BREAKING: Francis plainly accused of heresy

Comments (96)

1. I expect Pope Francis, at the end of the day, to play the obedience card and “insist” on obedience to the Pope, implying that obedience is the highest virtue, even before charity.

2. It’s too late for “Correction”. “Condemnation” is more appropriate at this point.

3. You are all getting your hopes up for nothing. This is an internal struggle inside the conciliar imposter modernist V2 sect. This has nothing to do with the True Church. No one is going to comdemn V2 or modernism from within this heretical sect. Bergolio’s crime is that he pushed the “agenda” too quickly, not that he pushed the agenda.

4. https://youtu.be/r-910fIY6Vw

5. Now I know that not everything a Saint writes becomes canonized, however, this passage from St Cyprian of Carthage seems quite interesting, and witnesses an early tradition in the Church that notes that we ourselves are contaminated with sin by communing with a sinful clergy…

   St Cyprian of Carthage Epistle 67
   To the Clergy and People Abiding in Spain, Concerning Basilides and Martial.
   …
   “For in Exodus God speaks to Moses, and warns him, saying, Let the priests which come near to the Lord God sanctify themselves, lest the Lord forsake them. Exodus 19:22 And again: And when they come near to the altar of the Holy One to minister they shall not bring sin upon them, lest they die. Exodus 28:43 Also in Leviticus the Lord commands and says, Whosoever has any spot or blemish upon him, shall not approach to offer gifts to God. Leviticus 21:17 …
   …
   3. Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin, while communicating with a priest who is a sinner, and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their overseer, when the divine reproof by Hosea the prophet threatens, and says, Their sacrifices shall be as the bread of mourning; all that eat thereof shall be polluted; Hosea 9:4 teaching manifestly and showing that all are absolutely bound to the sin who have been contaminated by the sacrifice of a profane and unrighteous priest.” …
   …

6. ‘ACCUSED” but not “CONVICTED”. Would a Filial Correction of Hitler prevented World War II? It will be business as usual for Bergoglio and the V2 pseudo-church, except that this imposter will be even more vicious. Those who signed this document should have included the Cardinals who cast their vote for this heretic, which proves he is doing exactly what they intended. The saddest part is that the majority of clueless Catholics actually believe that this is the True Catholic Church. It isn’t.

7. Wow Bishop Fellay signed it. That is a surprise.

8. It seems as if the idea of separating one’s self from sinful priests AND their sacrifices has been forgotten; but the idea has a rich and documented history in the Church…

   Letter of Cyprian in Council with thirty six other bishops, to certain clergy and laity of Spain. AD 256 :
   (Jurgens , The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol I p234 #588)
   .
   “The people, in obedience to the precepts of the Lord and in fear of God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful prelate, nor ought they associate themselves with the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest, especially insomuch as they have the power both of electing worthy priests and of refusing the unworthy. This very thing, too, we note, stems from divine authority. – that a priest be chosen in the presence of the people and under the eyes of all, and that he be approved as worthy and suitable by public judgment and testimony.” …

9. Well yes, we are in no uncertain terms dealing with THE Whore of Babylon at this point. Babylon being neo pagan Rome and the harlot being the Biblical symbol of apostasy. I wonder their reaction when they are ‘excommunicated’ for disobedience?

10. Dear mpoulin,

    Saint Thomas Aquinas affirmed this as well. Thank you for this. In caritas.

11. Dearest Tom A,

    Is it that Bergoglio, “…pushed the ‘ “agenda” ‘ too quickly,…”, or has this been the time of preparation for the entry of the “great mender and healer” of all the, “damage which has JUST NOW been caused”, as by Jorge from hell ? Has the stage now been set? Is the chess board now positioned ever so carefully for the “check mate”? Perhaps only God knows? In caritas.

12. Archbishop Lefebvre:
    “So have confidence! Ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us under all circumstances. She is as strong as an army arrayed for battle. She who suffered as Queen of Martyrs at the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And will we not follow Our Blessed Mother and with her be ready to suffer martyrdom so that the work of redemption can continue?”

