson:

“This conclusion directly contradicts the explanation of the phenomenon of aberration which has been hitherto generally accepted, and which presupposes that the Earth moves.”28

3) Eric Sammons: But more importantly, it opposes the actual traditional approach of the Church to scientific discoveries.

R. Sungenis: Mr. Sammons is referring, in large part, to the new book written by Walter Cardinal Brandmüller titled, The Case of Galileo and the Church, published in 2021, and republished in English in 2024 by Sophia Institute Press. The book appeals to the 1820 case of Canon Giuseppe Settele who sought an imprimatur from the Church for his new book, Elementi di Ottica e di Astronomia, which touted the heliocentric system as the correct system. As Brandmüller regards the case,

The fact that the Holy Office decided the question, “Is the heliocentric system of the cosmos compatible with the Catholic faith?” once and for all in the affirmative is almost never mentioned in the pertinent literature and is not appreciated at all, even though it has been well known for a long time.29

It is Mr. Sammons’ view that we are not adhering to the decision made in the 1820 case that gave Settele the imprimatur, which case, in the mind of Brandmüller, is enough to settle the issue indefinitely because it stands as the official position of the modern Catholic Church. They claim such despite the fact that the traditional Catholic Church rejected heliocentrism as a formal heresy in 1616 because it was contrary to Scripture and the consensus of the Church Fathers. If you are seeing a contradiction between the traditional Catholic Church and the modern Catholic Church, no one would blame you. But Brandmüller’s book will attempt to dissuade you from such a conclusion. He will attempt to convince the reader that the two opposing views can be melded together so that there is no remaining contradiction. And this is what Mr. Sammons means when he refers to, “the actual traditional approach of the Church to scientific discoveries.” Brandmüller is regarded as having the actual traditional approach to the heliocentric versus geocentric issue.

At this juncture, I will be brief since we will cover Brandmüller’s book later in this essay. For now, what should be said is that Brandmüller’s book is identical to every other book that Galileo historians have written since the affair began in 1616. Before the first page is written, the author presumes, without question, that the heliocentric system is the correct system, which then forces its author to search for the “real” reason the Church, who is supposed to be guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth and did an excellent job of it in all her other doctrines for the prior 1600 years, could suddenly veer from the truth and not only interpret Scripture erroneously in regards to what goes around what in the cosmos, but even more so, claim that a detail about the cosmos was, indeed, a matter of the Faith, and on that basis, convict one of its members, Galileo Galilei, of holding to a heresy against the faith. We can all see the dilemma very clearly.

Brandmüller remarks on the “leading of the Holy Spirit” later in the book, saying,

The Church itself, however, never made the claim to be in fully conscious possession of the whole truth from the very beginning. It has always been aware that it must first be led into all truth by the Holy Spirit dwelling within it – as the Gospel of John says. With this ‘leading into,’ though, the knowledge of divine revelation is already defined as a process, and the Gospel significantly says nothing about its course or duration. For here the concept of dogmatic development too has its theological locus.30

As he does throughout the book, Brandmüller makes the issue much more complicated than it has to be, and he does so on purpose. In the long and short of it, there is only one issue on the table, and all the rest is mere detail. That issue is: (a) does the sun revolve around the Earth; or (b) does the Earth revolve around the sun? Since Brandmüller—from his very limited science knowledge—has already decided that (b) is correct, he must then find a sufficient reason why the 1616 Church chose (a). He does so by claiming that the Church, at this time in history, needed much more knowledge about physics and astronomy before levying a judgment against Galileo. And because of this rush to judgment, Brandmüller faults the 1616 Church for not waiting for the “process” or “development” of the Holy Spirit (with Brandmüller pretending that he knows when the Spirit is going to move). He must rely on such a misconnection between the 1616 Church and the Holy Spirit otherwise there will be no room for him to make his case that heliocentrism is correct. Bellarmine’s rejoinder was, of course, that the Holy Spirit already made its mark on the Church for the 1600 years prior, and any change to His teaching would be tantamount to calling him a l iar.

Although Brandmüller is recognized as an erudite scholar and respectful leader of the Catholic Church in many other areas, somehow, when it comes to the Galileo affair, he, like every other Galileo historian, becomes almost completely prejudicial in what he writes. This is because each historian has already decided that Galileo was right and the Church was wrong before he starts his analysis.31 Some are worse than others. Most, if not all, know little science, especially geocentric science, and are oblivious to the fact that modern science, with the onset of Relativity theory, now accepts, even if reluctantly, that geocentrism is a viable scientific alternative, and can only believe in heliocentrism based on philosophical preference. As for Cardinal Brandmüller, in all my years of biblical study (50 years) and in all my years studying and writing on geocentrism (22 years), I have rarely seen a book that twists the Scripture, the tradition, the history, the magisterium, and the science so badly in order to get to its stated goal laid out in the beginning of the book. I will point out some of these instances later in this essay.

4) Eric Sammons: The conference’s promotional materials promise it will take aim at two evils: Darwinian evolution1 and “alien deception.” I agree that Catholics should have deep concerns about both. Darwinian evolution, specifically biological macroevolution in both its original and its later “neo-Darwinian” forms, has been used for the past 150 years to advance a fundamentally anti-Catholic worldview, one that rejects the role of God in our universe. And as it is popularly understood and taught, Darwinian evolution has little actual scientific evidence to support it.

R. Sungenis: What Mr. Sammons is trying to tell you is that he has the right to believe in an old earth (billions of years old) without having to believe in evolution, even though evolution also believes in an old earth. What is odd here is that Mr. Sammons believes that a young earth is “pseudo-scientific” but doesn’t call Darwinian evolution “pseudo scientific,” only that it “has little actual scientific evidence to support it.” This implies, of course, that Mr. Sammons believes a young earth has no scientific evidence to support it. If that is the case, those on our side of the fence can safely say that a young earth certainly has more scientific evidence than Darwinian evolution, but also more scientific evidence than Mr. Sammons’ cherished belief in the Big Bang. More on that later.

5) Eric Sammons: Likewise, the modern UFO movement has deceived many. Recently on the Crisis Point podcast I spoke with Teresa Yanaros, who was actively involved in this movement before returning to her Catholic Faith. As a result of her firsthand experience, she believes there’s no question that most purported alien encounters are actually encounters with demonic forces. If the Restore Truth Conference was simply warning against the dangers of Darwinian evolution and the UFO movement, I wouldn’t voice my reservations. But having Owen and Sungenis as speakers tells me that the solution being proposed—teaching that a young earth (Owen) and geocentrism (Sungenis) is “Catholic teaching,” as both Owen and Sungenis do—will also lead people astray, just in a different direction. A faithful Catholic can reject Darwinian evolution while also realizing that both a young earth and geocentrism are not scientifically viable alternatives. In this article I can’t detail all the arguments that Owen and Sungenis present to expound their views (see Owen’s Kolbe Center and Sungenis’s Catholic Apologetics International for details.

R. Sungenis: But Mr. Sammons doesn’t present any evidence that young earth and geocentrism are not scientific, and he never has. Otherwise, he would simply show, here and now, what he deems as proof. He only needs to show one proof, and if that proof is convincing it will be very simple and concise.

6) Eric Sammons: …but both follow the same basic outline, which contains two main points: first that their view is the only one consistent with a literal interpretation of Sacred Scripture; and second, that their view matches the “consensus of the Church Fathers.”

R. Sungenis: Hardly. These are just ancillary to the fact that not only does modern science have no dis-proofs for geocentrism, it has endorsed the fact that geocentrism is a viable scientific position. This was verified by all the scientists I quoted above. The consensus of the Fathers merely shows us that the Church, as was her practice from the beginning, read the Bible literally (which is how we received all our sacraments). And the Fathers also saw that the Bible insists that the sun moves and the Earth doesn’t. It is so simple a child could understand it.

7) Eric Sammons: Starting from these two points, they then try to find purportedly “scientific” evidence to support their views.

R. Sungenis: So here we see that Mr. Sammons isn’t ignorant of the scientific evidence for geocentrism; rather, he knows it but refuses to accept it and thus resorts to calling it “purportedly” scientific, that is, false scientific evidence. Then how does Mr. Sammons explain all the scientists I quoted earlier who say geocentrism is scientifically viable and that society’s choice of heliocentrism is just a matter of philosophical preference? Perhaps Mr. Sammons can rethink his position by talking to his new friend, Fr. Guy Cosolmagno, the Vatican astronomer who, in a debate I had with him in 2010 on the BBC, admitted he had no way of disproving geocentrism.

8) Eric Sammons: To disagree with them means, apparently, going against both Scripture and the Fathers, which no good Catholic wants to do.

R. Sungenis: Except Mr. Sammons.

9) Eric Sammons: This line of argumentation is particularly attractive to traditional Catholics, because we sincerely lament the jettisoning of both Scripture and the Fathers in recent decades in favor of modern fads. So anyone who argues that the young earth and geocentric views fell at the hands of the same movement that swept away so many traditional teachings finds a receptive audience.

R. Sungenis: Not really. For some reason, traditionalists aren’t as receptive to young earth and geocentrism as one would expect. They have enough battles to fight and thus are reticent to take on geocentrism for fear of further being ostracized. I once spoke with Bishop Bernard Fellay of the SSPX about geocentrism. He told me he had much more important things to think about and didn’t need another controversy on his plate. The late Bishop Williamson was the same way. Paul Robinson of the SSPX rejects geocentrism (but like Mr. Sammons, Robinson pretends to know the science, but doesn’t). Several years ago, Winchell wrote an article for Latin Mass magazine denying geocentrism. The article was so biased and littered with falsehoods, I asked the editor if I could write a rebuttal. He said no, emphatically, twice. The ones who are very receptive to geocentrism are the next generation. They are not afraid to see what the science really says and are tired of the one-way ticket that this generation has given them.

10) Eric Sammons: There’s just this little problem, however: Owen’s and Sungenis’s arguments aren’t traditional at all. The Church decided centuries ago that their way of approaching Scripture and the Fathers is a faulty methodology. A recent book reveals this clearly: The Case of Galileo and the Church by Walter Cardinal Brandmüller. In this book Brandmüller details the history of the geocentrism/heliocentrism debate in the Church from its origins in the 16th century to its resolution in the early 19th century. Cardinal Brandmüller is perhaps most known now as one of the four “dubia Cardinals,” who sent questions to Pope Francis about Amoris laetitia that went unanswered. Needless to say, his orthodoxy and love for the Church are unassailable. Beyond the fascinating historical account of the famous Galileo affair, Brandmüller’s book provides a further service: it details how Catholics should approach new scientific discoveries. And spoiler: it’s not how Owen and Sungenis approach them.

R. Sungenis: So all this tell us is that Mr. Sammons has chosen Brandmüller as his mentor and authority. Unfortunately for Mr. Sammons, because he didn’t read my book on the same material Brandmüller covers, failed to see that Brandmüller gave a very biased and distorted view of “how Catholics should approach new scientific discoveries,” just as all other Galileo historians do, which I will detail momentarily. They are always trying to find “some other reason” –other than the fact that Galileo could have been wrong—to explain why the Church formally condemned heliocentrism in 1616 and 1633.

11) Eric Sammons: As is well known, before the 16th century, the dominant cosmological theory was that of Ptolemy, the 2nd century mathematician who argued that the earth was motionless and that the sun revolved around it. Numerous Scriptural verses reference a motionless earth, and so early Christians, like everyone else, accepted Ptolemy’s geocentric system. It was, in other words, in keeping with a literal interpretation of the Bible and the “consensus of the Fathers.” In the 16th century, however, the Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus proposed an alternative theory: the earth circles the sun, i.e., heliocentrism. While modern mythology suggests that the immediate reaction of the Church was to reject this theory and burn anyone at the stake who might advance it, the reality is that many Catholics, including members of the hierarchy, were open to it.

R. Sungenis: No they weren’t. Mr. Sammons is just repeating a myth that has been popularized by modern Catholics who have endorsed heliocentrism and the Big Bang. Again, if Mr. Sammons had read my book, Galileo Was Wrong, Volume 3, he would have been enlightened. The truth is, there was only one cardinal who favored Copernicus. That was Nicholas Schöenberg, Cardinal of Capua. Most everyone else in the hierarchy rejected Copernicus’ book. Even Copernicus was reticent to publish his book since he discovered late in the game that his heliocentric version was actually more complicated than Ptolemy’s since Copernicus ended up with 48 epicycles to Ptolemy’s 40; and he never did “fix” the calendar problem that he boasted he could do. In the end, it was not Copernicus who published his book. It was the Lutheran, Andreas Osiander, who published it right after Copernicus’ death in 1543, and who used it to goad the Catholic Church, as he did with many other books he published that were against the Catholic Inquisition.

As for the official Catholic Church’s reaction to Copernicus’ book, Bartolomeo Spina, the Master of the Sacred Palace from 1542 until his death in 1547, sought to have Copernicus’ book banned, which was eventually carried out by his Dominican colleague Giovanimaria Tolosani in 1546. Similar to Osiander’s effort to endear Paul III with Copernicus’ theory, Tolosani wrote a detailed geocentric treatise in 1546, which he dedicated to Paul III and which included an endorsement from Spina. In it Tolosani vehemently rejected Copernicus’ universe and declared it “an extreme danger to the faith” precisely because of its attempt to de-literalize Sacred Scripture. As the 16th century reached the midway point, the staunchest anti Copernican of the day was the Jesuit Christoph Clavius (d. 1612). He writes in his highly esteemed work:

We conclude, then, in accordance with the common doctrine of the astronomers and the philosophers, that the earth lacks any local motion, either rectilinear or circular, and that the heavens themselves revolve continually round it….Holy Scripture is also in favor of this doctrine, stating in a great number of places that the earth is stationary. It also bears witness to the fact that the sun and the other heavenly bodies are in motion.32

In the end, Copernicus’ book was put on the Index of Forbidden Books. So much for Mr. Sammons claim that the Catholic Church was “open to it.” A couple of years before Galileo’s 1633 trial in Rome, Pope Urban VIII was in protracted discussions by letter with the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The letter carrier was Francesco Niccolini who tells us what the pope wrote.

“Galileo’s quest involved great harm to religion, indeed the worst ever conceived.”

“The pope appointed a Commission of theologians and other persons versed in various sciences, serious and of holy mind, who are weighing every minutia, word for word, since one is dealing with the most perverse subject one could ever come across.”

“In fact, the Pope believes that the Faith is facing many dangers and that we are not dealing with mathematical subjects here but with Holy Scripture, religion, and Faith…”

“endangers Christianity with some sinister opinion; furthermore, he had been told by His Holiness that we are dealing with dangerous dogmas,”

“These opinions were condemned about sixteen years ago [1616] and Galileo had gotten himself into a fix which he could have avoided; for these subjects are troublesome and dangerous, this work of his is indeed pernicious, and the matter is more serious than His Highness thinks.”

“may God forgive Mr. Galilei for having meddled with these subjects. He added that one is dealing with new doctrines and Holy Scripture”

“His Holiness said he was sorry that Mr. Galilei had gotten involved in this subject, which he considers to be very serious and of great consequence for religion.”

“However, he said that in regard to the issue, there is no way of avoiding prohibiting that opinion, since it is erroneous and contrary to the Holy Scripture dictated by the mouth of God.”33

12) Eric Sammons: What concerned Church officials was the encroachment of this scientific idea into theological waters, in which an (at that time) unproven scientific theory would be used to contradict a long-held interpretation of Sacred Scripture. In the early 17th century, Catholic scientist Galileo Galilei ran into trouble with the Church when he promoted the Copernican system, and, most importantly, argued that previous interpretations of Scripture were wrong. In response, the Congregation of the Index in 1616 declared that the new teaching about the movement of the earth was “altogether opposed to Sacred Scripture” and demanded that Galileo stop publicly advocating for it as a proven theory. In 1633 Galileo went on trial before the Holy Office, which condemned him and declared that the theory that “the sun is the center of the earth’s orbit and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the universe [is]…false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scriptures.” Galileo’s book, along with some other books advocating for heliocentrism, were put on the Index.

R. Sungenis: It was more than what Mr. Sammons is revealing. The Church of 1616 also said that Copernicus’ theory and Galileo’s endorsement of it was “formally heretical,” which puts a legal and canonical dimension on the affair than just being “opposed to Scripture.” In fact, in Galileo’s 1633 trial, he was convicted of being “vehemently suspected of heresy.” That can only be done if the heresy has been defined and declared prior to the trial, which is why the 1633 trial documents refer back to the 1616 declaration of “formal heresy” under Paul V. In other words, the 1616 Church declared heliocentrism a formal heresy, and the 1633 Church said that Galileo was “suspected of that heresy.” The 1633 Church chose not to convict him of formal heresy because the book of Galileo’s that was used as evidence, The Dialogo Between the Two Great World Systems, was a fictional book.

13) Eric Sammons: While this famous trial provided fodder for anti Catholics for centuries,

R. Sungenis: It only “provides fodder” for people who reject the Church’s formal declaration of heresy against heliocentrism, people like Eric Sammons.

14) Eric Sammons: …what is less well-known is its eventual resolution in 1820, a resolution that Cardinal Brandmüller details and which helps modern Catholics approach scientific discoveries with a proper, and dare I say traditional, Catholic outlook.

R. Sungenis: In reality, as we will see, the only thing Brandmüller’s treatment of the 1820 “resolution” does is show how Catholic apologists continue to ignore the elephant in the room when this subject comes to the fore. Much more on this later.

15) Eric Sammons: It’s important to note that the Church’s position in Galileo’s time was sound and was advocated by St. Robert Bellarmine: without real proof, we will stick with what Scripture appears to say and what all the Church Fathers believed. But also note that Bellarmine admitted that if science should prove it otherwise, the Church will need to rethink the common Scriptural interpretation.

R. Sungenis: As any Galileo historian has admitted, it was Bellarmine’s way of arguing his case and covering all the bases, not a concession to Fr. Foscarini (Foscarini wrote a book on heliocentrism that was condemned by the Church in 1615 after the book was published, a year before the Church’s confrontation with Galileo). This is proven by the fact that even if heliocentrism might be proven in the future—a position that any sensible person would have to admit as at least in the realm of possibility—Bellarmine and Paul V were undeterred and “defined and declared” heliocentrism as a formal heresy in 1616. But if Mr. Sammons’ logic is what was guiding Bellarmine, then we would expect Bellarmine to wait so that he would have no chance of putting the Church in a bind that might force her to contradict herself in the future. But both he and Paul V committed the Church to its position. Why? Apparently they trusted that the Holy Spirit would not lead the Church into error on a matter of faith, specifically Her official Scripture interpretation. That’s why they appealed to the consensus of the Fathers since the Fathers were the earliest indication as to where the Holy Spirit was leading the Church, which was based on the promise of Jesus to the Apostles: “I will send the Holy Spirit and he will lead you into all truth.”

16) Eric Sammons: This is what happened: between Galileo’s trial and the early 19th century, scientific consensus coalesced around a heliocentric cosmology. Even most Catholic scholars accepted it, because, unlike in Galileo’s time, there were now sufficient proofs for it.

R. Sungenis: Experiments were performed that were thought to have proven heliocentrism but were later discovered as no proof. Unlike Sammons, Brandmüller does manage to mention the popular “proofs” of the heliocentric system but they are nothing more than the usual parade of discredited proofs that we have seen many times. Since each of them can be explained from the geocentric model they can no longer be cited as proofs. The first is Newton. Brandmüller says:

“Newton was able to formulate the concept of gravitation, to prove its validity for the heavenly bodies, and thus to produce a proof for Copernicus.”34 …. “Not until 1684, however, did Newton, building on the mechanical-dynamic research from Galileo’s final years, discover the laws of gravitation and with their help prove the factuality of the heliocentric system”35

The ironic thing about appealing to Newton’s understanding and application of gravity is that neither Newton nor anyone else has been able to tell the origin and nature of gravity, which lack of knowledge is still true today. As it stands, modern science, for all its vaunted ability, can’t even explain the simplest and most common feature of nature. The only thing Newton could do and still do today is tell us how fast and how strong gravity pulls an object caught in its grasp. And even then, we don’t know if gravity is a pull, a push, or some other force. As for the strength of gravity, which Newton measured by the inverse square l aw,36 the equation comes from anything that disperses from its origin point at an angle, such as the spray from the nozzle of a paint can. And for all their applicability, Newton’s laws, which are based on a main equation, F = ma, cannot, by itself, get a space probe to Mars and back. Newton’s physics must add in the three inertial forces, by hand, otherwise the probe will veer off into outer space and never seen again. Additionally, Newton’s equation does not have a factor for time in its main equation (F = ma) because it assumes, without any proof, that the speed of gravity is instantaneous across the universe, whereas its rival, Einstein’s relativity, says gravity can only travel at the terrestrial speed of light (186,000 mps). Quite a difference! Lastly, as much as scientists speak of “universal gravity,” it has been known since the late 1970s that spiral galaxies spin ten times too fast for F = ma. So, if anything, it sounds like Newtonian physics is an inadequate theory to explain the workings of the universe.

And speaking of differences with Einstein’s relativity, whereas Einstein maintained that space is curved and warps, Newton held that space is rigid, infinite, not able to move, and not able to rotate. He called it “absolute space.” Newton needed this definition of space because he believed that a body in motion, unaffected by any other body or force, moves in a straight line, but there wouldn’t be any straight lines if space were allowed to curve and warp. This absolute space fit well into Newton’s solar system since if the Earth is moving in a straight line, the gravity of the sun will pull the Earth sufficiently so that the Earth moves in a curved line. Viola! We have the heliocentric system.

Conversely, all one must do to disprove Newton’s system is show that he cannot assume the universe is rigid, infinite and not able to rotate. This was done by both Ernst Mach in the 1880s and confirmed by Einstein in his 1915 General Relativity. In fact, the refusal of Newton to allow the universe to rotate led Einstein to posit that Newtonian mechanics had an intractable “defect.” As Einstein put it:

“One need not view the existence of such centrifugal forces as originating from the motion of K’ [the Earth]; one could just as well account for them as resulting from the average rotational effect of distant, detectable masses as evidenced in the vicinity of K’ [the Earth], whereby K’ [the Earth] is treated as being at rest. If Newtonian mechanics disallow such a view, then this could very well be the foundation for the defects of that theory.” 37

Philosopher and scientist Bertrand Russell said the same:

Whether the Earth rotates once a day from west to east, as Copernicus taught, or the heavens revolve once a day from east to west, as his predecessors believed, the observable phenomena will be exactly the same. This shows a defect in Newtonian dynamics, since an empirical science ought not to contain a metaphysical assumption, which can never be proved or disproved by observation.38

Once the universe is allowed to rotate around a fixed Earth, then all the presumed “proofs” of heliocentrism that depended on it are null and void. What we find in turn is that those who accused us of “stick our proverbial heads in the sand by refusing to adapt to new information” offered by the alleged proofs for heliocentrism, find the tables turned since suddenly they are the ones who “stick their head in the sand and refuse to accept the new information” we bring to them (to borrow a sentence from Sammons’ article). They don’t understand that, except for small issues here or there, Newtonian mechanics is basically defunct and has been superseded by Relativity theory. But, if I know him well enough, this is exactly what Sammons will do. He will refuse to allow the universe to rotate. And thus, based on the outdated and inadequate Newtonian science, he will insist there is still proof of heliocentrism. Whereas Sammons says:

“What is found to be true in the natural sciences cannot contradict what we know to be true from Scripture. If there is an apparent discrepancy, then the issue is either that the scientific discovery is faulty in some way or that our interpretation of Scripture is faulty. As Fr. Olivieri and then Pope Pius VII made clear, we can’t deny that second possibility….”

….when modern science admits that it has no disproof for the opposing view (geocentrism), then there is no discrepancy between science and Scripture. The problem is with those who side with popular science of heliocentrism. Since we now have two views that are scientifically viable, why would a Catholic choose the one that Scripture, the Fathers, and the magisterium does not endorse? This is the $64,000 question that people like Eric Sammons don’t want to face.

Before we leave this section, Brandmüller also appealed to Bradley’s discovery of stellar aberration as a proof for heliocentrism.39 Here again, if we allow the universe to rotate around a fixed Earth, it will duplicate what we see when we have the Earth move in a fixed universe. It is natural and inevitable. We have provided animations for the last twenty years that show how stellar aberration is displayed in the geocentric system. Anyone can view them, often free of charge.

Brandmüller also appeals to Bessel’s discovery of stellar parallax,40 but this alleged proof has the same problem as stellar aberration. In the geocentric version, the parallax angle is duplicated simply by allowing the star field to rotate around a fixed Earth. We have animations that show how it is done. Along the same lines, the retrograde motion of Mars was a popular “proof” for heliocentrism. Although Brandmüller didn’t mention it, it too can be explained in the Tychonic geocentric model by having the sun revolve around the Earth while carrying Mars in an orbit. Although one may wonder how it is possible for the larger sun to revolve around the smaller Earth, that is not as perplexing as it might seem. All that is needed is a counter-balancing force to the sun. It can be a rotating universe with its gravity and inertial forces; or it can be as Newton himself suggested in the last page of his 1687 Principia, a separate force outside the solar system. As Newton put it:

“Since this force is equal and opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at rest. And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth at rest, as in the Tychonic system”41

As the Nobel laureate, Steven Weinberg describes it in his 2015 book, To Explain the World:

If we were to adopt a frame of reference like Tycho’s in which the Earth is at rest, then the distant galaxies would seem to be executing circular turns once a year and in general relativity this enormous motion would create forces akin to gravitation, which would act on the Sun and planets and give them the motions of the Tychonic theory. Newton seems to have had a hint of this. In an unpublished ‘Proposition 43’ that did not make it into the Principia, Newton acknowledges that Tycho’s theory could be true if some other force besides ordinary gravitation acted on the Sun and planets.42

Weinberg’s reference to “forces akin to gravitation” refers to the known inertial forces, such as centrifugal, Coriolis, and Euler forces. Using Einstein’s General Relativity, Weinberg indicates that, in the view of modern physics, a universe rotating around a fixed Earth will create inertial forces that mimic the force of gravity. As the universe’s inertial forces meet the gravitational forces in our solar system, both will contribute to how the sun and planets will move with respect to each other. Weinberg also notes that the inclusion of forces outside the solar system that will allow Tychonian geocentrism are specified in Newton’s Proposition 43, which was originally planned to be added to page 510, the last page of the Principia.

Lastly, Brandmüller cites the 1789 experiment by Guglielmini as having proof for the rotation of the Earth. In this case, Guglielmini dropped balls from a tower and observed a deviation to the expected straight line trajectory. He concluded that the deviation was due to the rotation of the Earth. Although if the Earth were turning it would not be out of the realm of possibility to claim that the deviation was due to the Earth rotating,43 that assumption won’t prove the Earth is rotating. It only proves that some force is making the deviation. The geocentric system offers that, since the Earth is fixed, the force causing the deviation is coming from a different moving part, a rotating universe, whose rotation generates inertial forces that will move the ball as it falls to the ground. These forces are precisely what Weinberg was indicating above as he explained why even Newton’s system could allow the sun to go around a fixed Earth.

All in all, scientific arguments for heliocentrism would be wise to consider the words of Majordomo, Antonio Frosini, to Fabrizio Turiozzi (opponent of Filippo Anfossi) during the Settele controversy, which we will cover in detail later:

It cannot be maintained as a thesis that [heliocentrism] is true, or that it may be believed to be irrefutably true. Can the Reverend Canon Astronomer believe in conscience that the Copernican System is irrefutably true? He would be very rash if he asserted that to be the case. In order to justifiably make such an assertion, he would need to know all the possible resources within the planetary system that would be able to compensate for the supposed movement of the earth, and the sun's being at rest at the center.