13. https://www.change.org/p/pope-francis-support-by-the-catholic-laity-for-the-filial-correction-of-pope-francis

14. Tom A,
    You are “Right-On”. To me its troubling that Bishop Fellay is right in the midst
    of it all.

15. I think this will be ignored by the MSM.

16. If you can could you direct me to where St Thomas said so? Thank you.

    Psalm 49
    16 But to the sinner God hath said: Why dost thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth?
    17 Seeing thou hast hated discipline: and hast cast my words behind thee.
    18 If thou didst see a thief thou didst run with him: and with adulterers thou hast been a partaker.
    19 Thy mouth hath abounded with evil, and thy tongue framed deceits.
    20 Sitting thou didst speak against thy brother, and didst lay a scandal against thy mother’s son:
    21 These things hast thou done, and I was silent. Thou thoughtest unjustly that I should be like to thee: but I will reprove thee, and set before thy face.
    22 Understand these things, you that forget God; lest he snatch you away, and there be none to deliver you. …

17. Why is this troubling? We already know that Bishop Fellay is not a sede.

18. Have a look at the comments section to the article linked on Drudge…. Ah yes, here’s the article:

    Conservative Roman Catholic theologians accuse pope of spreading heresy
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-conservative-theologians-pope-heresy-20170923-story.html

    The comments section there is filled with ignoramuses, as it always is in Catholic-related articles in the fakestream media. I fear these commenters are representative of today’s stupefied, degenerate populace. Bergoglio thus knows he can get away with whatever he wants, as long as it’s “progressive.”

19. Francis must be running around the Vatican in a rage and spilling blood. This is only the beginning of his end. He’ll go down in history for what he truly is.

20. Tom A. You’ve probably nailed it, but as you know, not only did the two remaining Dubia brothers not sign, it also includes the signature of Bishop Bernard Fellay ––along with a number of other very credible Catholics.
    So while you make enormous sense by suggesting that this document may not be much different than the Dubia (since the leaders of the Church are mostly Modernists) perhaps because this document has been approved by a number of known, faithful Catholics, we should hold off on making any final judgment until more of this has played out.

21. We must be very close to the point where every diocesan bishop will be making a choice to go along with the Francis Apostasy or remain Roman Catholic. We may get a few surprises, but I don’t count on most to do anything different than what they have in the past. At this point, every Catholic, Trad or not, will have to make this choice. Clearly, now all ambiguity is removed, those dioceses that go with Francis from now on are no longer Catholic, but apostate, reprobate churches. No Catholic under pain of mortal sin will be permitted to take part in the worship or organizations of any Francis bishop. Indeed, we are all going to be asked to put our heads on the chopping block soon, by the secular elites, who will now have Rome itself in their pocket to validate the coming persecution.

22. In reading the list of signatories to this letter, it appears that the impetus for its generation is from the R&R crowd while the Dubia was the neo-cath response. There is no need of a sede response since Catholics don’t get involved in false religions. Why the R&R crowd doesn’t see this? Who knows. But restoration will never happen until trads withdraw all support, including recognition, from the imposters.

23. Other than Bishop Fellay and one other SSPX priest, I don’t see any other signatures from the SSPX. Am I missing something?

24. Not at all. Bergoglio knows that most people (as in 99.99999%) have been converted to the revolution. He just doesn’t give a damn about this “filial correction,” and he can very much afford not to give a damn. The stupefied masses are behind him all the way.

25. “Bergoglio thus knows he can get away with whatever he wants, as long as it’s “progressive.”

    He won’t get away with anything. Nobody does. God is not mocked. The damage he does to souls is staggering. He should be rebuked over and over again.

26. You mean Fellay was the only Bishop that signed it.

27. No you are as damnably judgemental as ever.

28. Francis has an agenda, and come hell or high water (or theologians) he will proceed forward. Torpedoes be damned! He hasn’t come this far to be stopped by a letter and will consult with other Alinsky followers and barge forward. The battle lines have been drawn and this won’t stop till one side has been defeated.