Now, it is beyond human competence to go that far. Therefore, if he wants to be a man of good faith, he can only put forward the Copernican System as a hypothesis. And that goes for all the others who discuss this subject, whether they be Cassinis, Eulers, or Laplace. The Reverend Canon [Settele], with his whole book, will tell us nothing more than what the others have already said. And may Heaven grant that their efforts be found worthy of a better reward than what we'd give to a piece of shitty toilet paper! Perhaps someone else would shrink from expressing himself so bluntly. I don't, because I'm convinced that astronomical science is full of uncertainties and deceptions.44

That Frosini’s sentiment has been demonstrated is proved above by all the scientists we quoted earlier who conclude that geocentrism is a viable scientific position; and thus show that there is no proof of heliocentrism. As Agostino Gemelli, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Science in 1942, likewise said: “…although Galileo did not provide a decisive demonstration of Copernicanism, neither did Newton, Bradley, or Foucault.” In 1965, Vatican II refrained from condoning heliocentrism or saying that the Church made a mistake in teaching geocentrism, even though many clerics were clamoring for it. If there was ever a time to clean up mistakes, Vatican II was it, yet the Church makes no such concession. Yet somehow Brandmüller insists:

Even though the twofold movement of the earth, as astronomers teach it today, cannot be proved strictly and mathematically, the possibility remains nevertheless of conducting the proof by methods from physics.45

To make such statements means Brandmüller neither knows the “methods of physics” nor that proof requires the absolute disallowance of any other explanation. Even modern philosophy has taught us that man cannot gather enough particulars to make absolutes; and even if we gather millions of particulars, we don’t know which ones are true and which are false. Physics has been trying to prove the movement of the Earth since the time of Galileo but without any success, by their own admission. This is why Lincoln Barnett, whose book’s Foreword was written by Einstein, concluded: “We can’t feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.” 46 If there was proof, Barnett or Einstein surely would have given us one. As the history shows, however, when Newton thought he proved the Earth’s movement by isolating the solar system and claiming the smaller Earth had to revolve around the larger sun,47 not only did Newton later realize that his theory could be nullified by a larger gravity force outside the solar system,48 Ernst Mach showed that Newton had no right to keep the universe from rotating around a fixed Earth.49 When Arago showed through his 1810-20 experiments with star light that the Earth appears to be motionless, Fresnel tried to refute it by superimposing an ‘ether drag’ theory that he could not prove. When Einstein tried to counter the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment that showed the Earth appears to be motionless in space, Einstein had to invent a whole new physics, Special Relativity, just to give the semblance of an alternate reason for Michelson’s null results. When Hubble saw by means of the ubiquitous redshift of the universe’s galaxies that the Earth appeared to be in the center of it all, he was forced to create an expanding universe without a center so that he would at least have an answer for the redshift, which is how the Big Bang theory was born, which, to their dismay, developed so many problems that today it is on the verge of collapse. As Cardinal Ratzinger himself has acknowledged:

Today, things have changed. According to [Ernst] Bloch, the heliocentric system – just like the geocentric – is based upon presuppositions that can’t be empirically demonstrated. Among these, an important role is played by the affirmation of the existence of an absolute space; that’s an opinion that, in any event, has been cancelled by the Theory of Relativity. Bloch writes, in his own words: ‘From the moment that, with the abolition of the presupposition of an empty and immobile space, movement is no longer produced towards something, but there’s only a relative movement of bodies among themselves, and therefore the measurement of that [movement] depends to a great extent on the choice of a body to serve as a point of reference, in this case is it not merely the complexity of calculations that renders the [geocentric] hypothesis impractical? Then as now, one can suppose the earth to be fixed and the sun as mobile.”50

Surely Brandmüller must have known about Ratzinger’s new perspective since it happened in 1992 when Brandmüller was deep into the Galileo issue with the publishing of, Copernico Galilei E La Chiesa, and especially since there was an outrage from the Parma audience against Ratzinger’s geocentric speech. But Brandmüller gives no mention of Ratzinger from 1992 to 2024.51 Instead, Brandmüller continues with:

If someone is unwilling to acknowledge even that, he nevertheless cannot deny that this view has attained the highest degree of probability.52

Probability? On what basis? Since geocentric science has a geocentric alternative to every previously assumed proof of heliocentrism, how can there be more than a 50/50 probability for either theory? Interestingly enough, what the geocentric side alone possesses in this scientific stalemate is that Scripture, the Fathers, and the magisterium (in two separate but combined instances in 1616 and 1633) has shifted the weight to the geocentric side. The only thing the heliocentric side has attained is the “highest degree of probability,” which is a far cry from the infallibility of Sacred Scripture.

Staying on his chosen course, Brandmüller then argues:

Above all, however, it must be considered that back then the Church condemned Galileo’s theory as false and contrary to Sacred Scripture, which with regard to the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture was also justified. This literal meaning must not be abandoned, even when applying all the hermeneutical rules, unless it leads to absurd conclusions. But both Copernicus and Galileo presented their system in a form that was fraught with major difficulties, without resolving them satisfactorily, since they did not yet know about the weight of the air. For this reason, Grandi notes, the Holy Office at that time insisted on the literal interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Considering the later discoveries, however, there is no longer any reason to hold this position. Instead, it is necessary from now on to interpret Sacred Scripture “in senso figurato” (figuratively). Anfossi’s arguments do not change this in the least.

As we will see more later, Brandmüller is arguing that even though it was right for the Church to adhere tenaciously to the literal meaning, he cleverly tries to take our eye off the ball by claiming that the Church’s problem was that it didn’t know how to answer the so-called “major difficulties” of the Copernican system and thus, only by default did the Church decide for a literal interpretation of Scripture against Copernicus.

So let us make this issue crystal clear.

Brandmüller is propagating a flagrant lie concocted in 1820 by Cardinal Maurizio Olivieri (Commissioner of the Index), and Fr. Antonio Maria Grandi (secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs) in order to deceive Pius VII into granting Canon Settele an imprimatur for his book on heliocentrism, an imprimatur that Fr. Anfossi had already denied Settele because his book “went against the decrees of 1616 against heliocentrism.” And either Brandmüller has not caught the Olivieri/Gandi lie, or he agrees with it and thus has not the slightest shame in perpetuating it in the name of the Catholic Church.

First Brandmüller attempts to make it appear that he is following Church protocol by admitting that “the literal meaning must not be abandoned, even when applying all the hermeneutical rules, unless it leads to absurd conclusions.” But then he insists the 1616 Church should not have interpreted Scripture literally (i.e., that the sun moves around a fixed Earth) because its competitor, the heliocentric system (that has the Earth moving around the sun), had too many unsolved problems in Galileo’s day and was in no condition to be judged for its competency. Only until these problems were solved (e.g., that a moving Earth would cause the air to be sucked out by friction with space) would heliocentrism be viable enough to be evaluated by the Church. And when the day came that the problems were solved and heliocentrism was put in its rightful place as the only correct mechanics of the cosmos, then the Church would need to interpret Scriptures in a f igurative way. Talk about anachronism!

That Brandmüller would try to sell this doubletalk to the public as a means of “resolving” the Galileo controversy reveals the condition of the Church today. The spear through the heart of Brandmüller’s (via Olivieri’s and Grandi’s) argument is that there was no discussion in 1616/1633 about alleged “difficulties” with the Copernican system as the reason the Church did, or should have, postponed its judgment against it. If we want to talk about “difficulties,” the only one on the table for discussion in 1616 was that the Copernican system made the Earth move around the sun when, in fact, Scripture said the sun moved around the Earth. Nothing else was considered.

Moreover, if we rely on “difficulties” as the criterion for viability, the geocentric system also had difficulties. As even Galileo showed, the reigning Ptolemaic geocentric system (100 – 1600 AD) had a severe difficulty. It could not display the phases of Venus. This was because Ptolemy put Mercury and Venus in the wrong place (orbiting the Earth instead of orbiting the sun). The problem wasn’t solved for the geocentrists until in 1573 Tycho Brahe’s improved geocentric model could display the Venusian phases. But even then, Tycho’s model was not capable of showing stellar aberration and stellar parallax, the alleged “proofs” of heliocentrism attributed to Bradley in 1727 and Bessel in 1838, respectively. Geocentrists didn’t solve this problem until the 1980s when Van der Kamp and Bouw made Earth the universe’s unmoving center of mass; and the sun the geometric center. As such, all heliocentric proofs that depended on stellar or solar motion (aberration, parallax, star-streaming) were sufficiently rebutted. At the same time, geocentrists used Mach’s Principle to explain effects on Earth, such as the Foucault Pendulum and the bulge of the Earth, that had previously been used as proofs for a rotating Earth.

The point of all this analysis is to show that the Church was only concerned with what the Bible said, not the merits or demerits of either geocentrism or heliocentrism. Everyone involved knew there was little scientific evidence to prove either system, especially when no one knew how either system worked. And as it stands, Olivieri and Grandi had no more proof than Galileo or Kepler. Science was in its infancy, and even in its adolescences today it still can’t prove, by its own admission, that the Earth revolves around the sun. So, in 1616, the Church didn’t care how the sun revolved around the Earth. The how was simply not an issue and never was. There was only one issue: that Scripture taught geocentrism; and that the Catholic Church, beginning with the Fathers, was required to interpret Scripture literally unless it produced absurd conclusions, but having the sun revolve around a f ixed Earth certainly wasn’t absurd.

Still in his ‘Galileo was right’ mindset, Brandmüller then affirms Grandi’s citing of the “the irrevocability of papal decisions, which applies also to the Galileo case,” but that…

…Anfossi ignores the fact that this irrevocable character belongs only to ex cathedra decisions, but by no means to decisions of the sort that were made in this case. Therefore, it is necessary to stay with the position taken by the Holy See, not to hinder the printing of books that teach the Copernican system.53

In other words, Brandmüller, in spite of Frosini’s argument that no one should be so foolish as to think the heliocentrism system is infallible; coupled with the fact that even Brandmüller has already conceded that his heliocentric opinion has only “attained the highest probability,” not certainty, refrains not in the slightest from accusing the Church, who has for the last 1600 years been ‘led into all truth by the Holy Spirit,’ was then being led into a horrendous error by the devil.

As to whether the 1616/1633 decrees are infallible, that is not for any layman or cleric to judge. It is only for the magisterium. Still, there are many Galileo historians—who are even pro-Galileo—who believe that Popes Paul V and Urban VIII did not consider their decrees against Galileo as reformable. One of them is Fr. George Coyne:

So far as we can conclude from the circumstances of the condemnation, Pope Urban VIII and the cardinals of the Holy Office certainly did not themselves think it to be “reformable.” Furthermore, if it was reformable, why has the condemnation of 1633 or, for that matter, the Decree of the Congregation of the Index in 1616 never explicitly been “reformed?”54

Ernan McMullin, although personally endorsing Galileo and his cosmology, likewise admits:

And let there be no mistake, the judgment of the qualifiers in 1616 and the language of the decree supported by it were couched in definitive terms; it was not proposed as something “reformable,” to use a term favored by some recent theologians. The decree did not say that in the absence of a demonstration, maintaining the Copernican theses would be risky (“temerarious”). It described the theses as “contrary to Scripture,” period, just as the qualifiers had “qualified” the heliocentric claim as “formally heretical.”55

This is precisely why Bellarmine expected no proof for heliocentrism to arise in the future, and why the ecclesiastical argument against Galileo was never really based on whether proof existed. The Church depended on an a priori argument that could not be toppled. She drew her line in the sand long before scientific proof became part of the discussion. Galileo knew this to be the case. He writes:

…for in disputes about natural phenomenon they seem to claim the right to force others by means of authority of Scripture to follow the opinion they think is most in accordance with its statements, and at the same time they believe they are not obliged to answer observations and reasons to the contrary.56

…to have such knowledge and demonstration. When one is in possession of this, since it too is a gift from God, one must apply it to the investigation of the true meanings of the Holy Writ as those places which seem to read differently.57

But, of course, Galileo was not in “possession” of such “knowledge and demonstration.” At best his evidence was circumstantial; at worst it was a mere bluff from things he knew provided no proof, despite his claims that such items were a “gift of God.” There was really nothing else to say. Galileo’s claims were contrary to Scripture, case closed.

Scripture was not going to change. The only thing that could change was Galileo, which he eventually did, forcefully in 1633 and voluntarily in 1641.58 As McMullin notes:

The issue was primarily an exegetical one. Should the disputed passages be understood as being accommodated to the capacity of the hearers, as the defenders of Copernicus suggested? That this was the key question was clearly grasped in Rome well before the Copernican issue came before the Holy Office for formal decision.59

As to the present and future, Canon law 749 §3 says: “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident,” which necessarily means it could be made “manifestly evident” at some time in the future. There have been many beliefs or doctrines in the Catholic Church that were not elevated to be infallible until very late in Her history (e.g., the Mass and Eucharist in 1215 at the Lateran Council; the canon of Scripture in 1563 at the Council of Trent; the Immaculate Conception in 1870 by Pius IX; and the Assumption of Mary in 1950 by Pius XII).

Infallibility aside, until if and when the magisterium declares a belief infallible, Catholics, nevertheless, have the duty to give their assent to the lower-level or non-infallible teachings of the Church, as per Lumen Gentium 25:

“This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and sincere assent be given to decisions made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated.”60

In fact, the Church’s historic teaching on geocentrism and her condemnation of heliocentrism fulfills all the criteria of Lumen Gentium 25:

“that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect”:

It was certainly the case that popes Paul V, Urban VIII, and Alexander VII understood themselves and their decrees against heliocentrism as coming from their “supreme teaching authority” and commanded that it be “acknowledged with respect.” Urban VIII, for example, approved his Holy Office’s conclusion that heliocentrism was “formally heretical” and “erroneous in faith,” which he obtained from Paul V’s approval of the conclusion of the Qualifiers in 1616, and demanded that Galileo sign an abjuration to that effect. Obviously, Pope Urban VIII considered his predecessor’s decree, Paul V’s, as authoritative, binding, and demanding respect, since the 1633 decree was based on the condemnations of the 1616 decree.

“and sincere assent be given to decisions made by him”:

It was certainly the case that the decrees against Copernicanism required the “assent” of Galileo, Foscarini, and all the other theologians who were venturing into the area of biblical cosmology. Urban VIII sent letters of the decree against Copernicanism and Galileo’s abjuration to all the papal nuncios and universities of Europe showing the seriousness of the issue and his desire to have it widely disseminated so that the Christian faithful would be obedient to it. In 1664, Alexander VII devoted a signed papal bull to the subject of banning books that threaten the faith and welfare of the Christian faithful, stating: “We command each and every one of our venerable brethren, the patriarchs, archbishops, bishops and other Ordinaries of places, as well as those beloved sons who are their vicars and officials, the inquisitors of heretical depravity, the superiors of every kind of religious Order, congregation, society, or institute, and all others…” to obey his words.

“conformably with his manifest mind and intention”:

Few can read the documents surrounding the Galileo affair and come away without the conviction that the popes, cardinals, and the Holy Offices were as resolute in their condemnation of Copernicanism as they have been about most major doctrines of the Church. The popes used and approved very solemn and foreboding language and made sure that the decrees were enforced throughout Europe.

“which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question”

The decrees against heliocentrism were put in place for the express purpose of protecting Scripture from false interpretations and protecting the Christian faithful from harmful teachings. Although the decrees may not reach the level of being declared formally infallible, they are, nevertheless, on the same level of “ordinary” or “traditional” authority as most other doctrines that the Church has taught.

“or by the frequency with which a certain doctrine is proposed”

The formal and official condemnations of Copernicanism spanned a period of fifty years (1615-1665) and were delineated by three different popes. The number of ecclesiastical documents and other personal correspondences written about the Galileo affair over the course of three decades (1615-1633) exceed 7,000. Obviously the Church considered this a grave matter. She incessantly appealed to the 1600 years of tradition on the teaching of geocentrism as her greatest bulwark against the new ideas of Copernicus and Galileo.

“or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated”:

During the condemnations against heliocentrism the Church issued some of the most detailed and comprehensive decrees ever written. Every wrinkle of the issue was investigated, arguments were presented and rebutted, witnesses were put under oath, experts were called in for testimony, the most severe and condemnatory language was formulated in the final decree, that is, that heliocentrism was “formally heretical” and “erroneous in faith.” If geocentric doctrine does not qualify under the rubrics of Lumen Gentium 25, what does? We should also consider that we obey lower-level teachings because of the solemn words of Lumen Gentium 12:

The holy People of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office: it spreads abroad a living witness to him, especially by a life of faith and love and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips praising his name (cf. Heb. 13:15). The whole body of the faithful who have an anointing that comes from the holy one (cf. 1 Jn. 2:20 and 27)61 cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of the faith (sensus fidei)62 of the whole people, when, “from the bishops to the last of the faithful” they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals. By this appreciation of the faith, aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (magisterium), and obeying it, receives not the mere word of men, but truly the word of God (cf. 1 Th 2:13),63 the faith once for all delivered to the saints (cf. Jude 3).64 The people unfailingly adheres to this faith, penetrates it more deeply with right judgment, and applies it more fully in daily life.65

Since it is a fact that the “People of God,” which includes “the bishops to the last of the faithful,” have believed unanimously, firmly, and without equivocation in the doctrine of geocentrism from the beginning of the Catholic Church and for almost two millennia, and who were “guided by the sacred teaching authority” to do so [Paul V and Urban VIII], this belief necessarily fulfills the criteria of Lumen Gentium 12 that these same People of God “cannot err.” It is an undeniable fact that all the Fathers, all the medievals, all the bishops, priests, saints, doctors, theologians and the remaining Christian faithful of every nation believed in the doctrine of geocentrism. Additionally, three popes and their Holy Offices officially confirmed this absolute consensus in the 17th century against a few men who, because of their own misguided convictions, sought to depart from that consensus, making the attempt in the wake of unproven scientific claims with the express purpose of reinstituting a novel and subjective interpretation of Holy Writ.

As we have seen, even many years after modern science began to treat heliocentrism as a scientific fact, the Catholic faithful still maintained their vigilance for geocentric doctrine. It has only been in the last one hundred years or so that this consensus has waned.

Because of the waning consensus, some objectors might themselves appeal to the principle of Lumen Gentium 12 and posit that the Holy Spirit is now teaching the “People of God” that heliocentrism has been correct all along. But that notion, of course, is impossible, since the “People of God” could not have been “aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth” into believing that geocentrism was correct for nearly two millennia and then have the Spirit suddenly change His mind to teach them the opposite. It would make the Holy Spirit a liar, which is certainly impossible. The reality is, if the “People of God” were led to believe that geocentrism was the truth, and which was, according to the stipulations of Lumen Gentium 12, “guided by the [1616/1633] magisterium” to confirm their consensus, then there is simply no possibility that a change in their belief could be understood as a movement of the Holy Spirit.

17) Eric Sammons: So, in 1820, the stage was set for the Church to officially review the Galileo affair and reconsider the geocentric interpretation of Scripture. The spark was a book to be published by Catholic scientist Giuseppe Settele that accepted the Copernican cosmology as proven. Since the middle of the 18th century the ban on such books had been relaxed,

R. Sungenis: Benedict XIV allowed an imprimatur to Galileo’s book only on severe conditions stipulated by the Padua Inquisitor, Paolo A Ambrogi, of which all of them were formulated to show that Galileo’s book was condemned. The book had to exclude Galileo’s Letter to Christina and the Letter to Castelli, which were two of Galileo’s more popular defenses of Copernicanism. Furthermore, Galileo’s Dialogue of the Two Great World Systems had to be printed in Volume IV and accompanied by the 1633 sentence against Galileo (i.e., “vehemently suspected” of “formal heresy”), as well as the text of Galileo’s abjuration denouncing his views. The most important feature of the re publication was that it was required to contain a preface emphasizing the “hypothetical” character of the book’s contents. This requirement shows the consistency of the Church’s position, for the same permission was granted to the works of Copernicus in 1620.

Even then, the road to the imprimatur was long and arduous. Rome was very cautious about what would be allowed and disallowed in the text. The events unfolded as follows. On September 29, 1741, Ambrogi wrote to the Inquisition for permission for the Padua seminary to publish Galileo’s complete works, with the promise to make the Dialogo hypothetical and to include Galileo’s abjuration. On October 9, the Inquisition approved the project. Ambrogi wrote a second letter to the Inquisition on February 10, 1742 requesting permission to keep the Dialogo intact as it was written by Galileo but to include a preface that stipulated the Church’s 1633 condemnation of both Galileo and the Dialogo. The seminary also wanted to include Galileo’s Letter to Christina. Excerpts from the book’s preface that Ambrogi submitted to the Inquisition are as follows:

O learned Christan reader, here is a beautiful example of humility and submission to the decisions of the Holy Roman Church. What I present to you is Galileo Galilei’s famous Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican. In this Dialogue, he [Galileo] showed too much fondness for the second [Copernicanism], which is not compatible with Holy Writ; thus, he later repented and performed a solemn abjuration and retraction….Indeed, I have wanted the remedy to precede the disease in print, by prefacing to the dialogue itself the sentence pronounced against him and the ready mortification he showed toward the venerable decisions of the Holy Office; for he declared that what he had written on the subject, impulsively and out of intellectual vanity, was not only false but also improbable, because it was contrary to the divine scriptures. Given, then, that the Copernican hypothesis is false and untenable, and that I also condemn and detest it in the clearest manner and for the same reason, you can make use of the other admirable doctrines that are coincidentally found scattered on almost every page.66

On March 17, 1742 Rome replied and stated that as long as the stipulated guidelines were followed, the imprimatur could be granted. Excerpts from the reply are recorded below. We notice the extreme care the Sacred Congregation took to abide by the decrees of 1616 and 1633 when granting the imprimatur:

Last September the Father Inquisitor informed this Supreme Congregation of the petition made to him for permission to reprint all of Galilei’s works. To obtain it, the printer obliged himself to print all declarations that might be prescribed by this Supreme Congregation; to include in the fourth volume the abjuration made by the author; to do everything possible to change the exposition to a hypothetical one, as it had been done there [in Padua] for the reprinting of Pourchot; and finally to have the correction done with the assistance of men who are learned and of proven Catholic religion….The committee of Consultants specially appointed by His Holiness decided that one should reply to the Father Inquisitor of Padua to permit the printing of the works in question, but only on the conditions described by the Father Inquisitor….Note that the needed searches have been made in the archives and the chancellery of this Supreme Tribunal in regard to Galileo’s works.67

On May 20, 1742, Ambrogi again wrote to Rome on behalf of the editors and asked if, instead of changing the Dialogo’s text they could make deletions and changes in the marginal postils of the book. They also stated that they would not be including Galileo’s Letter to Christina but would like to include a published essay by biblical scholar Augustin Calmet, a French Benedictine friar who defended the geocentric worldview based on an exegesis from Scripture. Rome responded on June 6 stating that it wanted more information on how and why the Church had previously decided that the Copernican system could be permitted as a hypothesis. Friar Luigi Maria Giovasco was assigned to this task. On June 13, the Inquisition approved the book on the following recommendation by Giovasco. We notice in the Inquisition’s approval that the heliocentric system is tied directly to Pythagoras, thus showing the 1742 Church’s recognition that the battle over cosmology was a long-running one, which began when the Church Fathers held fast to the fixed Earth of Scripture against the moving Earth of the Greek philosophers:

…On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus…and a work by Diego de Zúñiga …supported the ancient opinion of Pythagoras, who taught that the Sun was the motionless center of the world and that the terraqueous globe of the Earth turned around it with perpetuated motion. The Carmelite Father Paolo Antonio Foscarini adopted such a system and defended it against the censure of theologians, who judged it false and contrary to Sacred Scripture. This system, which is commonly called Copernican for having been reawakened by Copernicus from the ashes of the ancient philosophy of Pythagoras, was denounced to the Sacred Congregation of the Index. On March 5, 1616, this Congregation published a decree prohibiting the system as a false Pythagorean doctrine contrary to Sacred Scripture and prejudicial to Catholic truth. But there was this difference: that Father Foscarini’s Letter was prohibited absolutely, whereas Copernicus’ book and Diego de Zúñiga Commentaries on Job were merely suspended, until corrected.

Rome then responds to the specific request of Ambrogi. We notice again how close the Inquisition follows the history so as to show the continuity of the thinking process from 1616 to 1742:

Then some publishers approached the same Sacred Congregation of the Index to have the above corrections of the above-mentioned works and to be able to publish them, exempt from the announced suspension…So another decree appeared declaring that the system should be understood as condemned only when it was expounded as an absolute thesis, but not when it was expounded as a hypothesis to better know the revolutions of the heavenly spheres. These corrections appeared in a decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Index of the year 1620. They emended the chapters of Copernicus’ work in such a way that the printed text is left intact where it speaks problematically, and it is changed to mere hypothesis where it speaks in the manner of a doctrinal and absolute thesis. Corrected in this way, Copernicus’ work is even today free of any condemnation. Indeed, all astronomers study the moon by following Copernicus and tell us that they follow such a system in the manner of a hypothesis and not in the manner of a thesis, for they think it is more useful for contemplating the oppositions and phenomena of the stars. In the year 1633, there appeared the Dialogue of Galileo Galilei…in which he established the Pythagorean system in the manner of a thesis. So it was prohibited…because it defended and advocated such a system in the manner of a thesis and not in the manner of an imagined hypothesis.

Thus it seems that by reprinting in Padua the works of Galileo Galilei, among which there is the prohibited Dialogue…by including the decrees and Galileo’s retraction, as the printer promises; with the marginal notes referring to the prohibition to speak of the subject in the manner of a thesis and to the fact that one may discuss it only in the manner of a hypothesis; with the addition of Father Calmet’s dissertation, which for its part confutes such a system if taken in the manner of a thesis; by all these means one remedies very well the damage of this printing, and one corrects the daring of the modern philosophers who accuse of injustice the Roman condemnation and censure of such a system.68

18) Brandmüller also makes a remark about the 1758 decision given by Benedict XIV.

…Roselli also speaks about Copernicus and cites decrees that had been issued against his theory. Remarkably, though, he overlooks the fact that the general prohibition of books that teach Copernicanism had been rescinded by Benedict XIV in 1758.69

Regarding the 1758 decision, there was no carte blanche permission given to Copernican cosmology; rather, the decree contained precautionary and limiting stipulations very similar to the 1741 decision. We can understand these stipulations if we reflect on the prohibitions in the 1619 edition of the Index. It, as well as subsequent editions, had two categories of prohibitions for Copernican works: specific works and general works. The edition of 1758 excluded only the general. Still included were specific books, such as Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, Galileo’s Dialogo and Kepler’s Epitome, obviously intending to give no endorsement to Copernican cosmology.

In light of its conclusion, the events that led to the 1758 decision are important to know. In July 1753, Pope Benedict XIV issued a bull titled, Sollicita ac Provida, directing reforms of the criteria for publications that would be prohibited by the Index of Forbidden Books. In January 1754, Agostino Ricchini, secretary to the Congregation of the Index, inquiring to the pope for additional reforms, desired to remove the ban on various books if proper corrections were made to them.70 Among the examples he cited were works by Descartes, Copernicus and Galileo. Without much ado, Benedict XIV approved Ricchini’s request on February 12, 1754. The important point is that the basis upon which any changes to the Index were approved, or any prohibitions of the heliocentric system were relaxed, centered consistently upon the stipulation that the proposed book must contain the “proper corrections,” namely, that the use of the Copernican system not be promoted as a thesis, but as a hypothesis. Hence, on that specific basis, on April 1757, with the apparent approval of Benedict XIV, the Congregation of the Index eliminated the prohibition concerning “all books teaching the earth’s motion and the sun’s immobility,”71 and thus the new Index was published in 1758, although it still included the prohibition against Copernicus, Foscarini, Zúñiga, Kepler and Galileo, obviously because they stood “uncorrected” in their present form.

Not surprisingly, Galileo historians analyzing the situation from hindsight and predisposed to viewing heliocentrism as the correct model of cosmology, puzzle over what, in the words of Mayaud, seems to be an “illogical decision,” or in the words of Finocchiaro, seems to be an “incomplete censure” by the Index. As they see it, a complete exoneration of Copernicus, Foscarini, Zúñiga, Kepler and Galileo was long overdue. What they fail to see, however, is that the Church was being entirely consistent to what its previous authorities had decreed. Copernicus, Foscarini, Zúñiga, Kepler and Galileo had already been condemned and there would be no lifting of their condemnations for the simple fact that heliocentrism was not suddenly proven correct in 1757. The Church maintained the decision made in 1620 to allow Copernicanism to be published as a hypothetical model and nothing more. Those that advocated it as more than a hypothesis (e.g., Copernicus, Foscarini, Zúñiga, Kepler and Galileo) logically deserved to retain the status of being censured.

We must also conclude, then, that the removal of the all-inclusive sentence: “all books teaching the earth’s motion and the sun’s immobility” did not mean that other books could be published that taught heliocentrism as a fact. The 1758 Index laid the foundation for the meaning and intent of its decision to remove the all-inclusive sentence when it specified that Descartes, Copernicus and Galileo could be published if they contained the “proper corrections.” Logically, the Congregation of the Index would not require Descartes, Copernicus and Galileo to treat heliocentrism hypothetically yet allow “all [other] books teaching the earth’s motion” to do so as a fact. Accordingly, the 1758 decision contains no specific stipulation that “all [other] books” could treat heliocentrism as a fact. Hence, the intended meaning is that “all [other] books” teaching heliocentrism could do so only if they published it as a hypothesis, just as it was required of Descartes, Copernicus and Galileo. Since logic demands consistency, the burden of proof rests with any contrary assessment.

Nevertheless, the question may surface as to why the 1758 Index chose to remove the all-inclusive sentence at all if it remained firm in its intent to bar all books that taught heliocentrism as a fact. The probable reason is that the all-inclusive sentence might have been erroneously interpreted to mean that no other book could even teach heliocentrism as a hypothesis. But since the Church, even in 1616, never said heliocentrism was prohibited from being presented as a hypothesis, it was better, in light of Ricchini’s specific request to publish heliocentric works with the “proper corrections,” to delete the all-inclusive sentence so as to give no suggestion that hypothetical works on heliocentrism were barred from publication.

This potential problem in the all-inclusive “all books” sentence stems from the paragraph in which it was originally drafted in 1616. The decree reads:

And whereas it has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine – which is false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture – of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, which is also taught by Nicolaus Copernicus in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and by Diego de Zúñiga [in his book] on Job…. Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of the Catholic truth, the Holy Congregation has decreed that the said Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium, and Diego de Zúñiga, On Job, be suspended until they be corrected; but that the book of the Carmelite Father, Paolo Antonio Foscarini, be altogether prohibited and condemned, and that all other works likewise, in which the same is taught, be prohibited, as by this present decree, it prohibits, condemns, and suspends them all respectively.72

The phrase, “and that all other works likewise, in which the same is taught,” is ambiguous with respect to whether the decree was referring only to books, like Foscarini’s, that taught heliocentrism as a fact but had already been published and thus could not be corrected, or also included works that taught heliocentrism as a fact but had not yet been published and thus could still be corrected. That the latter condition may be included in the decree’s intent is noted by the addition of “suspends” to the clause “it prohibits, condemns, and suspends them all respectively,” since a single work within the class of “all other works” could not be “suspended” unless there was the intent to allow it to be corrected before being published, which also happened in the case of Copernicus’ book. But since this latter possibility is not clearly stated in the decree, the decree could give the impression that even works that taught heliocentrism as a hypothesis would also be prohibited from being published. Since the Church did not intend such due to the fact that the 1758 Index allowed Copernicus and Galileo’s works to be published if “properly corrected,” then it appears it was best to eliminate the general prohibition but keep the specific prohibition.

19) Eric Sammons: …but no one had asked for an official imprimatur from Rome for such a book. Settele did. Even though most Catholics at this time accepted heliocentrism,

R. Sungenis: According to Dorothy Stimson, who wrote her dissertation on this issue, the populous was divided down the middle, although there were certainly more heliocentrists in the 1820s than there were in the 1630s. What is important to know is that the man who would be defending Settele, Cardinal Maurizio Olivieri, was certainly a devoted heliocentrist.

20) Eric Sammons: …the man in charge of giving out the imprimatur, Fr. Filippo Anfossi, did not. Anfossi still believed that heliocentrism went against a literal interpretation of Scripture and opposed the consensus of the fathers. He didn’t care about any scientific proofs; all that mattered to him was whether he thought it was consistent with Scripture and the Fathers.

R. Sungenis: Sammons makes it sound as if it was just Fr. Anfossi’s personal opinion that was against heliocentrism. Anfossi wasn’t persuaded by “scientific proofs” because he knew instinctively that science couldn’t prove the Earth revolved around the sun, or prove that there was no possible way that the Sun could revolve around the Earth. Even Newton admitted in his Principia that the only way he could keep the Earth revolving around the Sun was to limit the test site to our solar system, since if there were a sufficient enough force outside of our solar system that could counterbalance the Sun, then, as Newton put it: “the Sun could revolve around the Earth, as in the Tychonic system.”

Be that as it may, Anfossi told both Settele and Olivieri that his decision was based on the decision of the 1616/1633 magisterium that condemned heliocentrism as a formal heresy. Hence it wasn’t just the Fathers and Scripture. It was the official interpretation the Church gave to the Fathers and Scripture that was the deciding factor for Anfossi. Thus one would have to prove that the Church’s interpretation of Scripture—given officially given by no less than two popes in canonical actions—was just downright false. To this very day no one has done so.

21) Eric Sammons: He refused the imprimatur. Settele challenged this decision with the Holy Office, thus initiating an ecclesial battle that included many high-ranking officials including Pope Pius VII and would eventually resolve the issue definitively. The case became a media sensation, for even non-Catholics understood its importance in determining how Catholics would approach new scientific discoveries going forward. Would the Church refuse to accept what was now scientifically proven, or would she be willing to recognize that the situation was now different than it was in Galileo’s time? Most bishops and priests involved in the case were on the side of Settele and felt that Anfossi’s refusal was embarrassing for the Church. Since heliocentrism was accepted by almost everyone at this time—and most importantly, had been proven definitively since Galileo’s time—they wanted a way for the Church to leave the Galileo affair behind. After a good deal of back-and-forth (Anfossi was a formidable defender of his beliefs), the Church granted the imprimatur and soon afterwards took all pro heliocentric books off the Index. Everybody understood this as the Church’s formal acceptance of the heliocentric view as consistent with Sacred Scripture, in spite of her long history of interpreting it geocentrically.

R. Sungenis: This is a whitewash of what actually occurred, and the blame is to be put on Brandmüller who represents the typical Catholic who has already made up his mind about accepting heliocentrism as a fact of science; and then tries to find some way to justify it, which invariably leads to twisting the history and the science. Catholics have become experts at this kind of apologetic when dealing with the Galileo affair. They come to the issue agreeing that they cannot accept the Church’s decision that Galileo was wrong, which then leads them on a continual manhunt, looking into every crevice and corner, for some legitimate excuse why they can reject the Church’s decision in the face of every other major decision of the Church that was supported by the Church’s dependence on the Holy Spirit for decisions in faith and morals.

What a dilemma for the Catholic apologist! How does one support the Church’s continual leading by the Holy Spirit and yet in this one major instance it appears the Holy Spirit abandoned the Church and that her Scriptures and her Fathers were wrong? Well, you do what Eric Sammons and Cardinal Brandmüller have done. You claim that science has “proven” heliocentrism and you claim that the Church cleaned up her contradiction by slowly sweeping the problem under the rug until it disappeared in 1820.

Here's what really happened.73 Canon Giuseppe Settele wanted an imprimatur for his 1814 book on heliocentrism that treated it as a fact. Fr. Filippo Anfossi, who was the Master of the Sacred Palace74 and the only one who could authorize imprimaturs, refused to give one to Settele.75 Anfossi had done so before and after with other would-be Copernicans. Unlike the others, Settele appealed to Cardinal Olivieri, the Commissioner of the Index (and later the Holy Office), and a battle ensued between Anfossi and Olivieri. With Anfossi not willing to budge, Olivieri eventually went to Pius VII to override Anfossi.

Here's the kicker. To get Pius VII to side with Settele and against Anfossi, Olivieri twisted what happened in the decisions of the 1616/1633 magisterium that had defined and declared heliocentrism to be a formal heresy. As we saw earlier, Olivieri argued that what would have been a problem for the 1616/1633 Church in Galileo’s day to approve heliocentrism would not be a problem in 1820. The next step was for Olivieri to assume the 1616/1633 Church knew of these problems, which then lead to assuming the 1616/1633 Church did not condemn heliocentrism, per se, but only Galileo’s version of heliocentrism. The f irst problem, according to Olivieri, was that Galileo failed to make the planets go around the sun in elliptical orbits, astronomers accepted from Kepler’s model. Curiously, Olivieri fails to reveal that even Kepler’s book on elliptical orbits, the Epitome, was already put on the Index of Forbidden Books by Alexander VII in 1664. The second problem with Galileo’s model, according to Olivieri, was that Galileo could not explain how a fast moving Earth would not suck away the air from the atmosphere. As Brandmüller argues the case for Olivieri:

Olivieri, on the other hand, had already figured out the main lines of his solution: it is possible to teach heliocentrism today without necessarily detracting thereby from the 1616 and 1633 decrees. Whereas they had condemned the teaching that the earth moves as philosophically absurd and heretical, we can no longer talk about absurdities since we know now about the centripetal force of gravity and the weight of the air, which precluded the absurd consequences of the earth’s motion. Moreover, no one maintains now that the sun is the stationary center of the universe.76

In another book, Brandmüller give us Olivieri’s stated argument regarding the sun. Olivieri states:

Nothing is more false than this, that Canon Settele wants to teach the stability of the sun in the center of world. Inasmuch as he teaches with the worldwide agreement of modern astronomers, the sun is not the center of the world, and not even in the center of our own planetary system, but to only one of the two foci of the ellipse with respect to which each planet revolves around it.77

In other words, Olivieri is cleverly trying to distance Settele from the 1616/1633 decisions by making it appear that Anfossi, in order to show that Settele is contradicting the 1616/1633 decrees, has Settele saying that the sun is immobile in the center of the solar system. So, Olivieri argues that Settele is not saying the sun is immobile or even in the center “but to only one of the two foci of the ellipse with respect to which each planet revolves around it.” As noted earlier, this is a classic case of misdirection for the simple reason that the Galileo controversy is not about how and why celestial bodies move as they do, but only about what celestial body moves around what celestial body, regardless of how and why God designed them to do so. In regard to the simple question of what body goes around what body, the Church was crystal clear in 1616/1633 that it is the sun that goes around the earth, not vice-versa. And, to be fair and complete here, whether the sun goes around the earth in an elliptical orbit; or whether the sun’s gases would be whisked away by the vacuum of space, was not a concern of the 1616/1633 prelature. They assumed that whatever model is real, God knew how to construct it to work as such.

So, Olivieri’s entire thesis is false; and so is Brandmüller’s defense of it. The Galileo records show that the 1616/1633 Church didn’t even discuss elliptical orbits or air movement, much less make their decision against Galileo based on them. And Brandmüller has no excuse since he knows that Anfossi argues the same principle, namely, that elliptical orbits and the movements of air are not the issue and never have been. Brandmüller knows because he directly says so:

In a further step, Anfossi disputes the remark in the Nota that “today” the Copernican system is taught differently in comparison with Galileo’s time. He says that now as before it concerns the same thesis: that the earth moves around the sun. Therefore the same condemnation continues in force.78

Since Brandmüller has never produced a document that shows the 1616 magisterium ever addressed the issue of elliptical orbits or the movements of air if the Earth were to move, then his case must be summarily dismissed with prejudice.

Concerning Brandmüller’s understanding of the decrees of 1616, he makes a rather surprising statement. Anfossi was insistent that because the Church had already condemned heliocentrism in 1616, no one had the right to resurrect the issue, much less say the Church was wrong. Brandmüller records Anfossi as follows:

Anfossi continues by observing that, in his petition to the pope, Settele himself admits that the teaching about the earth’s movement had in fact been condemned. How then can anyone allow the printing of his book? An attempt to weaken the import of the 1616 condemnation by pointing out that only the qualificators spoke them, but not the congregation of cardinals itself, cannot succeed, Anfossi insists. The eleven qualificators were not only eminent theologians; they also acted by order of the congregation and their verdict was confirmed by the pope. The condemnation therefore could not have occurred more authentically and solemnly. In this argument, of course, Anfossi is wrong. No relevant document was ever drawn up in the year 1616 or even later on79 ….he labors under a historically inaccurate conception of the vote by the qualificators in 1616.80

Brandmüller is trying to neutralize Anfossi’s argument by claiming that in 1616 there was “no relevant document” that contained what Anfossi is describing. Although Brandmüller provides footnote “537” to his claim, that footnote is obscure. It merely says, “See GT72 f. = after footnote 85 in Part 1, chap. 2 ‘History.’”81 How is anyone supposed to make sense of this? If the issue is so important (since it implies that without something written from the Qualifiers’ then their statement to Bellarmine or Paul V is null and void), shouldn’t Brandmüller have provided more than a mere citation? And shouldn’t he give reason why a verbal message to Paul V is not as good as a written message? This is certainly not good scholarship. It is desperation. The reader wants to know immediately what Brandmüller’s beef is, and in detail, otherwise he shouldn’t be making such wild claims.

As for what was written in 1616 that would have been considered a “relevant document” by all involved, Fantoli gives a good picture:

Now, the decree of the index of March 1616 was certainly not a ‘disciplinary measure,’ but a decree that reported the doctrinal decision made by Paul V while declaring that the Copernican doctrine, as an explanation for the real structure of the world, was “false and totally contrary to Divine Scripture.” It was the intention of Paul V and of the cardinals of the Inquisition and those of the Congregation of the Index that that decree was definitive and, therefore, certainly not seen by them as relative and reformable.82

Moreover, according to the wording of the March 5, 1616 decree, Paul V’s and Bellarmine’s rejection of Copernicanism was not considered some private affair between them and Galileo. The decree stated very clearly that its information was to be “published everywhere” and that its specific audience was the “whole of Christendom”:

Decree of the Sacred Congregation of the most Illustrious Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church specially delegated by Our Most Holy Lord Pope Paul V and the Holy Apostolic See to publish everywhere throughout the whole of Christendom.83

The 1633 trial reiterated the same thing that the 1616 decree stated and expected. The words approved by Pope Urban VIII were as follows:

…and in it [the Dialogo] there was discovered a patent violation of the aforesaid injunction that had been imposed upon you, for in this book you have defended the said opinion previously condemned and to your face declared to be so, although in the said book you strive by various devices to produce the impression that you leave it undecided, and in express terms probable which, however, is a most grievous error, as an opinion can in no wise be probable which has been declared and defined [in 1616] to be contrary to divine Scripture.84

What is also intriguing is that Brandmüller cites Antonio Grandi who, if we have our wits about us, should only be understood as an indictment against Grandi, but Brandmüller misses it. He writes:

To this Grandi adds a momentous observation: it is very risky to make detailed statements about the more particular circumstances of Galileo’s condemnation, since the acts of the trial had not yet been brought back from Paris and therefore were inaccessible.85

This just begs the question as to why Olivieri and Grandi are insistent on pushing their argument about the “major difficulties with the Copernican system” as the reason why the 1616/1633 decrees condemned heliocentrism. Since the Church of 1820 does not have the 1616/1633 records (since they were absconded by Napoleon in 1809), how can Olivieri and Grandi assume to know what the criteria was for condemning Copernicanism? Obviously they can’t, which was proven by the fact that when the records were finally returned in 1845 no discussion was found about elliptical orbits and air being sucked out of the atmosphere if the Earth were to move. What really happened is that Olivieri and Grandi took their 1820 understanding of how the Copernican system should run (i.e., by elliptical orbits and no concern for air being sucked away due to gravity) and superimposed it on the 1616/1633 Church as if that magisterium should have been concerned about the same two things. And then to add insult to injury, they used their superimposition to claim that Galileo was rejected because of not including those two things in his model. In all candor, there has never been such a deceptive charade in the Catholic Church. In the end we see that the 1616/1633 magisterium stated quite clearly and simply that if anyone made the Earth move around the sun, it was heretical, period.

Yet we see in Brandmüller’s book a constant drumbeating, ad nauseum, of Olivieri’s argument that…

22) Brandmüller: Surely it has been proved satisfactorily now that the arguments once opposing the Copernican system have meanwhile become untenable. However, the ecclesiastical condemnations of his time were based on them, and thus today they are without foundation. Anyone who still makes these arguments only shows that he does not understand what he is talking about—or that he is speaking against his better knowledge…”86

He says much the same a few pages later:

23) Brandmüller: Even when Galileo was condemned on account of his disobedience to the 1616 prohibition, in his recantation he did not have to acknowledge anything that truly would have contradicted the Copernican system. Nor can we discern any indication that the Holy See condemned the two movements of the earth in their true, proper meaning. This is even more true for the time after the Galileo judgment.87

At this point, there is little hope for Brandmüller. Since he has become convinced through Olivieri that the real issue for the 1616/1633 was the details of how the Copernican system operated, he is blind to the fact that the only issue on the table is what revolves around what. A child could understand it. But men with philosophical, metaphysical, religious, political or scientific agendas can often become blind to such simplicity. Consequently they cloud the issue with all kinds of confusion hoping that their view may rise to the top and they can bask in its glory.

At another point, Brandmüller is trying to devise a way that Galileo could have retracted his beliefs to satisfy both himself and the 1616/1633 Church. The twisting of meaning that Brandmüller must go through in order to accomplish this goal is amazing to watch.

24) Brandmüller: This now results in a meaning which Galileo could hold without any dishonesty. This antithesis reads as follows: The sun is not located in the center of the universe and does move. But that is entirely in keeping with today’s astronomical knowledge, according to which the sun is one of the two foci of the elliptical orbit described by the planets. It moves not only around its own axis, but also on an orbit together with its planets and their moons, heading toward the constellation Hercules.88

Of course here we have Brandmüller committing the logical fallacy of using as proof the very thing he is trying to prove. There is no proof that the sun is heading toward Hercules since the very “relativity” that Brandmüller touts a little later in his defense allows for Hercules to be heading toward the sun.89

25) Brandmüller: Even though Galileo could not yet have known this, he must have recognized nevertheless that the sun could not be considered the central point in relation to the f ixed stars, since they did not move around it.90

Unbeknownst to Brandmüller, the Neo-Tychonic geocentric system has the sun as the geometric center of the universe, while the Earth is the non-moving center of mass for the universe. The sun is also the pivot point for the daily revolution of the stars around the fixed Earth, yet because the stars move a little faster than the sun, they rotate one turn more per year around the Earth, which also means that the daily sidereal rate around the Earth is: 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds, while the solar day is exactly 24 hours.

26) Brandmüller: Galileo also knew that earthly bodies fall toward the center of the earth and not toward the sun. Therefore he was able to retract the second thesis, too. All that he had to profess — and he could — was that the sun is not immobile. All the rest was not included in the formula of recantation.91

In other words, Brandmüller is proposing two different definitions of how the sun moves so that he can get Galileo off the hook. When the Church in 1616/1633 denied the sun was immobile, it was for the purpose of declaring that, in order to make the day/night sequence, the sun had to move around the Earth in 24 hours. For Galileo—so that he can say, along with the Church, that the sun is not immobile—could also believe that the sun moves toward Hercules. Brandmüller is trying to tell us that these two different views are the same, merely because they both make the sun move, and on that level, Galileo can safely recant his idea and be exonerated by the Church. The most horrifying thing about this comparison is that Brandmüller doesn’t see it for the cockamamie manipulation it is. This is the same kind of twisting of evidence that permeates his book.

27) Brandmüller: As far as the earth was concerned, the positive antithesis had to read as follows: the earth is the center and does not move. But who does not understand clearly that the earth is the central point for all bodies that surround it and fall toward it? The center for water and air? Also with regard to heavenly phenomena, for which the earth, from our vantage point, really is the center? Significantly, Galileo did not have to acknowledge the earth as the center of the universe, but only as a center!92

As he changed the meaning of “moving,” now Brandmüller, ala Olivieri, wants to change the meaning of “center” in order to get Galileo off the hook. We are presented with two models: (a) the Earth, as the center of its water and air, can still revolve around the sun. This is different than: (b) the Earth as the center of the universe, which, by definition, means the Earth would not move but remain in the center. Brandmüller then tries to tell us that Galileo, using explanation (b), could also use it to include (a) if he wanted to abide by the stipulation of the 1616/1633 decree that the Earth is in the center. All one has to do is leave out what the Earth is the center of! That Brandmüller does this switcheroo when he knows the 1616/1633 decrees were only allowing (b) because the decrees were referring to the Earth’s relationship to the sun, not the Earth’s relationship to its water and air, means that this has become a shell game for him. Brandmüller will manipulate whatever he can to make Galileo the hero and make the Church an ignoramus.

28) Brandmüller: When Olivieri wrote this down, he was certainly not aware that with this view he was not far from the starting point of the theory of relativity! As far as the earth’s movement is concerned, he continued, the phrase added by the qualificators, “motu etiam diurno” (also by a daily motion), was not included in the recantation formula. Even apart from this, can’t we speak, really, about a sort of immobility of the earth? Isn’t it motionless with regard to all that comes to be and passes away on its surface? Doesn’t it remain the unshakable foundation for all that happens on it? Is it not motionless with regard to falling bodies? Can’t we say that it does not move, since as a whole it remains stable despite all its movement? This is true also with regard to the air.93

R. Sungenis: This is just another way of making the same argument. What Brandmüller misses, of course, is that the 1616/1633 decrees did not discuss the Earth’s relationship to its water and air, but the Earth’s relationship to the sun. Once the concern is limited to that celestial arena, the only issue at stake is whether the Earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the Earth. Anything else that Brandmüller tries to add to the scene is not only irrelevant but deceitful.

29) Brandmüller: Finally we can call the earth motionless with regard to its relation to the other heavenly bodies, too. This relation has an unchangeable regularity, without any disorder appearing in the heavens because of a cessation of the movement. Galileo could swear to all this with a clear conscience.94

R. Sungenis: In this instance Brandmüller wants to change the definition of “motionless” so that it is equal to “unchangeable.” This allows him to assert that an unchangeable moving Earth is the same thing as an unchangeable unmoving Earth. And he thinks he can do so because, after all, everything’s relative! I don’t think even Galileo would want to twist the meaning of words to this degree. Rather, he understood that the Church was saying. That is why he recanted his position in 1633, and did it again in 1639 when his friend, Francesco Rinuccini told him that an astronomer, Giovanni Pieroni, had discovered proof, by stellar parallax, that the Earth moved around the sun. Galileo wrote a three-page letter to Rinuccini and told him it could not be so. Rinuccini was so upset that he erased Galileo’s signature from off the letter and hid it among his effects. The letter was discovered three hundred years later. Here is a small paragraph from it:

The falsity of the Copernican system should not in any way be called into question, above all, not by Catholics, since we have the unshakeable authority of the Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the most erudite theologians, whose consensus gives us certainty regarding the stability of the Earth, situated in the center, and the motion of the sun around the Earth. The conjectures employed by Copernicus and his followers in maintaining the contrary thesis are all sufficiently rebutted by that most solid argument deriving from the omnipotence of God. He is able to bring about in different ways, indeed, in an infinite number of ways, things that, according to our opinion and observation, appear to happen in one particular way. We should not seek to shorten the hand of God and boldly insist on something beyond the limits of our competence….D’Arcetri, March 29, 1641. I am writing the enclosed letter to Rev. Fr. Fulgenzio, from whom I have heard no news lately. I entrust it to Your Excellency to kindly make sure he receives it.”95

At one point, Olivieri also tries to argue that Settele’s book has nothing to do with the decrees of the 1600s but is merely a scientific treatise explaining that, if the Earth were moving, it would present no scientific or theological obstacle for the Church, and therefore the Church should allow the Earth to move, as was the “common opinion of astronomers.” After all, Newton had presumably shown fifty years after the 1633 Galileo trial that the smaller Earth must revolve around the larger sun; and Bradley had presumably shown the next century that a moving Earth is what causes stellar aberration; and Calandrelli in the same century (later Bessel in 1838) had presumably shown that a moving Earth causes stellar parallax. These were formidable foes for Anfossi. How could he stand against them, especially since Olivieri seemed so adept at science and Anfossi would only argue from Scripture and the Fathers?

Pius VII, being weak and sickly for many years; and having been imprisoned by Napoleon in France for five years prior (1809 -1814), and from which Napoleon confiscated all the Galileo records (7,900 of them) from the Vatican archives and moved them to a library in Paris (and were not returned until 1845), Pius VII had little upon which to investigate Olivieri’s claims. If Olivieri was interested in doing the right thing, the whole matter should have been postponed until the Galileo records could be retrieved from Napoleon. But under intense pressure from Olivieri, and his cohort, Father Abbot Cappellari, as well as all the newspapers from Europe demanding the pope to give Settele an imprimatur, Pius VII verbally approved the imprimatur under that duress. Anyone who knows canonical protocol realizes that this whole escapade reeks of clerical malfeasance.

Pius VII was already known to have signed things he should not have signed. As even Brandmüller enlightens us:

After that followed, in 1812, the deportation of Pius VII to Fontainebleau and that cynical coup by Napoleon with which he obtained the signature of the physically broken pope on agreements that were damaging to the Church’s interests, interests, which the emperor immediately proclaimed as a new concordat.96

Olivieri himself knew the pope was not physically and mentally up to the task; in addition to the fact that the pope had serious reservations about Olivieri’s insistence that Settele be given an imprimatur. As Brandmüller himself admits:

The assessor, Msgr. Turiozzi, on the other hand, should ask the pope to impose silence in this matter on both Anfossi and the majordomo Frosini. However, the decision does not seem to have been easy for the pope. In Olivieri’s opinion, “non ha petto fermo” (he has no intestinal fortitude).97

In short, Olivieri used and abused Pius VII. Yet this is who Brandmüller and Sammons have chosen as their mentor to justify their belief that in 1820 the Church reached a “resolution” on the Galileo affair! Some resolution. Anytime a pope is forced to make a decision based on false evidence and his own physical weakness, it means that whatever he decides is likely to be null and void. Why didn’t Brandmüller and Sammons address this dimension of the issue? Instead, Brandmüller makes Anfossi out to be a fool but makes the lying Olivieri into a virtual hero for the whole world. Although Brandmüller recognizes Anfossi as having “an honest, unselfish zeal for the Church’s cause, and an unbending character,” at the same time he faults him for being “intransigent” with that zeal; and doing so “with a rather mediocre intellectual talent” and a “skepticism of everything new” who thus “complicated the Settele affair exceedingly.”98

Another indication that Pius VII—who was a man of little stature and very sickly, was not up to the task of dealing with Olivieri, who was a big man and of very sound health and mind—was that after Settele received his imprimatur, he went back to see Pius VII in January 1821 hoping to receive some kind of award (Pius VII then died two years later in 1823). He received no reward. Instead, according to Settele’s diary for January 24, 1821, the pope still…

“…expressed doubts about the demonstrability of heliocentrism and said, grinning, that he read in a book by Voltaire…that Friedrich II of Prussia had once told d’Alembert that even the natives in Madagascar cited proofs for the movement of the sun.” 99

One might surmise from this quip that Pius VII was not in his right mind, for what sane person would make such a contradiction to the imprimatur he just approved that had written off 1800 years of Church belief and teaching on geocentrism? To no surprise, Brandmüller tries to tone down Pius VII’s obtuse comment by attributing it to the pope’s “humor and irony.” But it could just as well be attributed to a man who was in much anguish because he was unduly pressured into making a wrong decision against what he truly believed in his heart—that heliocentrism had not been proven and he had no right to allow Settele to act as if it had been proven.

That Pius VII’s statement about Voltaire was not a case of “humor” is also shown by the fact that even Brandmüller cites the pope’s use of the Voltaire quote long before the pope’s meeting with Settele. In the previous instance, Pius VII uses the Voltaire citation against Olivieri when Olivieri and his entourage first approached the pope about the elliptical orbits and air issues. As Brandmüller puts it:

So first they sounded out the intentions of the pope, to whom Msgr. Cristaldi presented Olivieri’s arguments [i.e., elliptical orbits and air issues] verbally. The pontiff, however, obviously did not want to tie himself down and backed out of the affair with a quotation by Voltaire: When the philosopher spoke to Frederick II of Prussia about the proofs for the earth’s movement, Frederick replied that the natives of Madagascar had proofs, too, for the movement of the sun. Thus both sides cited their experience.100

So here we see Pius VII avoiding Olivieri’s attempts to persuade him to accept heliocentrism by shoving Voltaire in Olivieri’s face. So what does Olivieri do? Since Pius VII won’t give him an audience, Olivieri decides that Settele should ask the pope directly for an imprimatur, thus again bypassing Fr. Anfossi. Olivieri would draft the six-page request for Settele. Many others got involved, both pro and con, including Anfossi who by this time persuaded the pope back to the traditional view, along with help from Monsignor Antonio Frosini who worked out an agreement with Olivieri and Turiozzi that Settele could settle the controversy by agreeing to changing his wording from, “Movendosi la terra intorno al sole” (“since the earth moves around the sun,” to “Posto il moto della terra” (“assuming the earth’s movement”). This would be in line with what was allowed by Bellarmine to Copernicus’ 1543 book, De revolutionibus, that is, that all of Copernicus statements that treated heliocentrism as a fact (nine in all) would be changed to hypothetical statements.