29. Chris Ferrera and John Rao signed it as well as Martin Mosebach. I do not know if Michael Matt signed it.

30. The Filial Correction presents a direct challenge to the Catholic Hierarchy to witness to the truth of Christ or face Divine Retribution for their failure to do so. I very much doubt they will get another chance.

31. The words of Francis are judged every day as to whether we need to adhere to them or not.

32. Agreed 2cents , the ship sailed leaving us on the dock of the Magesterium and Borgoglio and his crew are far out to sea. Swimming after is a too late at this point.

33. Not quite…retired Bishop Rene Gracida (Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Corpus Christi) signed it this afternoon. He also has it listed on his blog.

34. Rushintuit–if your comment was meant for me, why can’t I wonder why others in the SSPX didn’t sign. If I’m mistaken, let me know. Why are you so sensitive? Are you judging my motives? I’m very happy that Bishop Fellay signed. Maybe he is giving second thoughts about seeking “regularization” from a Pope he admits to being heretical.

35. Hello mpoulin,

    Search the Summa Theologiae for the answer, as I don’t recall. The punch line as I recall, is that if any laity bear witness to sacrilege occurring on the part of the priest or as occurring by the laity in the midst of the priest, during the Holy Sacrifice, that lay person is commanded to inform the priest of his sacrilege or avail him of that of any laity, in the understanding that there are no graces which flow from the Sacrifice to the priest or the laity, as being blocked by the sacrilege, as any one or many sacrileges. If the priest continues in his sacrilege or in the allowance of any other to occur, you must cease going to the Holy Sacrifice which he offers. In caritas.

36. Yes, Louie didn’t mention that Bishop Fellay was among the signatories. I trust this will put to rest all the chicken little panic about SSPX shifting to modernism. What tripe that has been all along. By the way, the two “dubians” not being included speaks to my belief that they are, indeed, going to address this publicly in the context of their own document.

37. Tom,

    Please, for those of us still part of the Body of Christ, the One, Indefectable, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and loyal to Rome, don’t rain on our parade. This is huge.

38. Yea, where’s Paprocki, Cordeleon, Samples?

39. Here’s an entertaining and thought-provoking video by Christus Rex which discusses Pope Francis, the sensum fidelium (explained by Canon Hesse), the lack of response of the modern bishops (showcasing many saint’s prophecies foretelling this), and related issues that are touched upon in Louis’ above article:

    Pope Francis: I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmlsOu0wefk

40. Hello Tom A,

    The reason the, “R&R crowd doesn’t see this”, is given us in 2 Thess 2, as it relates matters of Faith and our salvation. As you likely know, Saint Paul said in verses 10,11:

    10 And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying: 11 That all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity.

    We know the Truth is hard as Christ Jesus commanded: “You think I came to bring peace. I came to bring the sword.” In Matthew 7: 15, 18-20, Christ commanded:

    “15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
    18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.”

    Christ commanded us to judge the objective reality, the outward acts of the other, such that we may know him, as by his fruits. The Angelic Doctor taught that the intellect must first inform the free will and then by virtue of our reception of grace alone, that gift both freely given and completely undeserved, can the will then choose the good over the evil. Holding this “R&R position”, through one’s own free will assent, speaks objectively about the person who holds the position as true. By virtue of the very reality of one holding that position as though it is true, it is objectively understood then, as Saint Paul taught, that same person has received, the “operation of error”, to believe the lie as the truth.

    You and others have demonstrated in this space time and time again Tom A, why one cannot at once profess to hold the Catholic Faith and at the same time reject the “Magisterial” teaching of the “Holy Roman Pontiff” in union with his “Bishops”. As this is a deFide teaching of the Holy Catholic Church, that is to submit to the Authority of Peter’s Successor in union with his Bishops, regarding all matters of Faith and Morality, when one chooses to “Recognize and Resist”, one places himself outside the Church by virtue of his freely being in opposition to the Faith, rendering him latae sententiae in schism, as an heretic. The so called “R&R” crowd twists that Truth in perfect contradistinction to, “Let your yea be yea and your no be no, anything else is from the Evil One”, and suggests that because the “Holy Father” didn’t pronounce it “ex-Cathedra”, he’s not actually attempting to teach it, and therefore that is evidence of the charism of Papal infallibility at work. This is a nightmarish deception of reality, as the Holy Father cannot teach anything which contradicts that which is in the Deposit of Faith, the Universal Magisterium, which is protected by the charism of “Ecclesiastical” infallibility. The charism of Ecclesiastical infallibility protects the Holy Father, in union with his Bishops, when defining and teaching Dogma and Morality from one iota of any error, as if only one iota occurs, the Church falls to the gates of hell and the Son of God made Man erred in Matthew 16:18, which is not possible as the divine Person cannot err. Period and end.