In another one of Olivieri’s clandestine moves, since Pius VII was in limbo on the issue, Olivieri figured he would have better odds if the pope sent the matter to the Holy Office. Of course, the best way to secure a positive decision from the Holy Office was to first make Olivieri the commissioner of the Holy Office! After Olivieri was elected as commissioner, he told Settele to make a request to the Holy Office for the imprimatur.

We then find that Olivieri does even more double-dealing. As Brandmüller admits:

The imprimatur was therefore granted on December 26, and now Olivieri also made known the reason why the imprimatur was to be granted by Frattini — the Holy Office preferred not to make any appearance whatsoever in the matter, but rather to behave as it did after the Galileo trial: “cioè di lasciar correre questa opinione senza opporvisi” (that is, to let this opinion make the rounds without opposing it).101

First, the reality is, the magisterium under Pope Urban VIII that conducted the 1633 trial against Galileo did everything but “let its opinion make the round without opposing it.” Not only was Urban VIII in protracted discussions a year before Galileo’s trial with the Grand Duke of Tuscany in which he showed the Medici’s that Galileo was teaching heresy and implored the help of the Grand Duke to forbidding it; after the Galileo trial, in order to require the whole of Europe to concede to Rome’s condemnation of heliocentrism and Galileo, the pope had letters sent to all the papal nuncios, inquisitors, bishops, priests and universities informing them of the pope’s decision against Galileo, requiring their immediate acceptance of Rome’s decision. If they didn’t reply in the allotted time, the letter threatened discipline. So much for just “letting the opinion make the rounds.” As Dorothy Stimson notes:

Pope Urban had no intention of concealing Galileo’s abjuration and sentence. Instead, he ordered copies of both to be sent to all inquisitors and papal nuncios that they might notify all their clergy and especially all the professors of mathematics and philosophy within their districts…102

Finocchiaro confirms this situation:

In the summer of 1633 all papal nuncios in Europe and all local inquisitors in Italy received from the Roman Inquisition copies of the sentence against Galileo and his abjuration, together with orders to publicize them. Such publicity was unprecedented in the annals of the Inquisition and never repeated. As a result, many manuscript copies of Galileo’s sentence and abjuration have survived in European archives. ….From the replies of the nuncios and inquisitors, there is concrete evidence that the sentence circulated in the manner intended. Letters of reply have survived from the nuncios to Naples, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Paris, Brussels, Cologne, Vilnius, Lucerne and Madrid, and from the inquisitors of Florence, Padua, Bologna, Vicenza, Venice, Ceneda, Brescia, Ferrara, Aquileia, Perugia, Como, Pavia, Siena, Faenza, Milan Crema, Cremona, Reggio Emilia, Mantua, Gubbio, Pisa, Novara, Piacenza, and Tortona. The most common reply was a brief acknowledgment of receipt and a promise that the orders would be carried out. However, in this case the standard response was not sufficient for the Inquisition. It expected to be notified that the orders had in fact been carried out. Those who did not send such a follow-up letter were soon reprimanded and had to write back to Cardinal Barberini to explain the oversight of the delay….The quickest promulgation occurred in university circles.103

Finocchiaro adds:

We know today that such a promulgation of Galileo’s condemnation had been decided at the Inquisition meeting of 16 June 1633, presided over by Pope Urban VIII; this was the same meeting at which Galileo’s trial was discussed and the pope reached a decision on its conclusion, the verdict, and the penalty. Thus the promulgation was not an afterthought but part of a well-considered plan. In fact, the plan was reaffirmed at the meeting of June 30, when the pope was again presiding over the Inquisition meeting and was a little more explicit about its details. Cardinal [Antonio] Barberini’s letter followed immediately thereafter.104

Second, that Olivieri would, on the one hand, force the Holy Office to become involved so as to approve the imprimatur for Settele when Olivieri knew that Pius VII “had no intestinal fortitude,” and that Pius VII had previously shunned Olivieri (by using the Voltaire quote) when Olivieri asked the pope to grant the imprimatur for Settele; and on the other hand, Olivieri would pretend as if the Holy Office used a hands off approach to the imprimatur with the express purpose of not sullying its reputation so that it would look like it had not strong-armed Anfossi, shows the kind of man we are dealing with in Maurizio Olivieri. He is a political animal that will twist events and coerce his opponents behind the scenes yet will be ready take full credit if the matter happens to go in his favor.

In any case, Brandmüller notes that:

As we know, the Holy Office decided to grant permission to print Settele’s work on the condition that he would add to the text an explanatory note, which would make clear why the condemnations from the year 1616 were no longer an obstacle.105

Notice they are sticking with Olivieri’s original argument, namely, that the 1616/1633 magisterium didn’t outrightly condemn heliocentrism, but thought heliocentrism was wrong because Galileo didn’t put the planets in elliptical orbits or explain how a moving Earth would not have its atmosphere whisked away. This, as we have seen many times, was a barefaced lie since the only matter the 1616/1633 magisterium was concerned with is any attempt by any would-be author to make the Earth go around the sun. Although Brandmüller is quite prolific about the Galileo affair, not once does he show where in the 1616/1633 decrees the magisterium even discussed elliptical orbits or the atmosphere of the Earth being sucked away.

Along these lines, Brandmüller makes some other audacious and fallacious remarks about the 1616 Church and its proceedings:

Brandmüller: Now Grandi first points out the fact that as early as 1620 the Congregation of the Index explicitly allowed advocating the Copernican system as a hypothesis. It is clear from this that in 1616 it could not have been condemned at all as an error of faith or a heresy, for such things could not be admitted even in the form of a hypothesis, since a hypothesis might someday be proved true.106

Brandmüller sides with Grandi a little later by faulting Anfossi for misinterpreting the 1616 decree. He writes:

30) Brandmüller: Anfossi also interprets incorrectly the decree of the Congregation of the Index dated March 5, 1616, because he does not take into consideration the one dated May 15, 1620, which contained the emendations to be made to the book by Copernicus.107

On one count, Brandmüller’s comment is quite hypocritical since in the 1820 deliberations between Anfossi and Settele, Settele refused Anfossi’s request to amend Settele’s book with hypothetical statements that the Earth revolved around the sun, a change that all parties involved admitted would have solved the problem about giving Settele an imprimatur.

On the second count, Grandi’s argument is illogical and anachronistic. The 1616 decree did not follow the 1620 decree. Obviously, it came before the 1620 decree. So how can Brandmüller base the 1616 decree on what the 1620 decree said? As it stands, the 1616 decree first anathematized anyone attempting to make Copernicanism a fact or thesis, even as it did with Fr. Foscarini in 1615, whose book, which had already been published, could not be corrected and therefore it had to be banned by the Church.

As a concession, the Church allowed hypothetical statements about heliocentrism to be made in books. Whether this was the wisest move the Church could have made is questionable, but the fact is She did it. If anything, it proves that Her main concern was with those who presented heliocentrism as a fact, which would be heresy and condemnable. This was evident in the following years when Galileo— who was given a canonical injunction in 1616 never to write or talk about heliocentrism for the rest of his life—appeared to be coming close to presenting heliocentrism as a fact, not a hypothesis, in his Dialogo, despite the fact that he tried to hide his thesis behind three f ictional characters. So, in a tit-for-tat, since Galileo was suspected of treating heliocentrism as a fact, the Church likewise convicted him of being “suspected of heresy.” And the fact remains that the 1633 Church would not have been able to convict Galileo of suspected heresy if the heresy had not already been “declared and defined” as a heresy in 1616.

Grandi than adds another dubious statement:

In fact at that time a corresponding vote by the qualifactors of the congregation had not been taken. Instead they had limited themselves to condemning Galileo’s teaching as harmful and contrary to Sacred Scripture. This, however, referred to the literal sense of Sacred Scripture.

Does it really make a difference when the qualifiers stated that Copernicanism was a formal heresy? Of course not. Rather, the mere fact that they added the formal heresy charge meant they were deadly serious about their decision. The 1633 magisterium believed the same, which is why it reiterated the charge of “formal heresy” from 1616 when it convicted Galileo of being suspect of it. Here are its words:

The proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture.108 The proposition that the Earth is not the center of the world and immovable but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith.109

On the issue of the second proposition’s clause, “is equally absurd and false philosophically,” Brandmüller tries to neutralize it from the mouth of Grandi:

31) Brandmüller: He [Grandi] points out instead that the Holy See in magisterial decisions has never taken its orientation from philosophical criteria but rather from divine revelation alone, as it is available in Scripture and Tradition. Galileo was not condemned because he presented a false and philosophically absurd teaching, which therefore was also contrary to Sacred Scripture, but rather on account of the suspicion of heresy that he had incurred by the fact that he advocated a view that contradicted Sacred Scripture.110

The fact is that the Sentence says, verbatim, Galileo was condemned because he presented a false and philosophically absurd teaching. There is no mystery here. The mystery, rather, is why Brandmüller can’t see it. The reason is that he apparently doesn’t understand the two Sentences in relation to one another. The first Sentence is the stronger of the two since Scripture “expressly” says the sun moves from its place, such as in Psalm 19:4-6:

In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.

Due to this “express” language, the absolute certainty is that the sun moves around the Earth each day. As such it would be “formally heretical” to say that the sun does not move from its place and does not revolve around the Earth. That being the case, the next proposition regarding the Earth not moving would necessarily follow since if the sun revolves around the Earth then, logically and scientifically, the Earth cannot be revolving around the sun. Since at that time the word “philosophical” referred to science and its logical formulations, this is the reason the Sentence says that a moving Earth would be “equally absurd and false philosophically,” that is, it’s “absurd” because it is not logical, and it is “false philosophically” because it is not scientific, for no philosopher or scientist would ever assert that the sun and the Earth both go around each other. Therefore, if the sun goes around the Earth, it is logically deduced that the Earth does not go around the sun.

But why doesn’t the Church say that to believe the Earth moves is also “formally heretical”? Because in some passages of Scripture that say the Earth doesn’t move, it’s possible for someone to interpret the language as referring to the Earth’s stability rather than movement in space. In allowing an alternate interpretation, however, the Church is not conceding the case; rather, She is only saying it is possible for some to interpret it as such and thus it cannot be a formal heresy. But She is also saying that if someone were to use the non-moving Earth passages of Scripture and thereby assert that the Earth could move around the sun, that position would be “equally absurd and false philosophically” since the two bodies cannot revolve around each other. Only when one body moves and the other remains in the center could we have the daily day/night sequence. As such, the Church also prohibits a rotating Earth (“and also with a diurnal motion”) for the same reason, for if the sun is revolving daily around the Earth then it is the sun only that is causing the 24-hour day/night rhythm.

To confirm the Church’s intent, here is what She said just prior to the Sentences at the 1633 tribunal. Notice there is nothing said about “major difficulties with the Copernican system” as the reason She had to reject it, but only that Copernicanism is false from the get-go, and obviously it will remain rejected no matter how much it might be “improved”:

Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, age seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves, and also with diurnal motion;111 for having disciples to whom you taught the same doctrine; for holding correspondence with certain mathematicians of Germany concerning the same; for having printed certain letters, entitled “On the Sunspots,” wherein you developed the same doctrine as true; and for replying to the objections from the Holy Scriptures, which from time to time were urged against it, by glossing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning:112 and whereas there was thereupon produced the copy of a document in the form of a letter, purporting to be written by you to one formerly your disciple, and in this divers propositions are set forth, following the position of Copernicus, which are contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture:113

Sentence: This Holy Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Holy Faith, by command of His Holiness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition,114 the two propositions of the stability of the sun and the motion of the Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:

Thus the record clearly shows that the 1633 conviction of Galileo as being suspect of heresy was based directly and entirely on the 1616 Qualifiers decision, confirmed by Paul V, that heliocentrism was a formal heresy because it defied Scripture. Only those who are oppressed with the spirit of doubt can read these Sentences and disregard how vigorously the Church gave itself to condemning “one of the most pernicious heresies it ever faced,” which are the words of Pope Urban VIII to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1632 just a few months before Galileo’s trial.

In spite of the above, Grandi and Olivieri continued their caper of trying to make the issue one of the weaknesses of the Copernican system and ignoring the fact that it was the Copernican system, in itself, that the 1616/1633 Church rejected. As long as they could play the game of misdirecting everyone’s attention from the real issue, they continued to gain adherents for Settele. As Brandmüller puts it:

Therefore, the report continued, the Copernican system won more and more adherents, since its weaknesses had been overcome and new proofs had been brought to light.115

As Anfossi began to discover the shell game that was being played against him and Pius VII, including Settele’s refusal to change the wording of his book from fact to hypothesis, which, in fact, Settele could not change since he had taken an oath to the French Enlightenment ten years earlier, push came to shove and Anfossi was convinced that…

…the pope had been hoodwinked and for that reason alone had given his approval for the printing….he now revoked the imprimatur for Settele’s work, which he had issued on the assumption that it was in keeping with the pope’s will. He wanted nothing to do with a matter that damaged the prestige of the Holy See and was a violation of his duties.116

Unfortunately, Brandmüller always sides with Grandi and Olivieri since he is adamant that they are right about heliocentrism, which is why he resorts to calling Anfossi “intransigent” and of “mediocre intellect.” The reality is that Anfossi was smart enough to figure out the shell game and thus withdrew his approval for the imprimatur. Obviously, if Anfossi could temporarily be hoodwinked into signing the approval for Settele’s imprimatur, then Pius VII could especially be hoodwinked considering his weak and fragile state. Still, if Pius VII disagreed with Anfossi’s decision, he could have fired him, but he never did.

As for Fr. Abbot Cappellari, he was Olivieri’s cohort in getting the imprimatur for Settele.117 The importance of his contribution is that in 1831 he became Pope Benedict XVI and four years later he took Galileo and Copernicus off the Index without any explanation whatsoever, or gave any recognition of the fact that removals from Index’s don’t trump the canonical and trial decisions of 1616 or 1633. The importance of this is noted when, in 1765, the French astronomer, Joseph Lalande, went to Rome seeking to have Galileo’s Dialogo taken off the Index. Lalande was told that because Galileo’s condemnation came under the aegis of a canonical trial, the legal sentence against Galileo had to be revoked first before any consideration to reevaluating the Dialogo could be initiated.118 Those rules don’t change for Gregory XVI, nor do they change today for Giuseppe Settele. The Settele imprimatur means only that we had some sketchy characters in the pontificate of Pius VII trying to make lower-level decisions as if they superseded previous higher-level decisions.

32) Eric Sammons: While reading Cardinal Brandmüller’s wonderful account of the Settele case, in which he demonstrates sympathy for everyone involved, I was struck by how much the debate corresponds to similar debates today. 19th century Anfossi’s arguments are exactly the same as the arguments of Owen for a young earth today: it’s the literal interpretation of Scripture and the consensus of the Fathers, so Catholics must accept it! Yet the Church decided 200 years ago that this is not the proper hermeneutical approach.

R. Sungenis: No, what one fabricator decided in doing his clandestine work (Olivieri) was what ended up 200 years ago as what people like Eric Sammons would depend upon today to further distance themselves from the Fathers and the literal reading of Scripture. The question is, what is Mr. Sammons going to do about this information I’m bringing him? Will he just bury it and hope I go away? Or will he have a moment of conscience and tell people the truth?

As for what Owens and Sungenis do, if Mr. Sammons is making it sound as if we limit our argumentation to the “literal interpretation of Scripture and the consensus of the Fathers,” then he is telling another falsehood. The Kolbe Center alone has had at least a dozen scientists on its staff, most with PhD’s in their field of study. Over the last 25 years, they have produced a plethora of scientific evidence for a six-day creation and young age to the Earth and universe. I myself, separate from the Kolbe Center, have published at least a dozen book dealing only with the science of geocentrism; as well as scientific critiques on current Big Bang science. For instance, the three volumes of Galileo Was Wrong, published since 2005 and now in its 12th edition, has two volumes devoted to nothing but science, while the third volume is strictly about the Fathers, Scripture and the magisterial decrees upholding geocentrism. Obviously, Mr. Sammons has neither read nor recognized any of them otherwise he would not be making false claims that we only use the Fathers and Scripture.

33) Eric Sammons: The main defender of Settele (and opponent of Fr. Anfossi) was Fr. Maurizio Benedetto Olivieri, the commissioner of the Holy Office. He forcefully refuted Anfossi, choosing as the motto of his defense a principle from St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine: “It is very harmful to assert or to deny things which have nothing to do with the teaching of piety as though they did pertain to sacred doctrine.”

R. Sungenis: Yes, that principle from Aquinas and Augustine is certainly true, but applying it to the Galileo case is certainly wrong, especially since both Augustine and Aquinas were geocentrists who would have died for the doctrine. The Church already made the decision, and it is not for Eric Sammons to undo it. That is, the Church already made the decision that the Galileo matter was one of doctrine, and therefore also of piety. Bellarmine, Paul V, and Urban VIII made that crystal clear. Again, it is the very reason they convicted Galileo of being “suspect of heresy” since he went against the decree of Paul V that heliocentrism was a “heresy.” It was a heresy because Scripture, which is the word of the living God, says the sun moves and the earth does not. Anyone who contradicts that fact is contradicting God, which is a heresy and damnable. Moreover, Scripture is constantly referring to the fact that God “made the heavens and the Earth and all that is in them”119 to garner piety from man; to humble man; to show him he makes the scales go up instead of down (Is 40:15).

34) Eric Sammons: Olivieri demonstrated that, since heliocentrism had been scientifically proven, the Church had to accept that previous literal interpretations of Scripture—including those by the Church Fathers—which advocated for geocentrism were erroneous.

R. Sungenis: The only thing Olivieri demonstrated is that he was a good pretender that heliocentrism had been scientifically proven, even as Mr. Sammons does without showing us any proof in this paper. Olivieri also showed he was a very good liar that preyed on weak and sickly people like Pius VII; something for which he had not the slightest tinge of conscience for the mortal sin he committed against the Church for lying to the pope. That Mr. Sammons could honor such a person and continue his sin, and do it without disturbing his own conscience, is also most amazing.

35) Eric Sammons: So how should Scripture be properly interpreted in these instances? Olivieri argues that Biblical passages suggesting an unmoving earth are simply colloquial ways of speaking, and that the literal meaning of the text isn’t intended to be a scientific description of the earth’s place in the cosmos.

R. Sungenis: Of course, but Olivieri wasn’t in charge; and he had to lie to get the guy who was in charge, Pius VII, to unwittingly endorse Olivieri’s lie and thus put himself against the whole tradition of the Church and its literal interpretation of Scripture that had been its legacy for the 1800 years prior. And all for what? Nothing, since the scientists today tell us that heliocentrism is just their preference, not a scientific law or proven fact. What a total fiasco! But that’s what lies do, even as the first lie told in the Garden Eden destroyed the human race. Likewise, the lie told by Olivieri has more or less destroyed the Catholic Church since now we have people all over the Church who say that since the Bible is wrong about cosmology, then the Bible is also erroneous when it speaks about history, science, math, genealogies, chronologies, names, dates, geographical places, authors of books, etc.120 There is even one Galileo historian who says that since the Church was wrong on Galileo, she could, and probably is, wrong on contraception, and other societal issues.121 These people have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.

36) Eric Sammons: Further, because the Church Fathers accepted Ptolemy’s cosmology like everyone else in their time, they had no reason to look for a different interpretation of those passages, but now that we understand that Ptolemy is wrong, we can adjust our interpretation.

R. Sungenis: None of the Fathers mention Ptolemy. What the Fathers knew for certain was what Scripture told them that the sun moved around the earth and the earth did not move. None of them grappled with how and why this took place. They just believed what Scripture said because God authored it. No “adjustment” was thus needed. “Adjustment” is needed for those who want to argue against Scripture by claiming that the phases of Venus won’t allow a geocentric universe, and thus the Bible must be wrong. For them, the Jesuits developed the Tychonic model, which thwarted Galileo’s claim about Venus. And today we have the Neo-Tychonic model so that we can answer things like stellar parallax and stellar aberration. God always gives us the answer to show us why the Bible is true and every man a liar.

37) Eric Sammons: Olivieri noted that this is exactly the path that St. Robert Bellarmine suggested: if scientific proof is furnished, then the Church can adapt accordingly, since these were not matters of faith or morals. To be intransigent to change in this matter would actually be harmful for souls.

R. Sungenis: As noted earlier, Mr. Sammons’ argument doesn’t hold water since Bellarmine, regardless of his remark that the Church could change her interpretation of Scripture, went ahead with Paul V to make a doctrine out of geocentrism and call heliocentrism a formal heresy. So the dye was cast, and Bellarmine wasn’t afraid to do it, and that was because, unlike Brandmüller and Sammons, he trusted that the Holy Spirit would not allow the Church to be deceived on a matter of official Scripture interpretation. And if Mr. Sammons rejects this logic, then he is caught by another piece of logic, which is, if he believes the Church of 1616 can be so deceived to think that a matter that isn’t a matter of faith is, indeed, a matter of faith; and also think that the same Church of 1616, trusting that they read the Bible rightly and in-line with their 1600-year tradition that, in the same manner of literal interpretation, wasn’t afraid to interpret Matthew 26:26 (“This is my body; take and eat”) in a literal manner so that the bread became the body of Christ, then the logical corollary is that Mr. Sammons’ magisterium of 2000+ can be just as deceived. If the Holy Spirit can bypass the Church of 1616 so that the Church does not recognize its crucial errors, then the Holy Spirit can bypass Mr. Sammons’ Church in the same manner, and the promise of Jesus that he would send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth would become haphazard, or even null and void. What Mr. Sammons needs to understand is that Catholicism is an ‘all or nothing’ religion. We either have it all right or we are all wrong. Truth does not come in bits and pieces in which some of the pieces are true and some are false. That religion is what we call Protestantism.

38) Eric Sammons: By accepting Olivieri’s arguments and methodology, the Church, including Pope Pius VII, established a solid framework for Catholics in the scientific age.

R. Sungenis: The only time Olivieri’s “arguments and methodology” were used was in the papal speech of 1992, a speech written by the highly liberal Cardinal Paul Poupard of France who is a devoted evolutionist and heliocentrist. It is probably no coincidence that Poupard gave the imprimatur to Brandmüller’s and Greipl’s book, Copernico Galilei E La Chiesa, and did so in 1992 in the same year that he wrote the speech for John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Science. It is also no coincidence that one of the main arguments of the pope’s speech is that the matter of heliocentrism and Galileo was “resolved” in 1820. It is also no coincidence that Brandmüller and Greipl tried to argue that the approval of Settele’s imprimatur by Pius VII set the precedent for the acceptance of heliocentrism in the Catholic Church, without revealing, of course, Olivieri’s achieving that goal by lying to Pius VII. What Brandmüller didn’t anticipate is that immediately after the papal speech, numerous Galileo historians wrote critiques of it (Coyne, McMullen, Mayaud, Finocchiaro, Fantoli, et al) revealing, for the first time in modern accounts, Olivieri’s malfeasance of lying to Pius VII in order to get Galileo exonerated and heliocentrism accepted, which malfeasance, any high-placed cleric would know, makes the decision of Pius VII for Settele null and void. Annabale Fantoli (who is a Copernican and in no sense favorable to Anfossi), said of Olivieri’s rejoinder against Anfossi:

Olivieri’s report, as I have already discussed, contained a completely absurd interpretation of the decree of 1616 and of Galileo’s condemnation.122

From that time onward few were using Settele’s imprimatur as a precedent of anything except clerical sin in high places. Who would want to use a blatant falsehood told to the pope as the basis for why we don’t have to abide by the magisterial decisions of 1616 and 1633, not to mention the Fathers and Scripture’s literal interpretation? The only one still using it are Eric Sammons and Cardinal Brandmüller.

39) Eric Sammons: We do not reject scientific theories out of hand when they seem to contradict either our interpretation of Scripture or the consensus of the Fathers.

R. Sungenis: We don’t depend on whether they “seem to contradict” Scripture or the Fathers. We reject them when we know for certain that they contradict Scripture or the Fathers. And we don’t do this ourselves. We were taught to do so by the Fathers themselves, and the medievals following, and the magisterium of 1616/1633. And contrary to Mr. Sammons, modern science has not proven heliocentrism, and therefore there is nothing for Mr. Sammons to base his rejection of either Scripture or the Fathers on this matter of geocentrism. Again, if Mr. Sammons can provide just one scientific proof that heliocentrism is correct and geocentrism is wrong, he has at least some solid ground on which to stand. But he won’t provide proof. He’ll just claim there is proof. Some scientist.

40) Eric Sammons: We don’t blindly accept them without proof, either. Until they are proven, in fact, we can stick with what we’ve always believed, but we don’t make our interpretations “sacred doctrine.”

R. Sungenis: What Mr. Sammons is telling you is that he rejects the authority of the 1600 Church to make the decision that Scripture teaches geocentrism and that it is Catholic doctrine. The audacity is astounding, but that is what he must do to uphold his position for heliocentrism. He must contradict Scripture, the Fathers, and the Church, and apparently he doesn’t mind doing so based on his belief that he has “proof” that the Earth moves, yet a man who has not given us one single proof in the many years I have had the pleasure to know him.

41) Eric Sammons: If proof arises, then we don’t—like Anfossi and Owen and Sungenis—stick our heads in the sand and refuse to adapt to new information.

R. Sungenis: Let’s see if Mr. Sammons can put his money where your mouth is. I declare, here and now, if Mr. Sammons can prove that the Earth moves by revolving around the sun and rotating on an axis, I’ll award him $1,000. Spoiler alert: I made this same offer to the public many years ago, but no one was able to win the money. Everyone thought they had proof but it turned out not to be proof. So, if Mr. Sammons takes the offer and cannot prove the Earth is moving, then he must write an article for Crisis magazine with the title, “I Was Wrong About Geocentrism” and proceed to explain to his audience that he had no proof for his contention that the Earth moves, and that there is nothing wrong with us accepting the consensual testimony of the Fathers and the testimony of Scripture, along with the 1616/1633 magisterium of the Church, that the sun revolves around a fixed Earth.

42) Eric Sammons: What is found to be true in the natural sciences cannot contradict what we know to be true from Scripture. If there is an apparent discrepancy, then the issue is either that the scientific discovery is faulty in some way or that our interpretation of Scripture is faulty. As Fr. Olivieri and then Pope Pius VII made clear, we can’t deny that second possibility.

R. Sungenis: Fr. Olivieri showed that the only way to get to the second possibility is to tell falsehoods to the people who are in charge.

43) Eric Sammons: While I don’t question the sincerity or good intentions of the organizers and speakers at the upcoming Restore Truth Conference, I think by advocating for a young earth and for geocentrism, the gathering does more harm than good. It combats secular pseudo-science, which tries to fit scientific findings into an atheistic framework, with Catholic pseudo-science, which ignores (and cherry-picks) scientific findings to match personal Scriptural interpretations.3 Most importantly, it does not follow the hermeneutical methodology the Church has laid out for centuries. In our day, the old age of the universe has been scientifically proven; it is billions of years old.

R. Sungenis: So we can see why Mr. Sammons is off-kilter. Not even modern scientists today claim to have “scientifically proven” that the universe is billions of years old. This shows you how out of touch Mr. Sammons is with the science. The Big Bang is just a theory, just like evolution is just a theory. Both are popular science, not proven science. In fact, the Big Bang theory has produced so many unsolvable problems today that it’s a wonder anyone still feels proud to hold to it. Everything from having to invent Inflation due to the limited speed of light; to having to invent Dark Energy and Dark Matter due to the required speed of an expanding universe; due to claiming that space has to increase expand faster than light for the same expansion; due to the irregular rotation rate of galaxies that far exceeds Newton’s and Einstein’s laws of motion; due to the incompatibility of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics; due to the failure to find a mechanism for gravity; or how the universe can hold itself together with a gravity speed limited to the terrestrial speed of light, the Big Bang is in very bad straits today and may not survive the 21st century.

Conversely, a geocentric universe has no such problems. Since it was put here in six days, all intact, it has no growth problems. It is the same today as it was 7,000 years ago. Since the universe is rotating and not expanding, there is no need for more energy since the angular momentum of the universe will suffice until the end of time. Since light speed is not limited to the dictates of Einstein’s Special Relativity, and since light speed increases with the increase of gravity and inertial forces in a rotating universe, there is no problem for light to travel from the rim of the universe to Earth each and every day; and the galaxies rotate faster in deep space due to the same inertial forces. Geocentrism also has a mechanism for gravity and it shows why gravity can travel across the universe in a fraction of a second and thus hold the universe together.

44) Eric Sammons: In fact, the well-accepted Big Bang Theory, which assumes an old age and explains cosmic evolution, was first formulated by a Catholic priest, Fr. Georges Lemaître, and later enthusiastically supported by Pope Pius XII.

R. Sungenis: Not quite. The only thing Fr. Lemaitre did was take the expanding universe invented by Edwin Hubble in 1929 and reverse the process by using Einstein’s field equation, G = 8πτ, which then led to the idea of a “cosmic egg” as the beginning of the universe.

And these facts just beg the question as to why Hubble invented the expanding universe, a story worth telling. He invented it because, after he saw, in his very big telescope at Mt. Wilson in California, the evidence from galaxies that they were surrounding the earth as the center of the universe, the only way he could get out of that “horrible dilemma” (his words) was to take away the center and turn the universe from a three-dimensional structure (e.g., Euclidean geometry) into a two-dimensional balloon-like universe with only a surface (e.g., Riemannian geometry). Here are his own words:

“Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central earth. The hypothesis cannot be disproved but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. Therefore, we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative, namely, a distribution which thins out with distance….The unwelcome supposition of a favored location must be avoided at all costs. However, the assumption is adopted. There must be no favored location in the universe, no center, no boundary; all must see the universe alike.123

So Hubble made the universe into a balloon that expands just so he could avoid the evidence that showed the Earth was in the center of the universe. Some science. And now most scientists believe in the Big Bang, even though they can’t get it to work right. For them, the Big Bang’s problems are easier to accept than the Earth being in the center of the universe and not moving.

By the way, Hubble wasn’t the first to rearrange nature in order to get out of a motionless Earth in the center of the universe. His cohort was Albert Einstein. Confronted with the evidence from the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment whose null results showed the Earth wasn’t moving through space, Einstein, in order to make it appear as if the Earth was moving, made the lengths of all moving objects contract, which then required that the time of all moving objects must dilate; and the mass of all moving objects must increase. Hence, for Einstein, the reason the Michelson experiment couldn’t detect the Earth moving around the sun was because the Earth shrank just enough (by 0.3 inches), to fool the interferometer into recording that the Earth wasn’t moving. Essentially, Einstein’s required changes of length, time and mass make up the heart of the Special Theory of Relativity, which Einstein invented in 1905. Here are the accounts from Einstein’s biographer that tell the story:

In the United States Albert Michelson and Edward Morley had performed an experiment which confronted scientists with an appalling choice. Designed to show the existence of the ether…it had yielded a null result, leaving science with the alternatives of tossing aside the key which had helped to explain the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and light or of deciding that the earth was not in fact moving at all.124 [After the Michelson-Morley experiment,] the problem which now faced science was considerable. For there seemed to be only three alternatives. The first was that the Earth was standing still, which meant scuttling the whole Copernican theory and was unthinkable.125

Where did Einstein get the idea to contract a moving object and dilate its time to compensate for the contraction? It wasn’t his idea. He took it from George Fitzgerald and Hendrick Lorentz who were also trying to solve the Michelson experiment in a way to keep the Earth moving. As the same biographer puts it:

Fitzgerald…suggested instead that all moving objects were shortened along the axis of their movement. A foot rule moving end forwards would be slightly shorter than a stationary foot rule, and the faster it moved the shorter it would be. The speed of the earth’s movement was all that was involved, so the contraction would be extremely small [0.3 inches]….But using the new set of equations which Lorentz now developed from Fitzgerald’s ideas—and which soon became known as the Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformations… the new position is represented by… √1 – v2/c2.

In other words, to make the Earth appear to be moving, they had to: 1) insist that it was moving, even though this was the fallacy of petitio principii, that is, assuming as proof the very thing one is trying to prove; and 2) claim that nature, without a known or logical reason, made moving objects shrink in their length dimension; and 3) use a sophisticated math equation to make it appear that the whole connivance had scientific validity. That Einstein used this absurd reasoning is noted in his book:

…the Michelson experiment gave a negative result—a fact very perplexing to physicists. Lorentz and FitzGerald rescued the theory from this difficulty by assuming that the motion of the body relative to the aether produces a contraction of the body in the direction of motion, the amount of contraction being just sufficient to compensate for the difference in time. Comparison…shows that also from the standpoint of the theory of relativity this solution of the difficulty was the right one.

The only thing Einstein added was that the contraction of matter could not be due to ether pressure but was simply a unique and unexplained property of nature. At least Fitzgerald and Lorentz gave a physical cause for the contraction (the ether was pressing against moving objects), but Einstein’s explanation was more hocus pocus. Wolfgang Pauli, a famous physicist of his day, admitted that Einstein had no explanation for the shortening of moving matter. In his 1958 book, Theory of Relativity, Pauli writes that while Einstein distanced his theory from Lorentz’s ether theory, in effect he kept the main ingredient – the contraction of matter – as a postulate for his Special Relativity theory, which then led to accusations that Special Relativity was defying the laws of causality. Pauli writes:

The epistemological basis of the theory of relativity has recently been undergoing a close examination from the side of philosophy. In this connection the opinion has been expressed that the theory of relativity has thrown overboard the concept of causality. [Nevertheless] We take the view that…relative motion is the cause of the contraction.126

So, in using the mathematical equation that Lorentz invented, let’s run the Earth through the equation. Let’s say the length of the Earth is 8000 miles exactly. So the formula would be:

• Lnew = L8000mi × √1 – v(19mps)2/c(186,000mps)2

• Lnew = 7999.999995824 miles

• 8000 miles – 7999.999995824 miles

• = 0.265 inches or 25.4 millimeters that the Earth shrinks by revolving around the sun.

Now, we will do the same for the all-important arm of Michelson’s interferometer. Let’s say the arm was 4 meters in length. According to Einstein, since it is also going around the sun at 19mps, it too will shrink a small amount proportionate to its length. If we run the numbers through, we have the following:

• Lnew = L4ft × √1 – v(19mps)2/c(186,000mps)2

• = 48.0 in – 47.9999997492 in

• = 0.0000002508 inches shorter than 48 inches.

• The arm must shrink by 2.508 x 10-7 inches, which is 6 x 10 3microns, or .006 millimeters.

In other words, in order for Michelson’s interferometer to show the proper wave separation that coincides with an Earth moving around the sun at about 19 mps, the interferometer arm has to shrink by .006 millimeters. This shrinkage will separate the yellow wave from the red wave as illustrated below, which will allow everyone to conclude that the Earth is moving around the sun.

But the Actual result of the 1887 Michelson experiment was:

…which, because the waves are not separated, means that the Earth is not moving around the sun and is standing still in space.

There was just one small price to pay to keep the Earth moving— nature’s dimensions had to be distorted. Not only would the lengths of all moving objects have to be contracted, since they were now shorter, it would take longer for them to reach the same distance than when they were their normal length, which, if everything is to be kept in balance, means the time of travel has to be increased, and by the same amount that the length was decreased, that is, √1 – v2/c2. Only in this case it is divided instead of multiplied, so the equation is: Tnew = Told ÷ √1 – v2/c2.

That’s not all. Since the length of a moving object is decreased, its volume is also decreased. Since the volume is decreased, the mass per unit volume increases. Therefore the mass of a moving object increases by the same factor, √1 – v2/c2. The equation is: Mnew = Mold ÷ √1 – v2/c2.

The world thinks Einstein was a genius. They applauded him for allowing the Copernican system to survive another day and keep the world from having to bow to the popes who told the world that the Earth was motionless in space because God designed the universe in that very way. In reality, Einstein manipulated the evidence to agree with his self-claimed hero, Galileo Galilei, and to disagree with the institution who silenced him, the Catholic Church.127

45) Eric Sammons: Arguing for a young earth denies legitimate scientific proofs, which in turn undermines the witness of the Church.

R. Sungenis: This statement is entirely false. Young earth advocates have consistently used scientific evidence to explain why the Earth is young, not old. Again, either Mr. Sammons is ignorant because he doesn’t read our books or watch our DVDs, or he is just an obstinate resistor. I wrote a whole book against his mentor, Fr. Paul Robinson, that was published five years ago titled, Scientific Heresies, which has 500 pages of nothing but science to deny an old earth and to support a young earth, including the issues concerning radiometric decay rates, the making of the geologic column, dinosaur fossils, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the Cambrian explosion, flood mechanics, population growth, and many other topics germane to the issue.

46) Eric Sammons: While Darwinian evolution, which covers biological macroevolution, does not have such scientific backing, cosmic evolution, which points to an old universe, has many strong proofs to support it.

R. Sungenis: Notice that Mr. Sammons doesn’t mention a single alleged “proof” for an old universe. We’re just supposed to assume that he knows what he is talking about.

47) Eric Sammons: So while we are free to reject the Darwinian-based theories (and should, in my opinion), to reject cosmic evolution because it supposedly contradicts the Bible and the Fathers is contrary to the mind of the Church.

R. Sungenis: False. If the universe developed over billions of years, and that was a scientific fact, we would accept it. We would just assume that at the end of that long period, God did everything Genesis 1 and 2 says he did. That is the mind of the Church. But notice that the Church requires one first prove, not just assume, that there were billions of years prior to Genesis 1. All Mr. Sammons has are guesses, not proof. Since those who invented the Big Bang were atheists, it’s obvious that they have a vested interest in demoting Genesis 1 as the origin point. Even Fr. Lemaitre, since he was a liberal priest who was denying the inspiration of Scripture in all things non-salvific, had ulterior motives for accepting the Big Bang.

48) Eric Sammons: A final note. Everything I detailed above about the Church’s approach to modern scientific discoveries occurred centuries before Vatican II, and also well before the advent of modernism. To act as if Catholics today don’t accept a young earth due to the impact of modernism or Vatican II is simply false.

R. Sungenis: No, it is not false. Although there were certainly some Catholics who were opting for an old Earth prior to Vatican II, they were few (e.g., de Chardin, E. Messenger, Tyrell, et al). After Vatican II, it was an avalanche. The liberal Catholics coming out of the post 1943 Divino Afflante Spiritu encyclical were bent on using the Protestant tool of historical criticism on Scripture, which, among other things, required that Scripture not be held as an authority on things outside of salvation, such as cosmology, archeology, chronology, genealogies, mathematics, dates, births, deaths, sojourns, ages, etc. After Vatican II, the Catholic liberals tried to support their view of the “limited inerrancy of Scripture” by appealing to a single clause in Vatican II’s document, Dei Verbum 11. That clause, “for the sake of salvation,” is in the following sentence, “Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” A normal reading of this passage—without an historical criticism agenda—would mean that God inspired all of Scripture to be without error because God wanted us to have accurate information that would lead us to salvation. And that is what the five footnotes teach that the Vatican II fathers attached to this sentence.

But that is not the way the Catholic liberals wanted it to be understood. Their main proponent was Fr. Raymond E. Brown. He wrote and edited the Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968, 1990); was head of the Pontifical Biblical Institute (1993-1998); taught at the most liberal Protestant seminary in the world, Union Theological Seminary in New York; and has about thirty pages in his commentary defending Darwinian evolution. He wrote several books denying that the Bible was fully inspired and inerrant. In one of those books he said:

In the last hundred years we have moved from an understanding wherein inspiration guaranteed that the Bible was totally inerrant to an understanding wherein inerrancy is limited to the Bible’s teaching of “that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writing for the sake of our salvation.128

So, in the liberal mind, this interpretation of Dei verbum 11 gave them the right to ignore anything the Bible said about cosmology, cosmogony, archeology, paleontology, etc. They could then propose any scientific theory they desired, regardless whether they had proof for it.

49) Eric Sammons: It’s not “traditional” to reject proven scientific discoveries like heliocentrism and an old earth; in fact, that’s contrary to the actual tradition of the Church.

R. Sungenis: Of course, once Mr. Sammons makes the mistake of asserting that he has proof of heliocentrism and an old earth, he will keep repeating it, so we will have to forgive him, for he knows not what he does. But that just begs the question. That is, Mr. Sammons needs to show, not just claim, that he has proof of heliocentrism and an old earth. He hasn’t mentioned a single proof in this whole paper. I’ll challenge him as I did a year or so ago, but he will never produce the proof. As to what is “contrary to the actual tradition of the Church,” Mr. Sammons made up his own “actual tradition” when he failed to tell his audience that the so-called “1820 resolution” between the Church and Galileo was nothing but a farce cooked up by Cardinal Maurizio Olivieri who claimed that although the Church of 1616/1633 convict Galileo of suspected heresy, it was not for believing that the Earth revolves around the sun, but for believing it did so without an elliptical orbit, and that it could do so without taking the air from the Earth. And thanks to Cardinal Brandmüller who failed to deal with this blatant lie in his 1992 book, and now in his 2024 book, we’ll probably have to wait many years to undo the damage done.

50) Eric Sammons: Catholics should be open to new scientific discoveries. Yes, secularists and atheists might abuse them to advance their false worldviews. But Catholics should not throw out the baby— legitimate discoveries—with the bathwater—false uses of those discoveries. These discoveries, properly understood, help us to better appreciate God and His Creation. The Church has given us a path forward in this regard; let’s not reject it under the guise of a pseudo scientific false traditionalism.

R. Sungenis: Mr. Sammons wants to impress you that he is fair and honest with the evidence, but my experience with Mr. Sammons is that he will ignore and/or disdain all the evidence I’ve put in my rebuttal, and he will not give the time of day to reading the many books I’ve written on these topics, just as he has done in the past. Mr. Sammons is not out for the truth; rather, he is out to twist the evidence to his own worldview.

Maurizio Olivieri’s Interpretations of Scripture

51) Brandmüller: “In the following discussion, which now really advances to the theological center of the controversy, Olivieri proves to be a specialist in the field of Old Testament hermeneutics and exegesis, since he sets out to invalidate the Old Testament arguments against the earth’s movement that were adduced by Rosell and by Anfossi after him.129

R. Sungenis: He is anything but a specialist. What we will see from Olivieri is a twisting and distortion of Scripture to suit his own views. He is a man on a mission to change the simple face-value meaning of every Scripture one might use to show the Earth is motionless in space.

52) Brandmüller: First he points out that Sacred Scripture has visible phenomena in mind and makes use of everyday colloquial language whenever it speaks about the rising and the setting of the sun. This fact allows us to explore the real astronomical-physical causes for what can be seen in the heavens, without thereby offending against Sacred Scripture.130

R. Sungenis: Brandmüller is saying that texts in Scripture that say the sun rises or the sun sets are phenomenal or “as it is seen” texts, but he believes there is an actual scientific reason why the sun appears to rise above the horizon or sets beneath the horizon. Geocentrists believe the same. Of course, Olivieri will then go on to argue that it is the heliocentric system is the reason the sun appears to rise and set, and he will do so without any scientific proof that heliocentrism has been proven, as Anfossi had argued against Olivieri.

53) Brandmüller: It is even easier for the exegete to upset the “probative weight” of two other Bible passages, namely 1 Chronicles (Paralipomenon) 16:30 and Psalm 93:1. Again these speak about the earth standing still, and again the context shows that it is impossible to see them as statements about astronomy or physics. Rather, Olivieri says, these verses likewise speak about the earth as the habitat of man, which in fact is not shaken, as the psalm says. This would be possible only assuming the “mobilità scompigliatrice e scompaginatrice” (disordering and breaking up movement, that is, if the earth’s movement has as a consequence that everything on the earth’s surface is thrown around in a furious swirl), in the theologians’ objection, which however is not correct.

R. Sungenis: Besides the fact that Olivieri does no real exegesis of the verses, the context, nor the word etymologies, his claim that the verses refer to the Earth not being shaken is simply countered by the fact that Scripture says, whether metaphorically or literally, that the Earth is shaken. Ps 82:5: “They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken”; Ps 99:1: “The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!” Is 13:13: “Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger”; Is 24:19-20: “The earth is utterly broken, the earth is rent asunder, the earth is violently shaken. The earth staggers like a drunken man, it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and will not rise again.”

Thus, neither 1Chronicles 16:30 nor Psalm 93:1 can refer to a shaking Earth. Rather, the point of these passages is to portray the Lord’s majesty and strength, as a king who wears his royal robes signifies that he reigns supreme over all the land and has subdued all his enemies. For the Psalmist, the best way to display the Lord’s power is that he has established the world so that it cannot move. Like the throne of a king that does not move unless by his order, so the world has been set by God and will not be moved.

Although the comparison between the strength of God and the stability of the world is quite evident in the passage, there are very few options available regarding the meaning of the “establishment of the world” if one seeks to make a legitimate comparison to God. The world cannot refer to the political movements of the nations, for they shift quite frequently. It could not refer to the whole universe, since if the universe were moved, to where would it move? The best way the Psalmist’s analogy can have its intended effect is if an object exists that is unmoved in the midst of all other objects that are moving. For example, if the Psalmist were referring to an unmoving Earth, then the image displayed by Ps 93:1 would be most accurate, for the Earth would be the only body at rest in the midst of a sea of moving bodies in the heavens. The Earth would be the only foundation point; the only immovable object, and thus the best analogy of the immutability of God. More to the point is that Ps 93:2 adds that God’s throne is also “established.”131 Logically, if his throne does not move then the world cannot move. The intended imagery would be identical to passages that call the Earth the “Lord’s footstool,” since footstools are understood to be at rest, not moving.132

As noted, Olivieri, for obvious reasons, wants the phrase “shall never be moved” to mean “shall never be shaken.” He could then argue that a “shaking of the world” could have some political overtones. This could be true, except for the fact that the political systems of the world are inherently unstable, and thus they would not make a good comparison in displaying the strength and throne of God almighty. Conversely, the physical world, marked as it is by times and seasons that have been repeating themselves in exact precision for eons, is the only possible “world” that could be compared to the infinite stability of God.

In actuality, if the proper translation were “shaken” rather than “moved,” this would only enhance the imagery of an immobile Earth, for it would require the Earth be so firm in its position that it would not only be prohibited from rotating or revolving, but it would also be prohibited from shaking. Scientifically speaking, the Earth is held in space by the combined forces of the whole universe. In other words, to move the Earth would require that it overcome the universe. Consequently, we can see why the Hebrew word (mōht) for “move” or “shaken” was chosen, since it includes the Earth’s resistance to even the slightest outside movement.133 If vibration occurs, it will occur within the internal structure of the Earth but not with respect to the Earth’s position in space. In fact, the reason earthquakes occur is that the internal movements within the Earth are rubbing against the external forces that are keeping the Earth immobile in space.

The only other detail of Ps 93:1-2 regards the meaning and usage of the word “world.” As it stands, the Hebrew consistently uses the term in reference to the earth, not the universe at large.134 Hence, it is the Earth alone that is kept immobile, not the universe.

Olivieri’s treatment of Joshua 10:10-14 and Isaiah 38:8 are even worse, as we will see.

54) Brandmüller: Then Olivieri discusses the oft-cited miracle of the sun in Joshua 10:12–15: “Sun, stand still at Gibeon/ Moon, in the valley of Aijalon!/ The sun stood still, the moon stayed,/ while the nation took vengeance on its foes.” Here Isaiah 38:8 should be kept in mind, too: “See, I will make the shadow cast by the sun on the stairway to the terrace of Ahaz go back the ten steps it has advanced. So the sun came back the ten steps it had advanced.” Now the exegete poses the question, whether we may conclude from the facticity of the miracles reported in these passages that the physical circumstances underlying them are also revealed. But the sacred texts are silent about this! Consequently it is the business of the astronomers to explore these phenomena.135

R. Sungenis: Olivieri’s explanation may seem clever to Brandmüller as Olivieri tries to pass the buck to astronomers to explain Joshua 10 by saying that the text itself makes no connection between what occurred and how it occurred. But the astronomers he is depending upon to get him out of this ordeal already know, and Olivieri should know too, that these astronomers would have no explanation why the sun stayed in the sky for an extra day, since all they know and have seen since the dawn of creation is that the sun only appears for 12 hours a day, every day, and there would be no scientific reason for it to appear for 24 hours in the same place. So the only ones who would have an explanation of why this normalcy could be disrupted is the theologian, since the theologian can invoke the power of miracles to explain the anomaly.

While we’re here, we should take note of the fact that in his letter to his best friend, Benedetto Castelli, Galileo tried to answer Joshua 10 by claiming the Earth stopped rotating. We will show why this is not possible; and thus why it is the sun that was actually stopped from orbiting the Earth for one entire day.

Therefore, if in agreement with the position of Copernicus we attribute the daily rotation primarily to the earth, then who does not see that, in order to stop the whole system without any alteration in the remaining mutual relation of the planets but only to prolong the space and time of the daylight, it is sufficient to make the sun stop, exactly as the literal meaning of the sacred text says? Florence, 21 December 1613.136

Similar to a few other accounts in the Old Testament, celestial bodies are incorporated into accounts of war in one form or another. The closest to Joshua is Judges 5:20: “From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera.” From the metaphorical wording embedded in the passages, some scholars have concluded that Joshua 10:10-14 is merely a fictional account of a typical battle in the annals of Israeli history. In their view, the account is merely an embellished story that attributes a decisive victory to the Hebrew God but in reality it was a normally fought battle that lasted at least two days. These scholarly conclusions, of course, discount any divine intrusion taking place in the narrative, which is their academic goal when interpreting such miracle-laden passages. The difficulty for these scholars, however, is that the miraculous intrusion is woven so inextricably within the details of the passage that it is impossible to separate them without destroying the history of the narrative itself. After the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” was undertaken by liberal scholars in the last few centuries, theological academia became quite aware of the fact that arbitrarily separating the miraculous from the historical results in destroying both. This has been the Achilles heel of most of liberal and modernistic scholarship when examining passages such as Joshua 10:10-14.

There are other interpreters who, although recognizing the validity of miracles, seek to minimize the possibility that such events occurred in Joshua 10, usually out of fear of criticism from modern academia. In such cases, appeal is often made to the Hebrew word .md (damam) that appears in reference to the sun: “And the sun stood still.” Since damam also means “silent,”137 these interpreters posit that Joshua is not saying the sun was moving and then stopped; rather, “silent” is merely a poetic way of describing Israel’s victory over the Amorites using celestial metaphors, as if the sun was hushed with amazement.

But escape from the literal application is not so easy. Although in many cases “silent” is the preferred translation of damam, in actuality, damam is chosen because it always ceases the action of the entity in view. For example, if a person is talking, damam is used to denote that he has ceased talking, and therefore he is “silent” (e.g., Ps 31:17: “let the wicked be put to shame, let them be silent in Sheol”). If an object is moving, damam is used to denote that it has stopped its motion (e.g., 1Sm 14:9: “Wait until we come to you, then we will stand still in our place, and we will not go up to them”). Whatever the normal activity of the entity in view, damam is employed when that activity comes to an end. Hence, if the salient feature of the sun is its movement in the sky so that it can give light upon the land (which function will eventually terminate if the sun moves beyond the immediate locale), damam would be the proper word to use if the sun’s movement ceased.

Although after Joshua damam is not used again in the Hebrew Bible in connection with a heavenly body, it is used with other objects whose chief function is movement. In Jr 47:6, for example, damam is used to represent the cessation of a sword’s activity: “Ah, sword of the Lord! How long till you are quiet? Put yourself into your scabbard, rest and be still!” We know that the salient feature of the sun in Joshua 10:13 is its movement across the sky to give light (as opposed to its heat), for the simple fact that it is coupled with the movement of the moon: “And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed.” Hence, the use of damam in the case of the sun can only apply to a cessation of its movement, otherwise, it could not be compared to the moon. Moreover, although in the moon’s cessation of movement the word chosen is dme (amad),138 in the latter part of Joshua 10:13 amad appears again to describe the sun’s cessation of movement: “The sun stayed (amad) in the midst of heaven.” Thus, the sun’s cessation of movement is reinforced by two similar yet distinct Hebrew words, damam and amad.

Additionally, two different Hebrew tenses are employed. After Joshua’s use in vr. 12 of damam in the Qal imperative that commands the sun and moon to “stand still,” in vr. 13 the narrator puts damam in the Qal imperfect to denote the sun did, indeed, heed the command. Normally, the imperfect tense is a future tense, but because it is introduced here with a waw-consecutive it acts like a past tense, thus vr. 13’s common translation, “stood still.” Also in vr. 13, the narrator then changes verbs and tenses to describe the moon’s cessation of movement, using amad in the perfect tense, which is the Hebrew past tense. Lastly, in vr. 14, the Book of Jasher is cited and now amad is applied to the sun in the Qal imperfect waw-consecutive. The upshot of all these grammatical nuances is that these Hebrew verbs and their alternating tenses show conclusively that the account is interwoven as a cause-effect sequence of events that actually took place as recorded. Poetry is never put in such a format.

Some claim that vr. 13’s wording, “The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day,” shows by the words “go down” that the passage is using phenomenological language since, in the geocentric system the sun doesn’t actually go down; rather, it circles the Earth and the sun only appears as if it is going down against the Earth’s horizon. This argument is falsified by the fact that the original Hebrew does not use the word “down,” but only “go.”139

Once divine miraculous intrusion is accepted as the basis for the account, another issue for consideration is whether the sun itself was stopped (which necessitates that it was previously in motion) or the Earth was stopped in rotation (which necessitates that the sun was not in motion). The most significant piece of evidence in favor of the former interpretation is that even modern heliocentric science (which holds that the Earth rotates on an axis and revolves around the sun), agrees that the moon moves in space. It revolves around the Earth every 28 days or so. That being the case, if behind the actual meaning of Joshua 10:10-14 were the possibility that the Earth was in rotation and thus the passage would be attempting to give a phenomenal or ‘as it appears’ account of the events occurring on that historic day, it would be rather self-defeating for the author to include the cessation of the moon’s movement, since both the ancient and modern observer agree that since the moon revolves around the Earth it must be stopped from doing so if it is to be legitimately considered ceasing its movement. Consequently, since in the normal course of events the moon is in constant motion, yet on this particular day its movement ceased, we are forced to conclude that the cause for the moon’s cessation of movement was not the Earth that stopped spinning but a force that acted upon both the moon and the sun to stop them from continuing their normal revolution around the Earth. So conspicuous is the moon in this account that the reader may assume that the writer deliberately added the moon so as to forestall interpretations of the passage that might seek to eliminate its literal interpretation. The reason is plain: in the heliocentric system, the Earth rotates, and whereas if the Earth stopped rotating it would make it appear as if the sun stood still, the moon would still revolve around the Earth and appear to be continuing to move while the sun remained still, and thus Joshua’s request could not be fulfilled by ceasing the Earth’s rotation.140 Once again, since in the geocentric system both the sun and the moon revolve around the Earth, then both the sun and the moon would need to cease their movement simultaneously to satisfy Joshua’s request. As noted previously, the heliocentric system, with its claim of a cessation of the Earth’s rotation, cannot satisfy Joshua’s request, for from Joshua’s perspective on the ground the moon would simply move too far in one day to fulfill the specification in the text that it remained over the valley of Aijalon, which at most stretches for only 15 miles until it hits the Mediterranean Sea.

55) Brandmüller: “It was easy to refute a final thought by Fr. Roselli, who tried to conclude from the wording of the creation account (Gen 1:14–19) that the earth is the foundation and center of the universe. All Olivieri needed to do was to cite the text of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Therefore, first the heavens and then the earth.”141

R. Sungenis: The text does not say, “first the heavens and then the earth.” It says, “the heavens and the earth.” That is, the heavens and the earth were made simultaneously. In fact, what comprises the heavens at this time is water, which is why the remaining part says, “and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”142 In other words, water surrounded the earth many miles above the surface of the earth. Since in the biblical definition anything above the earth is considered the heavens (first, second or third heavens), then where the earth existed on the First day of creation is the only place of physical existence; and therefore the earth is central in that respect.

56) Brandmüller: Thomas formulated a hermeneutic principle that should be applied here, when he pointed out that Moses spoke about visible phenomena in order to make himself understood by his uneducated people. Neither he nor any other writer of Sacred Scripture intended to teach an astronomical system. Notwithstanding the authority of Sacred Scripture, this is a matter for the astronomers. This concluded the refutation of the biblical objections to Copernicus…” 143

R. Sungenis: Yes, Scripture does not teach “an astronomical system,” for if it did it would be required to say a lot more than it does (e.g., gravity, inertia, light speed, atomic structure, magnetism, etc). What Scripture teaches is that the sun and stars revolve around a fixed Earth. No involved or complicated “astronomical system” is needed to comprehend the simple fact that of the two, the sun or earth, it is the sun that moves and the earth that does not. Any child could understand that fact; much more Moses and his people.

57) Brandmüller: Olivieri…continues, that many Church Fathers had no accurate notion at all of the spherical form of the earth, but simply went along with the “concetti non rettificati” (uncorrected concepts) of their contemporaries. The great Montfaucon therefore says in the introduction to his edition of Cosmas Indicopleustes that the Church Fathers in their statements concerning astronomy had altogether different notions, depending on whether they were well informed or had instead made fun of the experts (although they themselves were uninformed).144

R. Sungenis: This kind of broad brush criticism of the Fathers has the intent of making them look like quite ignorant compared to the knowledge Olivieri thinks he has garnered for himself. But not only is Olivieri wrong about the scientific aptitude of the Fathers, he is completely wrong in accusing them of believing in a flat earth. The Fathers of the Church, almost to a man, believed and taught the Earth was a sphere.145 The only person who appears to have explicitly believed and taught a flat Earth as if it were doctrine was Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. 550), a Greek merchant who was not considered a Church Father and held no office in the Catholic Church. The only other possibility is Lactantius (aka: Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius), an early Latin Father writing in the early fourth century. Although Lactantius certainly questions the viability of a spherical Earth, this is due only to the issue of the Antipodes and not to any scientific proof or exegetical demonstrations from Scripture that he reveals in his argumentation. Irrespective of his doubts about a spherical Earth, in the end Lactantius never explicitly says that he believes the Earth is flat; and never explicitly offers an alternative to compensate for the antipode problem.

Other Fathers who are often cited by flat-earthers as believing and teaching a flat Earth are Methodius and Theophilus, but the reality is that both these two Fathers never actually say they disagree with a spherical Earth, nor do they ever say they believe and teach a flat Earth. Rather, both Fathers question the Greeks’ use of the sphericity of the universe and the Earth due to the Greek penchant to turn them into astrological charts in order to preach fatalism. In another vein, John Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria are sometimes commandeered by flat-earthers due to these Fathers’ envisioning heaven as a “tabernacle” with a “tent stretched above it,” rather than a universal sphere. However, neither of these Fathers ever say the Earth is flat; rather, Chrysostom says only that the third heaven is not spherical, while Clement not only says the Earth is spherical but, like many other Fathers, he specifies that the Earth is “in the middle of the universe.” Another case is Basil of Caesarea who is also cited by flat earthers as evidence for their view, but the reality is that in one passage Basil says that he doesn’t know the shape of the Earth for certain, and in another passage says the Earth is made of “two hemispheres.” In any case, he never says he believes or teaches the Earth is flat. Jerome is also cited by flat-earthers. In this case, merely because Jerome questions, in his Commentary on Isaiah, how a spherical Earth could accommodate the lowering of the waters in Genesis 1, flat-earth advocates turn his question into a full-blown support for a flat Earth, in spite of the fact that elsewhere Jerome clearly says the Earth is a sphere. Flat-earthers do a similar bait-and-switch with Eusebius. Although Serverian and Isidore are sometimes cited as flat-earthers, the evidence is not clearcut. Lastly, even the great Augustine is sometimes cited by flat-earthers, as is the case with the Augustinian scholar, Leo Ferrari, who in 1970 formed the Flat Earth Society of Canada (FESC); but even Ferrari admits that Augustine’s clear evidence shows he accepted the Earth as a sphere, which forces Ferrari to appeal to a couple of Augustine’s obscure figurative phrases in an attempt to turn the scholarly tide. Suffice it to say, he fails. The Fathers who taught the Earth is a globe, a sphere, two hemispheres, or a round object (not a disc), some doing so more explicitly than others, are:

• Ambrose

• Arnobius

• Archelaus

• Athanasius

• Augustine

• Basil

• Clement of Alexandria

• Cyril of Jerusalem

• Eusebius

• Gregory of Nyssa

• Gregory Nanzianzus

• Gregory Thaumaturgus

• Irenaeus

• Jerome

• John Damascene

• Venerable Bede

Various Fathers say that the heavens are not spherical, but none of these Fathers concede the Earth is flat, although a flat Earth has been implied by various scholars due to these Fathers’ view that the heavens are hemispherical:

• Chrysostom

• Methodius

• Severian of Gabala

Some Fathers question how the Earth could be spherical considering other assumed facts that must be applied first:

• Lactantius

• Theopholis of Antioch

The rest of the prominent Fathers are silent on the issue. In the end, the only one who appears to be a full-fledged flat-earther is Cosmas Indicopleustes.146

58) Brandmüller: A further step in the argument leads Olivieri to discuss the question of how the preceding can be reconciled with the immutability of Church teaching, or, to put it the other way around, the question of the development of doctrine. First he emphasizes the immutability of the “deposit of faith,” which is represented in an increasingly explicit way by the doctrinal proclamations of popes and councils. Applied to the present case, this means that we cannot refer to the old Fathers of the Church in order to judge it, because no trace of an explicit Church teaching about this subject can be found yet in their writings. Although the ancient philosophers down to Ptolemy had reflected on the questions of astronomical cosmology and written about them, no indication can be discovered that the same was true of the Church Fathers.147

R. Sungenis: So it appears that Olivieri is on a scorched earth mission to divest the Fathers of any credibility outside the strict domains of theology. How he can do so is a little tricky since the Fathers have been the ultimate source for thousands of years for how a Christian is to interpret the Bible. Olivieri wants to make it appear as if the Fathers weren’t interested in celestial mechanics. Yet the statements from the Fathers regarding their teaching that the Earth does not move and that the sun revolves around the Earth were used by Robert Bellarmine against both Fr. Foscarini and Galileo Galilei.148 Apparently Olivieri was either oblivious to these many patristic declarations or dismissed them, even as he had already dismissed the Fathers’ understanding of Joshua 10 because “the text doesn’t say it is miraculous and thus is to be left to astronomers to figure out.” Instead of chastising Olivieri for such lame argumentation, Brandmüller applauds him. If Olivieri had only read the Fathers, he would see why Bellarmine depended on them, and why the Council of Trent insisted the same:

Furthermore, in order to curb impudent clever persons, the synod decrees that no one who relies on his own judgment in matters of faith and morals, which pertain to the building up of Christian doctrine, and that no one who distorts the Sacred Scripture according to his own opinions, shall dare to interpret the said Sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which is held by Holy Mother Church, whose duty it is to judge regarding the true sense and interpretation of Holy Scriptures, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers, even though interpretations of this kind were never intended to be brought to light.149

The Apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same Church I most f irmly admit and embrace. I likewise accept Holy Scripture according to that sense which our Holy Mother Church had held and does hold, whose it is to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures; I shall never accept nor interpret it otherwise than in accordance with the unanimous consent of the Fathers.150

The teaching of the supreme authority of the consensus of the Fathers of the Church was reiterated in the same infallible form by Vatican Council I in 1870:

But, since the rules which the holy Synod of Trent salutarily decreed concerning the interpretation of Divine Scripture in order to restrain impetuous minds, are wrongly explained by certain men, We, renewing the same decree, declare this to be its intention: that, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the instruction of Christian Doctrine, that must be considered as the true sense of Sacred Scripture which Holy Mother Church has held and holds, whose office it is to judge concerning the true understanding and interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures; and, for that reason, no one is permitted to interpret Sacred Scripture itself contrary to this sense, or even contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.151

Salient Points of the Church Fathers’ Consensus on Geocentrism:

• The Fathers never say the Earth moves.

• The Fathers always say the Earth is at rest at the center of the universe.

• The Fathers never say the sun is the center of the universe.

• The Fathers never say the sun does not move around the Earth, even in their scientific analysis of the cosmos.

• The Fathers always say the Earth is the center of the universe.

• The Fathers always say the sun moves in the same way as the moon moves.

• The Fathers recognize that some of the Greeks held that the Earth revolves and rotates, but they do not accept either of those teachings.

• The Fathers accept the Chaldean, Egyptian and Greek teaching that the Earth is at the center of the universe and does not move.

• The Fathers hold that the Earth was created first, by itself, and only afterward the sun, moon and stars. The only deviation from this is St. Augustine who, in one of his views, held that all the heavenly bodies were created at the same time.

• The Fathers hold that light was created after the Earth, but this light preceded the light of the sun and stars, with the exception of Augustine notwithstanding.

As for the Fathers’ statements, they are extensive:

Ambrose: But they say that the sun can be said to be alone, because there is no second sun. But the sun himself has many things in common with the stars, for he travels across the heavens, he is of that ethereal and heavenly substance, he is a creature and is reckoned amongst all the works of God.152

Aphrahat: For the sun in twelve hours circles round, from the east unto the west; and when he has accomplished his course, his light is hidden in the night-time, and the night is not disturbed by his power. And in the hours of the night the sun turns round in his rapid course, and turning round begins to run in his accustomed path.153

Archeleus: When the light had been diffused everywhere, God began to constitute the universe, and commenced with the heaven and the earth; in which process this issue appeared, to wit, that the center, which is the locality of earth.154

Aristedes: They err who believe that the sky is a god. For we see that it revolves and moves by necessity and is compacted of many parts, being thence called the ordered universe (kosmos)… And the sky with its luminaries moves by necessity. For the stars are carried along in array at fixed intervals.155

Arnobius: Has the fabric of this machine and mass of the universe, by which we are all covered, and in which we are held enclosed, relaxed in any part, or broken up? Has the revolution of the globe, to which we are accustomed, departing from the rate of its primal motion, begun either to move too slowly, or to be hurried onward in headlong rotation?156

Athanasius: For the Sun is carried round along with, and is contained in, the whole heaven, and can never go beyond his own orbit, while the moon and other stars testify to the assistance given them by the Sun…But the earth is not supported upon itself, but is set upon the realm of the waters, while this again is kept in its place, being bound fast at the center of the universe.157

Athanasius: For if the sun too, which was made by Him, and which we see, as it revolves in the heaven, is not defiled by touching the bodies upon earth, nor is it put out by darkness, but on the contrary itself illuminates and cleanses them also, much less was the all-holy Word of God, Maker and Lord also of the sun, defiled by being made known in the body; on the contrary, being incorruptible.158

Athenagoras: To Him is for us to know who stretched out and vaulted the heavens, and fixed the earth in its place like a center. 159

Augustine: Let not the philosophers, then, think to upset our faith with arguments from the weight of bodies; for I don’t care to inquire why they cannot believe an earthly body can be in heaven, while the whole earth is suspended on nothing. For perhaps the world keeps its central place by the same law that attracts to its center all heavy bodies.160

Basil: There are inquirers into nature who with a great display of words give reasons for the immobility of the earth...It is not, they go on, without reason or by chance that the earth occupies the center of the universe...Do not then be surprised that the world never falls: it occupies the center of the universe, its natural place. By necessity it is obliged to remain in its place, unless a movement contrary to nature should displace it.161 …In the midst of the covering and veil, where the priests were allowed to enter, was situated the altar of incense, the symbol of the earth placed in the middle of this universe; and from it came the fumes of incense.162

Basil: The philosophers of Greece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to destroy one another.163

John Cassian: He was a man who, after the close of his life had been decreed and the day of his death determined by the Lord’s sentence, prevailed by a single prayer to extend the limits set to his life by fifteen years, the sun returning by ten steps.164

Chrysostom: “For they who are mad imagine that nothing stands still, yet this arises not from the objects that are seen, but from the eyes that see. Because they are unsteady and giddy, they think that the Earth turns round with them, which yet turns not, but stands firm.”165 “And again, David saith of the sun, that “he is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course….and running unimpeded all the day; he meets no obstacle to interrupt his course. Beholdest thou, then, his beauty?166….But, on the other hand, the sun with the rest of the stars, runs on his course through every day. And again, the earth is fixed.167

Clement of Rome: The sun and moon, with the companies of the stars, roll on in harmony according to His command, within their prescribed limits, and without any deviation.168….“The Creator…who has fixed the great world as a center in space, who has spread out the heavens and solidified the earth.169 …. “For it is manifest even to the unbelieving and unskillful, that the course of the sun, which is useful and necessary to the world, and which is assigned by providence, is always kept orderly; but the courses of the moon, in comparison of the course of the sun, seem to the unskillful to be inordinate and unsettled in her waxings and wanings. For the sun moves in fixed and orderly periods.170

Cyril of Jerusalem: The earth, which bears the same proportion to the heaven as the center to the whole circumference of a wheel, for the earth is no more than this in comparison with the heaven: consider then that this first heaven which is seen is less than the second, and the second than the third, for so far Scripture has named them...”171

Ephraim the Syrian: The sun in his course teaches thee that thou rest from labor.172

Eusebius: The vast expanse of heaven, like an azure veil is interposed between those without, and those who inhabit his royal mansions: while round this expanse the sun and moon, with the rest of the heavenly luminaries (like torch-bearers around the entrance of the imperial palace), perform, in honor of their sovereign, their appointed courses.173 …. “The sun and the moon have their settled courses. The stars move in no uncertain orbit round this terrestrial globe.174

Gregory Nazianzus: But who gave him motion at first? And what is it which ever moves him in his circuit….How comes he to be the creator of day when above the earth, and of night when below it? Or whatever may be the right expression when one contemplates the sun?175 …. “The sun is extolled by David for its beauty, its greatness, its swift course, and its power, splendid as a bridegroom, majestic as a giant; while, from the extent of its circuit, it has such power that it equally sheds its light from one end of heaven to the other, and the heat thereof is in no wise lessened by distance.”176 …. “And we are taught in the Gospel of a third earthquake, namely, from this Earth to that which cannot be shaken or moved.177

Gregory of Nyssa: “This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth,” saith the Scripture, when all that is seen was finished, and each of the things that are betook itself to its own separate place, when the body of heaven compassed all things round, and those bodies which are heavy and of downward tendency, the earth and the water, holding each other in, took the middle place of the universe; and preserving the indissolubility of both by their mutual action, as the circling substance by its rapid motion compresses the compact body of the earth round about, while that which is firm and unyielding, by reason of its unchanging fixedness, continually augments the whirling motion of those things which revolve round it, and intensity is produced in equal measure in each of the natures which thus differ in their operation, in the stationary nature, I mean, and in the mobile revolution; for neither is the earth shifted from its own base, nor does the heaven ever relax in its vehemence, or slacken its motion.178 …. And how does earth below form the foundation of the whole, and what is it that keeps it firmly in its place? What is it that controls its downward tendency? If anyone should interrogate us on these and such-like points, will any of us be found so presumptuous as to promise an explanation of them? No! the only reply that can be given by men of sense is this: that He Who made all things in wisdom can alone furnish an account of His creation. For ourselves, “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,” as saith the Apostle.179 …. “The vault of heaven prolongs itself so uninterruptedly that it encircles all things with itself, and that the earth and its surroundings are poised in the middle, and that the motion of all the revolving bodies is round this fixed and solid center...” 180

Gregory Thaumaturgos: “And all things that have been constituted by God for the sake of men abide the same: as, for instance, in that man is born of earth, and departs to earth again; that the earth itself continues stable; that the sun accomplishes its circuit about it perfectly, and rolls round to the same mark again; and that the winds in like manner, and the mighty rivers which flow into the sea, and the breezes that beat upon it, all act without forcing it to pass beyond its limits, and without themselves also violating their appointed laws.181

Hippolytus: And again, when Joshua the son of Nun was fighting against the Amorites, when the sun was now inclining to its setting, and the battle was being pressed closely, Joshua, being anxious lest the heathen host should escape on the descent of night, cried out, saying, “Sun, stand thou still in Gibeon; and thou moon, in the valley of Ajalon,” until I vanquish this people. And the sun stood still, and the moon, in their places, so that day was one of twenty-four hours. And in the time of Hezekiah the moon also turned back along with the sun, that there might be no collision between the two elemental bodies, by their bearing against each other in defiance of law. And Merodach the Chaldean, king of Babylon, being struck with amazement at that time, for he studied the science of astrology, and measured the courses of these bodies carefully – on learning the cause, sent a letter and gifts to Hezekiah, just as also the wise men from the east did to Christ.182 …. [Refuting the view of Ecphantus]: “And that the earth in the middle of the cosmical system is moved round its own center towards the east.” 183

Irenaeus: The sun also, who runs through his orbit in twelve months, and then returns to the same point in the circle.184

Jerome: In Exodus we read that the battle was fought against Amalek while Moses prayed, and the whole people fasted until the evening. Joshua, the son of Nun, bade sun and moon stand still, and the victorious army prolonged its fast for more than a day.185 …. “The moon may dispute over her eclipses and ceaseless toil and ask why she must traverse every month the yearly orbit of the sun. The sun may complain and want to know what he has done that he travels more slowly than the moon.186

John Damascene: For it is night when the sun is under the earth, and the duration of night is the course of the sun under the earth from its rising till its setting.187

Justin Martyr: The former, after he had been named Jesus (Joshua), and after he had received strength from His Spirit, caused the sun to stand still.188

Mathetes: By whom He made the heavens, by whom he enclosed the sea within its proper bounds, whose ordinances all the stars faithfully observe, from whom the sun has received the measure of his daily course to be observed, whom the moon obeys, being commanded to shine in the night, and whom the stars also obey, following the moon in her course; by whom all things have been arranged, and placed within their proper limits.189

Methodius: And, of a truth, it seemed worth while to inquire also about the sun, what is the manner of his being set in the heaven; also what is the orbit he traverses; also whither it is that, after a short time, he retires; and why it is that even he does not go out of his proper course: but he, too, as one may say, is observing a commandment of a higher power, and appears with us just when he is allowed to do so, and departs as if he were called away.190

Minucius Felix: Look also on the year, how it is made by the circuit of the sun; and look on the month, how the moon drives it around in her increase, her decline, and decay.191

Tertullian: In Exodus, was not that position of Moses, battling against Amalek by prayers, maintained as it was perseveringly even till “sunset,” a “late Station?” Think we that Joshua the son of Nun, when warring down the Amorites, had breakfasted on that day on which he ordered the very elements to keep a Station? The sun “stood” in Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon; the sun and the moon “stood in station until the People was avenged of his enemies, and the sun stood in the mid heaven.” When, moreover, (the sun) did draw toward his setting and the end of the one day, there was no such day beforetime and in the latest time (of course, (no day) so long), “that God,” says (the writer), “should hear a man” – (a man,) to be sure, the sun’s peer, so long persistent in his duty – a Station longer even than late.192

Brandmüller’s Continued Defense of Olivieri

59) Brandmüller: In later history he, Olivieri, finds no other relevant facts until we reach Nikolaus Cusanus [aka Nicolaus of Cusa] and Copernicus, whose book was recognized for seventy years before it was suddenly censored. If Copernicus had in fact erred in faith, would it have been necessary to wait so long for the grido della fede (outcry of faith)?193

R. Sungenis: The mere fact that Cusanus’ book was censored, regardless of when, means the Church was building a precedent against anyone who was proposing the heliocentric system, which means the case against Copernicus was not a mere shot out of the blue. As noted earlier, Bartolomeo Spina, the Master of the Sacred Palace from 1542-1547, sought to have Copernicus’ book banned, which was eventually carried out by his Dominican colleague Giovanimaria Tolosani by 1546. Tolosani then wrote a detailed geocentric treatise in 1546, which he dedicated to Paul III and which included an endorsement from Spina. In it Tolosani vehemently rejected Copernicus’ universe and declared it an extreme danger to the faith precisely because of its attempt to de-literalize Sacred Scripture. The work’s title is: On the Highest Immobile Heaven and the Lowest Stable Earth, and All Other Movable Heavens and Intermediate Elements. Tolosani insisted Copernicus’ teaching “could easily provoke discord between Catholic commentators on Holy Scripture and those who have resolutely decided to follow this false opinion. It is in order to avoid such scandal that we have written this short work”194

The precedent for dealing with Copernicus was already set when Nicolas Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux (d. 1382) suggested that the Earth might be rotating. Oresme’s specific assertion was that the Earth might rotate on an axis. His works were, Traité de la sphère, later printed in Paris with the second edition published in 1308, and Traité du ciel et du monde, published in 1377, his heliocentric views are expressed in chapters 24 and 25 but they are by no means dogmatic.

Nicholas of Cusa, Bishop of Brixen came almost a hundred years later (d. 1464). From his book De docta ignorantia (“Learned Ignorance”). Based on his concept of an infinite universe, Cusa argues:

“…it is impossible for the machine of the world to have any f ixed and motionless center; be it this sensible earth, or the air, or fire or anything else. For there can be found no absolute minimum in motion, that is, no fixed center, because the minimum must necessarily coincide with the maximum….The world has no circumference, because it is had a center and a circumference, and thus had a beginning and end in itself, the world would be limited in respect to something else….The earth, therefore, which cannot be the center, cannot be lacking in motion; but it is necessary that it move in such a way that it could be moved infinitely less. Just as the earth is not the center of the world, so the sphere of the fixed stars is not its circumference….Thus it is the blessed God who is the center of the world.”195

Naturally, both Oresme and Cusa claimed that they were not required to interpret Scripture literally. For Pope Paul III, having the historical distinction of forming the Congregation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542 for the precise purpose of defending the Catholic Church from heresy,196 the time was growing ripe for a confrontation with those who were teaching that Scripture need not be interpreted literally when it addressed issues of cosmology. The fact that Copernicus’ book, De revolutionibus, was printed by a Lutheran who also had printed other non-Catholic works that the Inquisition had censured, added a flavor of animosity to the issue that only religious disputes can generate.

Pius V’s 1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent

Although the Church did not come down hard on these isolated instances of anti-geocentric thought (e.g., Oresme, Cusanus), Immediately after Copernicus, the clearest official and authoritative statement from the Catholic Church defending the doctrine of geocentrism comes from the catechism issued under a 1566 decree of Pope Pius V, known as The Catechism of the Council of Trent or more simply, The Roman Catechism. In light of its date, the Catechism comes as a capstone to the Church’s position since the Church had already rejected both Rheticus’ and Copernicus’ books on heliocentrism in the 1540s and put Rheticus’ book on the Index in 1559. The Catechism comes just seven years after the Index. In its first instance of teaching geocentrism, the Catechism states:

…He also gave to the sun its brilliancy, and to the moon and stars their beauty; and that they might be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. He so ordered the celestial bodies in a certain and uniform course, that nothing varies more than their continual revolution, while nothing is more f ixed than their variety.197

Although this wording is somewhat brief, it correctly describes the Church’s historical position. It states very clearly that the “sun…the moon and stars” are “celestial bodies” which move with a “certain and uniform course” and does not say that the Earth moves among them. Rather, to expel any doubt about what objects are revolving the Catechism adds that the sun, moon and stars have a “continual revolution.” Although the unspecified reference to “revolution” might cause a heliocentrist to infer that the sun’s revolution does not necessarily mean it is revolving around the Earth, a few pages later the Catechism disallows that inference by stating the following:

The Earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundation and made the mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which he had founded for them.…198

Some have advanced the argument that in the above passage the word “Earth” (Latin: terram) should be translated as “dry land,” and that “world” (Latin: mundus) should be translated “Earth.” This translation portrays a “dry land” distinct from air and water, which was then filled with plants and animals, both of which are situated on the Earth.199 As such, the passage would not be demonstrating an Earth in the center of the universe but merely a dry land placed on the Earth. But this interpretation is falsified by the fact that the Catechism specifies that the terram stands in the “midst” or middle of the mundus. At creation, dry land was not made to be, or said to be, in the “midst” of the Earth. It is only said to be separated from water (see Gn 1:9). The dry land covered various parts of the surface of the earth, not the midst or middle of the earth. If the translation were “the midst of the earth” it would refer to the center of the earth, since the “midst” or “middle” of a sphere can only be the center of the sphere. Conversely, the surface of the land on the Earth does not possess a “midst” or middle position. Hence, the only way “midst” can make sense is if the Earth was placed in the middle of a rotating universe. Not surprisingly, this solution fits very well with the Catechism’s statements about the sun and stars which, “by their motions and revolutions,” must revolve around a central point, the “midst” or middle of the universe. The Roman Catechism then says the following toward the end:

But though God is present in all places and in all things, without being bound by any limits, as has been already said, yet in Sacred Scripture it is frequently said that He has His dwelling in heaven. And the reason is because the heavens which we see above our heads are the noblest part of the world, remain ever Incorruptible, surpass all other bodies in power, grandeur and beauty, and are endowed with fixed and regular motion.200

A few pages later the Catechism confirms its cosmology and the God who designed it:

…all goods both natural and supernatural, must be recognized as gifts given by Him from whom, as the Church proclaims, proceed all blessings. If the sun by its light, if the stars by their motion and revolutions, are of any advantage to man; if the air with which we are surrounded serves to sustain us...nay, those very causes which philosophers call secondary, we should regard as so many hands of God, wonderfully fashioned and fitted for our use, by means of which He distributes His blessings and diffuses them everywhere in profusion.201

Up to the publishing of the Roman Catechism, we see the following in the Church’s teaching on the universe:

• that sun and stars move. It never says the earth moves and, in fact, says the earth “stands still.” • it says the sun and stars move in continual revolution. The only “revolution” that science and the Church knew was the stars and sun revolving around the earth. • Oresme suggested the earth might be rotating, but such diurnal motion was rejected by the Church in 1541, and 1548 and placed on the Index in 1559, as well as condemned both in 1616 and 1633. • Cusa said the earth could be moving but not necessarily by rotating or revolution, but this was also rejected in 1541 and 1548 and placed on the Index in 1559, as well as condemned both in 1616 and 1633. • the Tridentine catechism entertained no alternate scientific theory (i.e., heliocentrism) when it supported geocentrism. It made no statement accepting heliocentrism. It made no mention of acentrism, or any other view. It gave no credence to Oresme, Cusa, Aristarchus, Pythagoras or any view that said the earth moved; • the Tridentine catechism knew that the Catholic tradition believed the earth did not move and it makes no statement that indicates a break with the Church’s tradition, including no break against the consensus of the Fathers on geocentrism.

One of the more significant facts regarding the Roman Catechism’s dogmatic assertion of geocentrism is that it remained unchanged in all subsequent editions, including the last Roman Latin version in 1907 and the 1914 edition published in Turin, which, incidentally, was just three years before the Fatima visions of 1917 showing the sun moving in the sky. Obviously, no editor saw fit to remove the geocentric teaching from the catechetical regimen of Catholic doctrine. The introduction states:

The original manuscript of the Catechism is not extant. But of the innumerable Latin editions that have appeared, the earliest are: The Manutian (Rome, 1566), so called because it was printed by Paulus Manutius by command of Pope Pius V….Among later Latin editions may be mentioned the following issued at Rome: The edition of 1761, which contains the Encyclical of Clement XIII on the excellence and use of the Roman Catechism; the Propaganda editions of 1858, 1871 and 1907.202

Also highly significant is the fact that the Roman Catechism makes a point of not only reiterating the dogmatic decrees from the Council of Trent, but its purpose was also to “examine every statement in the Catechism from the viewpoint of doctrine,”203 which requires us to conclude that among the statements subjected to the prescribed analysis were the four geocentric catechetical teachings noted above. This is a clear indication that Pius V understood geocentrism as Catholic doctrine.

60) Brandmüller: Olivieri emphatically underscores the fact that in all the years since 1633 he could discover not one single measure of the Congregation of the Index or of the Holy Office against one of the numerous books teaching heliocentrism that had appeared since, or against their authors.

R. Sungenis: Olivieri must not have been looking very hard. Thirty-one years after Pope Urban VIII and his Sacred Congregation of the Index condemned heliocentrism as “formally heretical” and “erroneous in faith,” on March 5, 1664, Pope Alexander VII attached condemnations of the works of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler to a papal bull appropriately titled Speculatores domus Israel (“Watchman over the House of Israel”), signed by the pope himself and which declared that the Index of Forbidden Books was part of the papal bull and thus bore his direct papal authority.204 In this way, the pope’s decree against books teaching heliocentrism was in the forma specifica venue, one of the highest magisterial vehicles for the dissemination of papal authority. The pope also mentions past decrees against heliocentrism, which implies that the decree of 1633, which stated that heliocentrism was “formally heretical” and “erroneous in faith,” were personally and canonically confirmed by Alexander VII. Needless to say, this highly authoritative bull was the chosen means the pope determined to be a “Watchman” for the Church, to protect it from heretical and erroneous ideas that would damage the faith of its people.

Moreover, the very fact that Johannes Kepler and his elliptical orbits were put on the Index by Alexander’s 1664 bull meant that Olivieri’s main argument to Pius VII, namely, that the 1616/1633 decrees had rejected Galileo’s heliocentric system because he lacked elliptical orbits, is forthwith exposed for the fallacy it was.

The Case of Joseph Lalande

The solidity of Benedict XIV’s 1758 approval of the acts of the Sacred Congregation in continuing the ban on Copernicanism was confirmed with legal overtones when French astronomer, Joseph Lalande, while visiting Rome in 1765, attempted to have Galileo’s Dialogo taken off the Index by Lalande’s citing the fact that the 1758 Index had withdrawn the general ban on books about Copernican cosmology. Although we already covered the 1758 Index, here we will add that the head of the Congregation of the Index promptly told Lalande that since the prohibition against Galileo and his Dialogo was precipitated by a canonical trial, the sentence pronounced against Galileo would first have to be revoked in order for any lifting of the prohibition to occur.205

The importance of this canonical protocol cannot be underestimated. If the head of the Congregation of the Index indeed spoke truthfully for the Church on this matter, he informs us in no uncertain terms that for any rehabilitation of either Galileo or his heliocentric theory to occur, a formal and legal reversal of his sentence and condemnation would first have to occur, either by the then present magisterium or any future magisterium. If there is no subsequent formal and legal exoneration of Galileo, then, according to the canonical protocol of the Catholic Church, Galileo and his heliocentric theory remain condemned to this very day. Since the Church has not initiated any official, formal or legal rescission of Galileo’s condemnation, it remains legally in force.

The Efforts of Pietro Lazzari to Exonerate Galileo

The Jesuit consultant, Pietro Lazzari, was a professor of church history at the Roman College. Lazzari tries to convince the Congregation of the Index to remove the prohibition of heliocentric books by first citing all the modern astronomers who hold to heliocentrism. The pressure his words put upon the Congregation were unprecedented. It seems his objective was to make them appear foolish if they did not accept the heliocentric system as a thesis. He writes:

…I now come to the second point and reflection: that not one of these reasons, and still less the whole set, remains nowadays to retain the clause [“all books teaching the earth’s motion and the sun’s immobility”]. First, then, the opinion of the earth’s motion is prevalent in the principal academies, even in Italy, and among them most celebrated and competent physicists and mathematicians. Second, they explain Scripture in the sense that is proper and most literal. Third, they advance a kind of demonstration in their favor.206

To put as much pressure on the Congregation of the Index as he could muster, Lazzari adds an arsenal of heliocentric supporters, quoting from the 1749 Chambers’s Universal Dictionary: “According to the Copernican hypothesis, which now seems generally accepted and even has a demonstration [Bradley’s stellar aberration] the sun is at the center of the system of planets…and our earth among them revolve around it in different periods…” and the 1750 Philosophical Grammar of the Sciences, which, speaking of geocentrism, says: “We have not reason to believe it; instead we have some demonstrations to the contrary.” He cites Fr. Paolo Frisi’s Dissertation on the Diurnal Motion of the Earth, which was granted an “imprimatur of the general of his order; and it was signed ‘Rome, at the ex-college of Saints Blaise and Charles, 24 January 1756’ and was based on the reports of two of his theologians.”

61) Brandmüller: Then Newton made decisive progress with his discovery of gravitation, which modified the Copernican system in such a way that we could call Copernicus a Newtonian. The fact that Newton was never condemned, although this absolutely ought to have happened if the old sentences had applied to his teaching, shows that they did not fall under the judgments passed in 1616 and 1633.

R. Sungenis: Just because Newton wasn’t pursued by the Catholic Church does not mean he did not fall under the judgments passed in 1616/1633. The Catholic Church didn’t pursue a lot of proclaimed heliocentrists, as noted by what Pietro Lazzari stated above. Moreover the French Revolution of 1789 precipitated an almost total rejection of Church authority in France. As Finocchiaro describes it:

The French Revolution affected the Galileo affair not only in the general and indirect ways…but also in a very specific and concrete way….In 1798 a French army occupied Rome, abolished the papal government, and established a Roman Republic. Pope Pius VI was deported to Florence, and the Inquisition palace in Rome was ‘plundered to some extent by a French military rabble, and a part of the archives burned.’ In 1800 a new pope, Pius VII, was elected in Venice, and in 1806 he was allowed to return to Rome with limited powers of government….In 1809, Napoleon again abolished papal government in Rome; the pope responded by excommunicating him. As a result, the pope was arrested and deported to France, and on 2 February 1810 everything in Rome pertaining to papal government was ordered moved to France. This situation did not change until 1814, when Napoleon freed the pope, restored the papal state, and began returning Church records and archives to Rome.207

The Catholic Church was simply becoming outnumbered. She could declare a doctrine, but getting the populace to obey it was an altogether different thing. What began as the decline in geocentric thinking in the late 1700s metastasized into almost total disbelief in the 1800s and 1900s. When Galileo and Copernicus were finally taken off the Index in 1835 by one of Olivieri’s collaborators, Cardinal Cappallari, the f loodgates were wide open.

But there was a remaining bright spot, and it regarded how the Church regarded Isaac Newton. As Lalande and Lazzari were advancing Newton to support heliocentrism, there was a Catholic force against succumbing to Newton. Newton published his famous work, Principia Mathematica, in 1687. It was, and is now, the most famous book ever written on physics and mathematics. It was the Principia that single handedly gave geocentrism its most difficult challenge, since, apparently, Newton’s laws of motion: (a) required the sun to be larger than the Earth, and (b) required the smaller body to revolve around the l arger body. In all practicality, Newton’s book was well on its way to convincing the world that heliocentrism could be the only possible answer to the question of celestial revolutions. But the deadly flaw that would be discovered two hundred years later by Ernst Mach was that Newton had no right to confine the system to the sun and Earth but must also include the rest of the universe, and even allow the universe to move (i.e., rotate).

Before Mach, Newton’s Principia had some formidable competition from the Catholic Church. In 1739-1742, when the three-volume edition of the Principia was published in Geneva, the Catholic Church assigned two Minim friars from the Franciscan order, Thomas Le Seur and François Jacquier, as editors. Their editing of the Principia was for the purpose of introducing Newton’s work to the educated class of the Roman papal court. As one author judged their edition:

With its rich editorial content, extensive summaries and detailed index, the Jesuit edition remains the most ambitious and perhaps the most useful edition ever published. It was reissued in Geneva in 1760, Prague in 1780-85, and finally in Glasgow in 1822 and 1833, with further changes by J. M. F. Wright.208

The most significant feature of the above editions of the Principia in light of the heliocentric/geocentric debate was that the Preface contained a disclaimer, or what was then known as a “Declaratio,” stating that although Newton assumed the heliocentric system to be true, this was not the belief of the Catholic editors, Le Seur and Jacquier. Hence, each reader of the Principia would understand that although the editors wrote as if they accepted Newton’s heliocentrism, they did not, in fact, agree with it at all. All the editions carried this wording:

Newton in his third book assumes the hypothesis of the earth’s movement. The author’s propositions could not be explained except on the same hypothesis. Hence we have been obliged to put on a character not our own. But we profess obedience to the decrees made by the Supreme Pontiffs against the movement of the earth.209

This is quite a statement. The Pontiff reigning at the time was Benedict XIV, the same pontiff that eventually gave approval to remove the prohibitory sentence [“all books teaching the earth’s motion and the sun’s immobility”] from the Index but only under heavy restrictions. Hence, whatever allowance he had given to science in 1742 and 1758 it certainly was not to be interpreted as supporting the heliocentric system. In fact, we take strict notice that Le Seur and Jacquier did not attribute the “decrees…against the movement of the earth” as coming merely from “theologians” or even cardinals in high places, but from the “Supreme Pontiffs” up to their own day. Their specific use of the plural “Pontiffs” recognizes all the previous popes whom they understood as holding the same truth as Benedict XIV. All of them, without exception, had condemned the notion of a moving Earth. As editors under the Church and her authority, Le Seur and Jacquier would never have been able to attribute the rejection of heliocentrism to all the “Supreme Pontiffs” unless they were permitted to do so by those very popes; and unless the consensus of allegiance to the pope on this matter was pervasive throughout the countries under Her control. If the Church had disagreed with the disclaimer and had decided by 1739 to accommodate cosmologies other than geocentrism, the disclaimer would have been removed since the disclaimer is making the bold and well publicized proclamation that all the “Supreme Pontiffs” have rejected Newton’s heliocentrism. In 1739, when Jaquier and Le Suer f irst published their commentary, the Index against heliocentrism was alive and well, as noted by the fact that Benedict XIV kept Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler on the Index in 1741 and 1758. If Jaquier and Le Suer had promoted Newton’s heliocentrism, they would have been put on the Index as well.

Interestingly enough, Pietro Lazzari, noted earlier for his long letter seeking to convince the Inquisition in favor of Copernicanism in 1741, mentions Le Seur and Jacquier in his letter as “two celebrated mathematicians of the order of St. Francis of Paola”210 and he attempts to use them as corroborating testimony of the position that “nowadays the prevalent opinion among the most competent astronomers and physicists is that the earth moves around the sun.” Hence, either Lazzari did not know of Le Seur and Jacquier’s devotion to geocentrism, or he was purposely distorting the truth.

The most significant aspect of the Declaratio was that it persisted in all Latin volumes of the Principia for the next hundred years. The last volume on record to contain Le Seur’s and Jacquier’s disclaimer was the 1833 Glasgow (or Glasguæ) edition, two years before the Index of Gregory XVI. This late date of 1833 proves once again that the Pontiffs of the Catholic Church were the main authorities against the heliocentric system. By 1833, Newton was a household word and anyone worth his scientific salt had read his book and most likely agreed with it, at least in principle. That his book still contained the Declaratio in 1833 meant that the Catholic Church still believed in geocentrism and, consequently, the imprimatur granted to Settele in 1822 really had no effect on that consensus.

62) Brandmüller: What can be criticized is the fact that Galileo’s theological opponents were not capable in this case of interpreting the literal sense of Sacred Scripture adequately, by adopting the principles of interpretation that had already been applied by Cajetan, or — like other contemporaries — by taking into account the possibility that Sacred Scripture was employing colloquial speech at the places indicated. This, however, can of course be regarded as an error of the Inquisition.

R. Sungenis: Notice how Brandmüller tries to soften the devastating blow to the Church he has just made by referring to the perpetrators of the alleged error as “the Inquisition,” when in fact those ultimately responsible for what was concluded were two popes, Paul V and Urban VIII. He also indicts the dozen or so Dominican qualifiers commissioned by Paul V who determined that a heliocentric interpretation of Scripture was a “formal heresy.” And last but not least, Brandmüller indicts Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, the Church’s chief exegete of Scripture who almost single handedly silenced the Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) whose “faith alone” exegesis he utterly destroyed. Brandmüller’s attempt to minimize his opponents is similar to what Paul Poupard did when he wrote the 1992 speech for John Paul II’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Science. Instead of naming the popes and high-ranking cardinals responsible for the Galileo decision, the speech refers only to “theologians” as the culprits:

If contemporary culture is marked by a tendency to scientism, the cultural horizon of Galileo’s age was uniform and carried the imprint of a particular philosophical formation. This unitary character of culture, which in itself is positive and desirable even in our own day, was one of the reasons for Galileo’s condemnation. The majority of theologians did not recognize the formal distinction between Sacred Scripture and its interpretation, and this led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation.211

As even one of the members of the commission assigned to study the Galileo issue in 1981 by John Paul II, Fr. George Coyne, admitted:

It is, furthermore, claimed in the Papal address that the error of the theologians was due to their failure to “recognize the distinction between Sacred Scripture and its interpretation.” This cannot be correct. Since the time of Augustine, this distinction was well established and it was taught in all the schools of exegesis at the time of Galileo. In fact, in 1616 the qualifiers/consultors of the Holy Office knew this distinction and made use of it in formulating their philosophical theological opinion on Copernicanism.212

So, the ones who are wrong here are Poupard and Brandmüller, and that is because they are insistent, without the slightest scientific proof, that heliocentrism is the correct view of the cosmos. Thus something has to change. It is either the Church or Science. For these two cardinals it is the Church who erred and must change because not only does She not know science, She doesn’t even know how to interpret Scripture correctly, and that’s because for sixteen hundred years prior She was never taught properly about the so-called “the formal distinction between Sacred Scripture and its interpretation.” We wonder, then, what led Her to interpret Matthew 26:26 (“Take and eat; this is my body”) as the body of Christ and no longer as bread? As Coyne says, not only did She know the “formal distinction,” She had the guts to take Scripture at face value and accept what looks like an impossibility as a definitive truth for all ages. The result is that the modern Church is little more than a cowardly remnant of its former self, bowing to almost every whim and call of the secular society.

63) Brandmüller: And Olivieri’s solution after two hundred years? At f irst it might seem that he had relinquished the position of Aquinas under the impression of scientific progress. But Olivieri too, and then the Holy Office along with him, did not maintain that the earth’s movement and heliocentrism were indisputable truths — although by then the professional world was convinced of it, and public opinion no less so. Olivieri’s reasoning merely shows that someone can teach this astronomical interpretation without contradicting the Catholic faith.

R. Sungenis: So Olivieri and his cohorts get to have their cake and eat it, too. Of course, we know how he arrived at this antinomy. He lied (telling everyone that the real issue was elliptical orbits and the weight of air); and used political maneuvers to get it passed (having himself placed as commission of the Holy Office), and strongarmed Pius VII who he knew was weak, sickly, equivocating.

63) Brandmüller: This restraint immediately proved to be all too justified, for further research has long since made the system of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton obsolete.

R. Sungenis: So if Copernicus, Galileo and Newton have been made obsolete, how does Brandmüller know that heliocentrism in itself won’t be made obsolete? He doesn’t. As we noted from the words of Cardinal Ratzinger (who Brandmüller doesn’t cite in his current book):

Today, things have changed. According to [Ernst] Bloch, the heliocentric system – just like the geocentric – is based upon presuppositions that can’t be empirically demonstrated….Then as now, one can suppose the earth to be fixed and the sun as mobile.”213

In fact, the greater truth from Ratzinger’s revelation is that modern science is blind to what system is correct. It can look all it wants into space but he will never be able to figure out whether the sun goes around the Earth or the Earth goes around the sun. And yet Brandmüller, without the slightest shame, is so ready to declare that the 1616/1633 “theologians” didn’t know what they were doing and were in “error.” In reality, the only true and authoritative source that can tell us which system is correct is Holy Scripture, from the mouth of God who cannot lie. That is what the “theologians” of 1616/1633 knew that Brandmüller either doesn’t know or refuses to accept.

64) Brandmüller: And this same development confirms once again the Thomistic methodological skepticism of the Roman theologians in 1616.

R. Sungenis: Notice here that he calls them “Roman theologians.” As for “skepticism,” perhaps Brandmüller forgets why we are in this dilemma in the first place. It began in the Garden of Eden when a pompous and conceited creature took advantage of the innocence of a human couple and convinced them that what God said was not true. At this point, the job of this couple was, indeed, to be as skeptical as they could, since it turned out that what God said was true and the only liar in the group was the creature. They didn’t need to know the “formal distinction between God’s word and its interpretation” in order to make the right decision. In the same way, God has told us that the Earth is f ixed and the sun daily moves around it—so simple a child could understand it. But those pretentious creatures, who themselves don’t know for certain what goes around what, are insistent that the face value biblical model just can’t be right.

Perhaps the real reason is, they don’t want to be in the center, for being in the center means that Someone had to put it there, and that means God exists, and that means that God will be their judge. They would much rather be out in the remote recesses of space, which is much more amenable to time and chance, without a God to judge us in the end. As Jesus said in John 3:19-21:

And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

---

1 https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-truly-traditionalist-approach-to science-isnt-what-youve-been-told

2Sammons says: 1) “Would the Church refuse to accept what was now scientifically proven, or would she be willing to recognize that the situation was now different than it was in Galileo’s time?”; 2) Since heliocentrism was accepted by almost everyone at this time—and most importantly, had been proven definitively since Galileo’s time”; 3) Olivieri demonstrated that, since heliocentrism had been scientifically proven, the Church had to accept that previous literal interpretations of Scripture—including those by the Church Fathers—which advocated for geocentrism were erroneous”; 4) In our day, the old age of the universe has been scientifically proven; it is billions of years old”; 5) “It’s not “traditional” to reject proven scientific discoveries like heliocentrism and an old earth; in fact, that’s contrary to the actual tradition of the Church.”

3We say “more or less” because sometimes Brandmüller appears to equivocate on whether there was proof. He says: “Galileo’s statement that the discovery of the phases of Venus proves that the heliocentric system is the only correct one” (p. 55); and then says: “…for while Galileo’s observations may well have raised doubts about the Ptolemaic system, they did not prove Copernicus correct” (p. 56); “Since the History says that the Copernican system was conclusively confirmed and proved in our times with many arguments and experiments” (p. 224); “Even though the twofold movement of the earth, as astronomers teach it today, cannot be proved strictly and mathematically, the possibility remains nevertheless of conducting the proof by methods from physics. If someone is unwilling to acknowledge even that, he nevertheless cannot deny that this view has attained the highest degree of probability” (p. 287); “This then was scientific situation on the eve of the Settele affair, which we are about to describe: the Copernican system —corrected, substantiated, and refined by the results of nearly two hundred years of astronomical research — had met with ever greater approval, or rather, it had become increasingly self-evident, even though — at least judging by today’s standards — Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was the first to provide conclusive proof for this system with his discoveries in the year 1838” (p. 209).

4 https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-truly-traditionalist-approach-to science-isnt-what-youve-been-told

5The Realist Guide to Religion and Science, Gracewing, 2018, pp. 279-282. Fr. Robinson shows a diagram to illustrate that stellar parallax occurs when the Earth (in the heliocentric system) moves 180 degrees in six months around the sun, which causes a shift in the view of two stars. The shift is called the “parallax angle.” Unfortunately, Fr. Robinson fails to show his reader that the same shift will occur in the Tychonic geocentric system when the star field turns 180 degrees in six months around a fixed Earth. The sad fact is, Fr. Robinson has been alerted to the geocentric alternative but refuses to acknowledge it and remains incommunicado with his critics.

6“Relativity – The Special and General Theory,” cited in Stephen Hawking’s, A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion, 2007, p. 169.

7Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, 2nd rev. ed. 1957, p. 73.

8The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, NY, Bantam, 2010, p. 41.

9Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on his Life and Work, p. 82. Also from the same book: “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is “right” and the Ptolemaic theory is “wrong” in any meaningful sense. The two theories are…physically equivalent to one another” (ibid, p. 88).

10 From Copernicus to Einstein, 1970, pp, 18, 82.

11 Quoted from Dennis W. Sciama’s, The Unity of the Universe, 1961, pp. 102 103.

12 I. Bernard Cohen, Birth of a New Physics, revised, 1985, p. 78.

13 Arthur Lynch, The Case Against Einstein, p. 22.

14 Wolfgang Pauli, Theory of Relativity, 1958, p. 4.

15 From Poincaré’s lecture titled: “L’état actuel et l’avenir de la physique mathematique,” St. Louis, Sept. 24, 1904, Scientific Monthly, April, 1956.

16 Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwicklung Historich-Kritisch Dargestellt, Liepzig: Brokhaus, 1883. English title: The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development, translated by T. J. Macormack, La Salle, Open Court Publishing, 1960, 6th edition, p. 201. The seventh edition of Mach’s book was published in 1912.

17 Julian Barbour, Absolute or Relative Motion, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 226.

18 From Poincaré’s report La science et l’hypothèse (“Science and Hypothesis”)1901,1968, p. 182, Kostro’s, Einstein and the Ether, 2000, p. 30.

19 The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, 1938, 1966, p. 212.

20 Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, HarperCollins, 2015, pp. 251-252. Originally from George E. Smith of Tufts University in the essay titled: “Newtonian Relativity: A Neglected Manuscript, an Understressed Corollary.” My thanks to him for use of his essay and the accompanying Power Point presentation, emailed to me on August 8, 2015, record on file.

21 The Relativity Explosion, 1976, pp. 86-87. The previous edition was published in 1962 under the title: Relativity for the Million.

22 Bertrand Russell, The ABC of Relativity, London, revised edition, editor Felix Pirani, 1958, pp. 13-14.

23 J. L. E. Dreyer, A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, New York, Dover Publications reprint, 1953, p. 363. See also his 1890 work Tycho Brahe, (New York, Dover Publications reprint, 1963).

24 James A. Coleman, Relativity for the Layman, p. 37. Of Coleman’s book Einstein wrote: “Gives a really clear idea of relativity” (front cover 1954 edition).

25 Bernard Jaffe, Michelson and the Speed of Light, 1960, p. 76. Jaffe adds this conclusion to the above sentence: “This, of course, was preposterous.”

26 Julian Barbour, Absolute or Relative Motion, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 226.

27 Adolf Baker, Modern Physics & Antiphysics, pp. 53-54.

28 Albert A. Michelson, “The Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether,” American Journal of Science, Vol. 22, August 1881, p. 125.

29 Brandmüller, Cardinal Walter, The Case of Galileo and the Church, Sophia Institute Press, p. 10.

30 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 357.

31 As Brandmüller says, “The Lincean Academy, and also the Arcadia and the Archeological Academy, held their meetings. Most importantly, however, the Accademia di Religione Cattolica proved to be very lively. After the interruption from 1809 to 1814, it experienced a meteoric rise. It recognized that its real mission was to come to terms with contemporary science, which was influenced by the Enlightenment, and the academy fulfilled this task with numerous lectures” (op cit. pp. 230-231). The Lincean Academy was Galileo’s intellectual hangout, all of them heliocentrists. According to Harvard author, David Wooton, Galileo was part of an underground movement to undermine the Catholic Church and did his best with his claims that the Church read Scripture incorrectly concerning the cosmos. This attack, of course, just begs the question: what else did the Church get wrong on doctrine when she thought she was right? See Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, pp. 185-262.

32 In Sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco Commentarius, Rome 1570, pp. 247 248, cited in The Church and Galileo, p. 18, 31. Clavius uses Psalms 19:5-6; 104:5 and Ecclesiastes 1:4-6 for his main support. See also: James Lattis’ Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology, University of Chicago Press, 1994.

33 Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 15, p. 160, translated by Finocchiaro in The Galileo Affair, p. 255.

34 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 139.

35 Ibid., p. 168.

36 F = GM1M2/r2

37 Hans Thirring, “Über die Wirkung rotierender ferner Massen in der Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 19, 33, 1918, translated: “On the Effect of Rotating Distant Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation.”

38 Quoted from Dennis W. Sciama’s, The Unity of the Universe, 1961, pp. 102 103.

39 “Ten years later, James Bradley made his sensational discovery of the stellar aberration of the light from the fixed stars and thereby made possible something close to a proof for the motion of the earth” (p. 198).

40 “…at least judging by today’s standards — Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was the first to provide conclusive proof for this system with his discoveries in the year 1838” (p. 209).

41 Newtonian Relativity: A Neglected Manuscript, an Understressed Corollary, Geroge E. Smith, Tufts University, 2015.

42 Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, HarperCollins, 2015, pp. 251-252.

43 “Giovanni Battista Guglielmini published in 1789 an initial experimental proof for the rotation of the earth — and did so in Rome with the ecclesiastical imprimatur” (p. 207).

44 Taken from Brandmüller and Greipl, Copernico Galilei E La Chiesa, 1992, p. 350, translated by Rev. Fr. Brian Harrison, STD. Italian: Non si può sostener per tesi che quell oche sia vero, o che si creda vero irrefragabilmente. Il Sig. Canonico Astronomo può Egli in coscienza creder vero il Sistema Copernicano irrefragibilmente? Egli sarebbe ben temerario, se asserisse di sì. Per poterlo asserire con giustizia, converrebbe, che sapesse tutte le risorse possibili nel sistema planetario capaci di supplire al supposto movimento della terra, ed al riposo centrale del Sole. Or non è dell’uomo l’arrivare tant’oltre. Dunque, se vuol essere uomo di buona fede, non può sostener il Sistema Copernicano, che per Ipotesi, e così tutti gli altri, che trattano di queston soggetto, siano I Cassini, gli Euleri, la Place, sia il Sig. Canonico con tutto il suo libro, non ci dirà di più di quell, che ci han detto gli altri, e facia il Cielo, che I suoi sforzi non siano premiti degni di una cacata carta. Forse qualcuno avrebbe difficoltà d’esprimersi così chiaro. Io non l’ho, perchè son convento di tutta l’incertezza, e della molta imposture della scienza Astronomica.

45 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 287.

46 Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, 2nd rev. ed. 1957, p. 73.

47 As Newton claims in his 1684 Scholium: “Thence indeed the Copernican system is proved a priori. For if a common center of gravity is computed for any position of the planets, it either lies in the body of the Sun or will always be very near it.”

48 “Since this force is equal and opposite to its gravity toward the Sun, the Earth can truly remain in equilibrium between these two forces and be at rest. And thus celestial bodies can move around the Earth at rest, as in the Tychonic system” (Newtonian Relativity: A Neglected Manuscript, an Understressed Corollary, Geroge E. Smith, Tufts University, 2015).

49 “Obviously it matters little if we think of the Earth as turning about on its axis, or if we view it at rest while the fixed stars revolve around it. Geometrically these are exactly the same case of a relative rotation of the Earth and the fixed stars with respect to one another. All masses, all velocities, thus all forces are relative. There is no basis for us to decide between relative and absolute motion….If there are still modern authors who, through the Newtonian water bucket arguments, allow themselves to be misled into differentiating between relative and absolute motion, they fail to take into account that the world system has been given to us only once, but the Ptolemaic and Copernican views are only our interpretations, but both equally true” (Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwicklung Historich-Kritisch Dargestellt, Liepzig: Brokhaus, 1883, p. 222. The original German reads: “Alle Massen, alle Geschwindigkeiten, demnach alle Kräfte sind relativ. Es gibt keine Entscheidung über Relatives und Absolutes, welche wir treffen könnten, zu welcher wir gedrängt wären….Wenn noch immer moderne Autoren durch die Newtonschen, vom Wassergefäß hergenommenen Argumente sich verleiten lassen, zwischen relativer und absoluter Bewegung zu unterscheiden, so bedenken sie nicht, daß das Weltsystem uns nur einmal gegeben, die ptolemäische oder kopernikanische Auffassung aber unsere Interpretationen, aber beide gleich wirklich sind”).

50 Extracts taken from “A Turning Point for Europe? The Church and Modernity in the Europe of Upheavals,” Paoline Editions, 1992, pp. 76-79. From a speech given on March 15, 1990 in Parma, Italy. English translation by the National Catholic Register. http://ncronline.org/node/11541

51 The only mention of Ratzinger in the latter is the following: “While working on these projects we were able to enjoy the sympathetic cooperation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor to the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index. For this our most courteous thanks go to its then-prefect, His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger” p. 13.

52 The Case of the Galileo and the Church, p. 287.

53 The Case of the Galileo and the Church, p. 288.

54 The Church and Galileo, p. 354. Coyne adds: “In the Galileo case the historical facts are that further research into the Copernican system was forbidden by the decree of 1616 and then condemned in 1633 by official organs of the Church with the approbation of the reigning pontiffs” (ibid).

55 “The Church’s Ban on Copernicanism,” in The Church and Galileo, p. 159.

56 “…mentre sento che essi pretendono di poter costringer altri, con l’ autorità della Scrittura, a seguire in dispute naturali quella opinione che pare a loro che più consuoni con I luoghi di qualla, stimandosi insieme di non essere in obbligo di solvere le ragioni o esperienze in contrario” (Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 5, pp. 323-324, translated by Finocchiaro).

57 Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 5, p. 322.

58 Galileo was well aware of this dimension of the contention between himself and the Church. In a June 8, 1624 letter to Federico Cesi (one of the censors later assigned by Riccardi to edit Galileo’s Dialogo) he remarks: “…ma che non era da temere che alcuno fosse mai per dimostrarla necessariamente vera” (“that it was not to be feared that anyone would ever be able to demonstrate it as necessarily true”) in Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 13, p. 182.

59 “The Church’s Ban on Copernicanism,” in The Church and Galileo, pp. 172 173.

60 See also Pius XII’s Humani Generis: “Nor must it be thought that the things contained in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves require assent on the plea that in them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For these things are taught with the ordinary Magisterium, about which it is also true to say, ‘He who hears you, hears me.’ [Lk 10. 16]...If the Supreme Pontiffs, in their acts expressly pass judgment on a matter debated until then, it is obvious to all that the matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be considered any longer a question open for discussion among theologians.” See also the Code of Canon Law Canon 752: “Although not an assent of faith, a religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act; therefore, the Christian faithful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.”

61 “But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know….but the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.”

62 Lumen Gentium 12 adds this footnote: “(The sensus fidei refers to the instinctive sensitivity and discrimination which the members of the Church possess in matters of faith. – Translator.)”

63 “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”

64 “Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

65 The Documents of Vatican II, Austin Flannery, O.P., NY: Costello Publishing, 1975, p. 363.

66 Translated from the anonymous Italian text transcribed and published by Mayaud, Rome: Editrice Pontifica Università Gregoriana, 1997, pp. 136-137, as cited in Finocchiaro’s Retrying Galileo, pp. 127-128.

67 Mayaud, pp. 137-138, Retrying Galileo, op. cit., p. 128.

68 Mayaud, pp. 146-148, Retrying Galileo, op. cit., pp. 130-131.

69 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 312.

70 Finocchiaro notes: “…Agostino Ricchini, proposed to the pope…the possibility of lifting the prohibition of some books after proper correction” (Retrying Galileo, p. 138).

71 Finocchiaro, ibid., p. 139, citing various sources, including Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 19, p. 419; Karl Gebler’s Galileo and the Roman Curia, pp. 312-313; Pierre-Noël Mayaud, La Condamnation des Livres Coperniciens et sa Révocation à la Lumière de Documents Inédits des Congrégations de l’Index et de l’Inquisition, 1997, p. 197.

72 Original Latin: “….Et quia etiam ad notitiam praefatae Sacrae Congregationis pervenit, falsam illam doctrinam Pithagoricam, divinaeque Scripturae omnino adversantem, de mobilitate terrae et immobilitate solis, quam Nicolaus Copernicus De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, et Didacus Astunica in Job, etiam docent…. ideo, ne ulterius huiusmodi opinion in perniciem Catholicae veritatis serpat, censuit, dictos Nicolaum Copernicum De revolutionibus orbium, et Didacum Astunica in Job, suspendendos esse, donec corrigantur; librum vero Patris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitae omnino prohibendum atque damnandum; aliosque omnes libros, partier idem docentes, prohibendos: prout praesenti Decreto omnes respective prohibit, damnat atque suspendit. In quorum fidem praesens Decretum manu et sigillo Illustrissimi et Reverendissimi D. Cardinalis S. Caeciliae, Episcopi Albanensis, signatum et munitum fuit, die 5 Martii 1616” (Antonio Favaro, Galileo E L’Inquisizione, p. 63; Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 19, p. 323). Part of above translation taken from de Santillana’s The Crime of Galileo, as cited by Fantoli in Galileo: For Copernicanism and For the Church, pp. 223-4.

73 All of it is covered in Galileo Was Wrong, Volume 3, pages 326-393.

74 Brandmüller adds: “Even the Master of the Sacred Palace was ex officio a member of the Holy Office and of the Congregation of the Index” (op cit., p. 235).

75 As Brandmüller says: “Anfossi forbade publication, citing the 1616 decree” (op. cit., p. 270).

76 Brandmüller, The Case of Galileo and the Church, pp. 270-271.

77 “Il P. R.mo Maestro del S. P. Ap.lico. ha presentato a S. S.ta uno scritto, nel quale espone nove Motivi, per cui “ha creduto, e crede non doversi permettere al Sig. Canon Settele d’insegnar come tesi, e non come semplice ipotesi a tenor del Decreto del 1620 la mobilità della terra e immobilità del Sole nel centro del Mondo. Per verita queste sole parole del titolo mostrano un imperizia, che appena si può credere nel P. Anfossi non solo rivestito di una dignità così importante, ma autore di tanti Libri stampati. Niente è più falso di questo, che il Canon Settele voglia insegnare la stabilità del sole nel centro del mundo. Imperocchè egli insegna colla universalita de’moderni astronomi, che il sole non e nel centro del mondo, anzi neppure nel centro del nostro, sistema planetario; ma soltanto in uno dei due fochi delle elissi rispettive, che ciascun pianeta descrive d’intorno a Lui” (Brandmüller and Greipl, Copernico Galilei E La Chiesa, pp. 317-318).

78 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 309.

79 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 306.

80 Ibid., 307.

81 Ibid., 328.

82 The Case of Galileo, p. 241.

83 “Decretum Sacrae Congregationis Illustrissimorum S.R.E.Cardinalium, a S.D.N. Paulo Papa V Sanctaque Sede Apostolica ad Indicem librorum, eorumdemque permissionem, proibitionem, expurgationem et impressionem in universa Republica Christiana, specialieter deputatorum, ubique publicandum” (Antonio Favaro, Galileo E L’Inquisizione, p. 63; Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. 19, p. 323).

84 “non potendo in niun modo esser probabile un’opinione dichiarata e difinita per contraria alla Scrittura divina.”

85 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 289.

86 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 322.

87 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 326.

88 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 323.

89 Similar lame arguments are used today for the reason we see a dipole in the CMB. Since it is assumed by scientists that the sun/earth is moving counter clockwise around the Milky Way, this would cause a blue shift at the anterior and a red shift at the posterior. But if space were moving clockwise around a fixed Earth, there would be the same blue shift and red shift at opposite poles.

90 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 323.

91 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 323.

92 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 323.

93 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 324.

94 The Case of Galileo and the Church, pp. 323-324.

95 Ibid, p. 316, translated from the original Italian by Fr. Brian Harrison, STD. A note added by the editor states: “Bibl. Naz. Fir. Banco Rari, Armadio 9, Cartella 5, 33. – Orginale, di mano di Vincenzio Vivani.” This means that the letter is stored in the rare archives of the National Library at Florence in the rare books department, in cabinet #9, folder #5, 33 and written in the original hand of Vincenzio Viviani, since Galileo was blind in both eyes in 1641. Viviani was Galileo’s last pupil and first biographer. NB: Viviani had performed the first Foucault-type pendulum experiment in 1661. Stillman Drake contains a similar translation in Galileo At Work: His Scientific Biography, 1978, p. 417.

96 Brandmüller, The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 230.

97 Ibid., p. 290.

98 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 261-263.

99 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 355.

100 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 271.

101 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 261.

102 Dorothy Stimson, The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe, pp. 67-68.

103 Retrying Galileo, pp. 26-28.

104 Ibid., p. 27.

105 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 307.

106 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 277.

107 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 306.

108 “Che il sole sia centro del mondo et imobile di moto locale, è propositione assurda e falsa in filosofia, e formalmente heretica, per essere espressamente contraria alla Sacra Scrittura (ibid.).

109 “Che la terra non sia centro del mondo nè imobile, ma che si muova etiandio di moto diurno, è parimente propositione assurda e falsa nella filosofia, e considerate in teologia ad minus erronea in Fide” (ibid.).

110 The Case of the Galileo and the Church, p. 288.

111 “falsa dottrina, da alcuni insegnata, ch’il sole sia centro del mondo et imobile, e che la terra si muova anco di moto diurno” (Galileo E L’Inquizisione, Favaro, p. 143).

112 “rispondevi glosando detta Scrittura conforme al tuo senso” (ibid).

113 “si contengono varie propositioni contro il vero senso et auttorità della Sacra Scrittura” (ibid).

114 “di questa Suprema et Universale Inq.ne” (ibid).

115 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 278.

116 Ibid., p. 282.

117 As Brandmüller notes: “Settele was highly esteemed as an archeologist by Leo XII and especially by Gregory XVI. The latter already knew Settele from the time of the conflict that will be described here, during the course of which he had issued an opinion in favor of the professor” (ibid., p. 255).

118 As noted by Finocchiaro in Retrying Galileo, p. 154.

119 Ex 20:11; 30:17; 2Kg 19:15; 1Ch 16:26; 2Ch 2:12; Nh 9:6; Jb 9:8; 35:5; 38:33; Ps 33:6; 96:5; 115:15; 112:2; 124:8; 134:3; 136:5; 146:6; Is 37:16; 44:24; 45:12, 18; Jr 10:12; 33:17; 51:15; Jh 1:9; Ac 14:15; 17:14; Ap 14:7; Sr 24:5, et al.

120 “Such as, my dear, that Christianity is dead and rotting since Galileo cut its throat.” The words of Slote to Natalie to prove the philosophical basis to the 20th century German revolution (Herman Wouk, The Winds of War, Pocket Edition, 1973, p. 610).

121 It is the very reason that Galileo historian, Annabale Fantoli, faults the Church later in his book for her doctrine on contraception and insists that, due to her mistake with Galileo (which he calls “an abuse of power both doctrinal and disciplinary”), the Church should make herself “more open to the world” (Annabale Fantoli, The Case of Galileo: A Closed Question?, trans. By George V. Coyne, SJ, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012, p. 120, 252-253).

122 Annabale Fantoli, The Case of Galileo: A Closed Question? 2012, p. 240. Fantoli calls it: “the ‘remarkable’ way out of the centuries-old impasse excogitated by the commissioner of the Holy Office [Olivieri] in 1820” (p. 245).

123 The Observational Approach to Cosmology, 1937, pp. 50, 51, 54.

124 Einstein: The Life and Times, 1984, p. 57.

125 Ibid., pp. 109-110.

126 Theory of Relativity, Wolfgang Pauli, London, Pergamon Press, 1958, p. 15.

127 After receiving instruction at Bavarian schools, which included teaching on the Catholic faith (and in particular the traditional six-day creation), “at the age of twelve…he suddenly became completely irreligious” (Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 24). Einstein stated: “For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs” (Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 1984, p. 45). At another time: “Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] free thinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment – an attitude which has never again left me…” (Jammer, p. 25). “I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of his children for their numerous stupidities, for which he himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only his nonexistence could excuse him” (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, 2000, p. 201).

128 The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 8-9. See my book, The Demise of Catholic Scripture Scholarship.

129 Ibid., p. 312.

130 Ibid., pp. 314-315.

131 Ps 93:1 and 93:2 use the same Hebrew word for “established,” the word (kun), which appears over a hundred times in the Old Testament in most of the Hebrew tenses. In vr. 1 it is utilized in the Niphal imperfect and in vr. 2 in the Niphal participle, which is the simplest of the passive tenses. Although kun includes the concept of an original founding date (e.g., “the building was established in 1955”), it also includes the concept of stability and longevity (e.g., “the rock of Gibraltar was established”). Kun also refers to rest or immobility (Jg 16:26: “and Samson said to the lad who held him by the hand, ‘Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests’”; 16:29: “And Samson grasped the two middle pillars upon which the house rested”; Er 3:3: “They set the altar in its place”).

132 Is 66:1; Mt 5:35. In all of these passages the notion of “rest” for the Lord’s footstool is emphasized: Is 66:1: “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house which you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?”; 1Ch 28:2: “I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God”; Ps 132:7 8: “Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool! Arise, O Lord, and go to thy resting place, thou and the ark of thy might” (see also Ac 7:49). “Rest,” of course, refers to motionlessness, which is appropriate in the Earth’s case only if it is not moving through space.

133 Hebrew:(mōht) appears 39 times in the Old Testament, 20 in the Psalms. The Qal form appears 13 times, 23 times in the Niphal, and one each in the Hiphil and Hithpael. It can refer to things as simple as slipping with the foot (Dt 32:35; Ps 17:5; 38:16-17) to moving the earth (Ps 82:5; Is 24:19). Mōht, in the physical sense, refers to the transition from a state of rest to a state of movement; in the figurative sense, from a state of stability to a state of instability. Of all the words in Hebrew referring to movement (mōht) is used when any, even the slightest movement, is in view. Hence, it can refer to a shaking or vibration as well as a change of location.

134 Hebrew:(tebel) appears 38 times in the Old Testament. It is often a poetic synonym of ;(erets) referring to the “earth” (e.g., 1Sm 2:8; Ps 33:8; 77:18; 90:2; Is 34:1; Lm 4:12), but in non-poetic contexts it sometimes has a larger focus than the physical world and may include the more abstract notions associated with existence, such as the totality of human consciousness (e.g., Is 24:4; 26:9). In the non-poetic passages that tebel is used without erets, tebel always refers to the earth or that which is inhabited by mankind (e.g., 2Sm 22:16; Is 13:11; 14:17, 21; 18:3), not to the universe at large.

135 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 315.

136 Translated by Richard Blackwell in Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible, pp. 199-201. Blackwell’s use of “rotation” and “revolution” have been corrected when necessary and are noted by an asterisk. For the larger discussion regarding Galileo’s views of Joshua 10, please see Galileo Was Wrong, Vol. 3.

137(damam) appears 30 times in the Old Testament (RSV), and is understood in the following ways: “silent” (Lv 10:3; Jb 29:21; 31:34; Ps 4:4; 30:12; 31:17; 62:5; 131:2; Jr 47:6; 48:2; Lm 2:10; Ez 24:17; Am 5:13); “cut off” (1Sm 2:9); “stand still” (1Sm 14:9) “still” (Ex 15:16; Jb 30:27; 37:7; Is 23:2; Jr 8:14); “ceasing” (Ps 35:15); “devastated” (Jr 25:37); “destroyed” (Jr 49:26; 51:6); “rest” (Lm 2:18).

138 (amad) appears 78 times in the Old Testament. Its preponderant meaning is translated by such words as: “stay,” “wait,” “remain,” “abide,” “establish,” etc., the most common being “stop” or “stay” (e.g., Gn 19:17; Ex 9:28; Lv 13:23; Dt 10:10; 1Sm 20:38; 30:9; 2Sm 17:17; 2Kg 4:6; 13:18; 15:20; Jr 4:6; Hs 13:13).

139 (“and did not hasten to go for a whole day”) wherein the word in question does not mean “to go down” but “to go.” It is a combination of the Hebrew prefix (“to”) and the root word (“go,” “come,” “bring”). As such, the passage is entirely literal, since the phrase in question is not speaking of the direction of the sun but only the movement of the sun.

140 The distance from the Earth to the moon is 250,000 miles. Using 2πr for the circumference of the moon’s orbit, the total is 1,570,000 miles the moon travels in 28 days. In one day it travels 56,071 miles, which distance would take it way beyond the valley of Aijalon. In fact, since the Joshua account says that both the sun and the moon could be seen in the sky, this means that the sun and moon were at right angles to one another with the moon being near the extremity of the horizon. That being the case, there is a slim margin of space the moon could occupy in order to remain in the sky if its movement had not been arrested. An extra distance of 56,000 miles would take it beyond the horizon and out of sight.

141 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 315.

142 In the Hebrew etymology, “water” is (mayim) and “heavens” is (sha-mayim = “from the water”).

143 The Case of Galileo and the Church, pp. 315-316.

144 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 316.

145 “Myth 3: That Medieval Christians Taught that the Earth was Flat,” by Lesley Cormack, cited from Ronald Numbers’ Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion, Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 30–31.

146 For a detailed study on the Fathers’ treatment of a spherical v. flat earth, including a thorough review of Cosmas Indicopleustes, see my book, Flat Earth/Flat Wrong, 2018, pp. 176-248.

147 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 325.

148 On April 12, 1615, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine wrote a personal letter to Fr. Paolo Antonio Foscarini, who had been advocating the heliocentric view for some time. In the letter Bellarmine states: “Second, I say that, as you know, the Council prohibits interpreting Scripture against the common consensus of the Holy Fathers; and if Your Reverence wants to read not only the Holy Fathers, but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find all agreeing in the literal interpretation that the sun is in heaven and turns around the earth with great speed, and that the earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless at the center of the world. Consider now, with your sense of prudence, whether the Church can tolerate giving Scripture a meaning contrary to the Holy Fathers and to all the Greek and Latin commentators.

149 The Council of Trent, Fourth Session, 1563. The Sources of Catholic Dogma, translated by Roy J. Deferrari, from the 13th edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum, Loreto Publications, 1954, p. 245, ¶786.

150 The Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent, Ibid., p. 303, ¶ 995. Giovanni Riccioli, S. J., notes that it was the daily routine of Jesuit colleges to open the school year with a recitation of the above oath on the Bible (Almagestum novum, Bononiae, Typis Haeredis Victorii Benatii, 1651, Part II, p. 479, as cited in Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible, p. 14). Riccioli was the author of Almagestum Novum in 1651, the 2500-page tome that stands as the most detailed and comprehensive defense of the magisterium’s condemnation of Galileo.

151 Vatican Council I, Chapter II, Denz. 1788.

152 Exposition of the Christian Faith, Bk V, Ch II.

153 Demonstrations, 24.

154 Disputation with Manes, 22.

155 The Apology, G IV.

156 Against the Heathen, Book 1, 2, 5. The Fathers understood “globe” (Latin: mundi) to refer to any spherical body, including the universe, the sun, the planets or the earth. If Arnobius had desired to confine the meaning to “earth” the more likely word he would have chosen is terra. The original Latin, beginning at “has the fabric of this macine” is: numquid machinae huius et molis, qua universi tegimur et continemur inclusi, parte est in aliqua relaxata aut dissoluta constructio? numquid vertigo haec mundi, primigenii motus moderamen excedens, aut tardius repere aut praecipiti coepit volubilitate raptari? Arnobius’ context, which refers to the “mass of the universe” and “the stars begun to rise,” is speaking of the globe of the universe.

157 Against the Heathen, Part 1, No. 27.

158 Against the Heathen, Book II, 17.

159 Why the Christians do not Offer Sacrifices, Ch XIII.

160 City of God, Bk XIII, Ch 18.

161 Nine Homilies on the Hexameron, 10.

162 The Mystic Meaning of the Tabernacle, Bk V, Ch VI; Clement of Rome, Stromata, Bk V.

163 Nine Homilies of the Hexameron, Homily 3, 2.

164 Twelve Books on the Institutes, Bk XI, Ch X.

165 Homily on Titus, III.

166 Homilies to Antioch, Homily X.

167 Homilies to Antioch, Homily XII.

168 First Epistle to the Corinthians, Ch XX. Some object that Clement is incorrect since the moon’s path changes and the distance to the Earth changes. Clement is correct, however, since the phrase “without deviation” does not refer to the few centimeters per year that the moon falls away from the earth, but to the “roll on in harmony,” that is, to the fact that it continually revolves around the earth without fail, year after year. In either case, neither the Fathers nor the Church ever claimed a consensus or teaching on the moon’s distance from the Earth, but only that the moon revolved around the Earth.

169 Homily II, Ch XLV.

170 Pseudo-Clementine, Bk VIII, Ch XLV

171 Catechetical Lectures, VI, 3.

172 On Admonition and Repentance.

173 Oration of Constantine, Ch 1.

174 Life of Constantine, Bk II, Ch. LVIII.

175 Orations, XXVIII, XXX.

176 Funeral Orations for St. Basil, 66.

177 Orations, 5, xxv.

178 On the Making of Man, 30, 1, 1.

179 Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book. Some object that Gregory is incorrect because the Earth does not have a downward tendency. But Gregory does not mean that “downward tendency” is an actual motion downward but a force going against any attempt to move the earth in the opposite direction, thus allowing it to remain motionless. In either case, neither the Fathers nor the Church ever claimed a consensus or teaching on what keeps the Earth motionless; only that it is motionless.

180 On the Soul and Resurrection.

181 On Ecclesiastes, Ch 1, 2.

182 Fragments, I, Discourse on Hezekiah. Hippolytus’ reference to “twenty-four hours” refers to the second leg of the forty-eight hour period of that unique long day.

183 The Prooemium, Ch XIII.

184 Against Heresies, Bk I, Ch XVII, 1.

185 Against Jovinianus, Bk 2.

186 Against the Pelagians, Bk I, 1, 9.

187 The Orthodox Faith, Bk 2, Ch 7.

188 Dialogue with Trypho, Ch CXIII.

189 To Diognetes, Ch 7.

190 Concerning Free Will.

191 Octavius, Ch xvii.

192 On Fasting, Ch X.

193 The Case of Galileo and the Church, p. 325.

194 English translation of the French translation Aux origins, p. 708, cited in The Church and Galileo, pp. 15-16.

195 Alexander Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, 1957, pp. 11-12).

196 Also known as the Congregation of the Holy Office or the Sacred Congregation. In 1965, Pope Paul VI changed the name to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

197 The Roman Catechism, The Catechism of the Council of Trent, translated by John A. McHugh, O.P. and Charles J. Callan, O.P., Tan Publishing, 1982, p. 27. This particular translation has a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, issued January 1923. The 1829 version says the same: “[God] so ordered the celestial orbs in a certain and constant course, that nothing can be seen more variable than their continual revolution, nothing more certain than that variety” (Catechism of the Council of Trent, Article 16, Chapter 2, translated by Fr. O’Donovan, Dublin, James Duffy and Sons, n. d., p. 38).

198 Ibid., p. 28. The 1829 version reads: “God also, by his word, commanded the earth to stand in the midst of the world, ‘founded upon its own basis’” (Article 18, Chapter 1). NB: the word “world” is from the Latin mundus, which means “universe.” The clause “founded upon its own basis” may refer to the fact that, if the Earth were the universe’s center of mass, it would be independent of all inertial forces, remaining in the center while neither resting upon or suspended by any force or object. As Job 26:7 says: “He…hangs the earth upon nothing.”

199 Argued by David Palm in a 2010 debate with the author. Palm states: “Notice again that the Catechism states that God clothed the terram with ‘trees and every variety of plant and flower.’ He also filled it with living creatures, ‘as He had already filled the air and water.’ In other words, this terram is something distinct from the air and the water. The passage makes perfect sense if terram means ‘dry land,’ as it does in Gen 1:10. It makes no sense whatsoever if it means the entire earth, as in ‘the globe’—which is what the neo-geo needs it to say.”

200 Ibid., pp. 511-512.

201 Ibid., p. 516.

202 Ibid., p. xxvi. Even later, namely 1969, is the French version of Roman Catechism, Catechisme du Concile de Trente (Paris: Itinéraires, 1969, p. 30), stating: Dieu affermit aussi la terre sur sa base, et par sa parole Il lui fixa sa place au milieu du monde (“The earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundation”).

203 Ibid., p. xxv.

204 ¶6: “All these things were ordered to be carried out carefully and accurately according to Our mind, and the resulting general Index, including all the Tridentine and Clementine documentation, has now been composed. By Our order, it has also been revised and printed at the press of Our apostolic household, with the insertion of this present Bull. Therefore, on the advice of the aforesaid cardinals, We, by Our apostolic authority, and by means of this present Bull, confirm and approve the said general Index, with each and every thing contained in it.” Index Librorum Prohibitorum et Expurgandorum Novissimus, Pro Catholicis Hispaniarum, Regnis Philippi IV, Regis Cathol., Ill., AC. R. D.D. Antonii A Sotomaior O.P., Supremi Præsidis, & in Regnis Hispaniarum, Siciliæ, & Indiarum Generalis Inquisitoris, c. jussu ac studiis, luculenter & vigilantissimè recognitus, Madriti [Madrid], Ex Typographæo Didaci Diaz, Subsignatum Lldo Huerta, M. DC. LXVII [1667]. “Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Alexandri Septimi [Alexander VII] Pontificis Maximi jussu editus: Copernicanæ Astrologiæ Epitome. vide, Ioannis Kepleri; Copernicus. vide, Nicolaus.” (p. 30); “Galileo Galilei. Vide, Dialogo di Galileo.” (p. 52); “Ioannis Keppleri Epitome Astronomiæ Copernicanæ” (p. 73), attached to: “…Bullam Alexandri VII, P. M. qualis est in limine Editonis Superioris Anni, qui est M, DC, LXIV [1664]. Nam licèt nonnulla contineat, quæ ad illam Editionem, ejusque dispositionem speciatim pertinent, non sufficiebat tamen ea ratio, vt ejus lectione non fruerentur hic Fideles. Alexander Papa VII, Ad perpetuam rei Memoriam. Speculatores Domus Israel…” (p. 137).

205 As stated verbatim by Finocchiaro in Retrying Galileo, p. 154, with citation to Lalande’s 1771 work, Astronomie, second edition, vol. 1, pp. 536-41, ¶¶ 1103-4. Also cited in Karl Gebler’s Galileo and the Roman Curia, 1879, p. 313, and Walter Brandmüller’s Galilei e la Chiesa, ossia il diritto di errare, 1992, p. 162.

206 Jean D’Alembert, Copernic, in Diderot and D’Alembert 1751-1780, 4, pp. 173-174, as cited in Retrying Galileo, pp. 142-143.

207 Retrying Galileo, pp. 175-176.

208 Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revolution, an exhibition of books from Dr. and Mrs. R. Ted Steinbock, Mountain Goat Press, Louisville KT, 2006.

209 Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Isacco Newtono, PP. Thomæ Le Seur & Francisci Jacquier, Genevæ, MDCCXXXIX [1739]. Original Latin: “DECLARATIO: Newtonus in hoc tertio Libro Telluris motæ hypothesim assumit. Autoris Propositiones aliter explicari non poterant, nisi eâdem quoquè factâ hypothesi. Hinc alienam coacti sumus gerere personam. Cæterum latis a summis Pontificibus contra Telluris motum Decretis nos obsequi profitemur.” Above translation taken from Rev. William W. Roberts in The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement, p. 53.

210 As cited in Finocchiaro’s Retrying Galileo, p. 143, with an endnote identifying them as: “The Minim Fathers François Jacquier (professor of experimental physics at the University of Rome from 1746) and Thomas Le Seur (professor of applied mathematics from 1749)…They were the coeditors of the famous edition of and commentary to Newton’s Principia in 1739-1742” (ibid., p. 394), yet neither Finocchiaro nor his alternate source, Baldini, mention that Jacquier and Le Seur disavowed themselves from Newton’s heliocentrism and gave their full allegiance to the pontiffs who condemned Copernicanism.

211 Paragraph 9.

212 “The Church’s Most Recent Attempt to Dispel the Galileo Myth,” p. 344.

213 Extracts taken from “A Turning Point for Europe? The Church and Modernity in the Europe of Upheavals,” Paoline Editions, 1992, pp. 76-79. From a speech given on March 15, 1990 in Parma, Italy. English translation by the National Catholic Register. http://ncronline.org/node/11541

---

Sixty Ways to Refute a Catholic Heliocentrist: Robert Sungenis (geocentrist) versus Walter Cardinal Brandmüller and Eric Sammons (heliocentrists), is authored by Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D.

© Copyright 2025: Robert A. Sungenis, Sr. and assigns.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

Published by: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc. P.O. Box 278 State Line, PA 17263

Cover design: Robert Sungenis

NB: The Scripture portions of this book come mainly from the 1951 Revised Standard Version, but other translations are used when appropriate, and the author has also given his own translation at times. Greek and Hebrew font is taken from www.teknia.com and all Hebrew fonts are transcribed without Masoretic vowel pointing.

ISBN 13: 978-1-939856-52-4 Paperback

Fair Use of Published Material: This book claims use of published material under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, in which allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976).

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1