    All that is required is to find one error of heresy, as to be contained anywhere within the so called, “Universal Magisterium”, to know that it cannot be the Universal Magisterium of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which teaches it, regardless of whom those who teach the error may claim themselves to be, as these truths speak res ipsa loquitur. That one error of heresy is found, as one specific and objective fact of reality as Reality, in “Lumen Gentium, 16”. “Lumen Gentium” is in fact titled, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”. The word “Dogmatic” is even used in the Constitution’s very own title. To parlay the claim that heresy can be contained within a teaching document of the church (sm. case intended), as its “Dogmatic Constitution”, which by its very nature then, claims itself to be a matter of faith (sm. case intended) (aka: “Dogmatic” and its being contained within a “Council” which defines and teaches on matters of Faith and Morality, as that is what “Councils” do) taught by the pope in union with his bishops (sm. cases intended), is an absolute metaphysical absurdity. As in the “Wizard of Oz”, one must then repeat three times: The true Church of Jesus Christ cannot teach heresy. The true Church of Jesus Christ cannot teach heresy. The true Church of Jesus Christ cannot teach heresy. Thus, we know that when a church teaches heresy, it simply cannot be the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Period and end. As it cannot be the Church, the pope cannot be the Pope and it is utterly absurd to claim that the “Pope” can be the “Pope” of the true Church and the “conciliar church” (aka. the church of the Antichrist), as one and the same “Pope”. The true Vicar of Christ Jesus cannot both be the true Vicar and not be the true Vicar, at the same time, and under the same respect. There can be only “one respect” for “one reality”. The “same respect” here is in the “respect of the True Church”. In caritas.

41. Courageous prelates both of them. They need our prayers.
    Pax.

42. exactly

43. Lefebvre was a weak man and its his responsability that this fake church is still there cause he did not condemn the apostates when it was time….His rotten FSSPX sect is still trying to save the silly business of vatican 2 its a pity so please dont talk of this man here.

44. Of course it is late, but all of the proper steps must still be taken for it to be legal. This will show every possible chance was given to the Pope as well.

45. “Tripe” perhaps, but many of us who have been faithfully supporting the SSPX for decades, are breathing a sigh of relief after many of the strange things that have been done and said contracting those we always heard from the Archbishop.

46. Deo Gratias! Sancta Maria Gratias! Seems our Rosary Crusade has borne some fabulous fruit.

47. God forgive your stupidity! How dare you refer to Archbishop Lefebvre as “this man”?! He is the one God chose to save Tradition in the Church. What in the world is the matter with you? What great things have YOU done for the Church, if I may ask?

48. It is all over the mainstream. NY Times, CNN, FOX USA Today, and those you may not consider mainstream but have a huge following like Drudge and Breitbart. Those are just a few of those covering this.

49. I’m delighted to hear this and I hope the reporting is accurate. I will take a look.

50. https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/359634132/Signatories-of-Filial-Correction

51. Akita, really? Indefectable? How do you write that and keep a straight face? One? Are you telling me there is unity in conciliar Rome? You have blinded yourself to the truth. The One Holy Indefectible, and Apostolic Church of Christ exists, but not in Rome. What part of “Rome will lose the faith” do you not understand? Akita, look past the vestments and titles and buildings and find His Church in His Words where you hear them. You will never hear them from anyone who accepts V2 or the NO.

52. In the Archbishop’s own words he called the V2 NO sect a false church, he called the NO a bastard rite. Somewhere along the line the Archbishop just couldnt quite cut the temporal cord with the temporal corrupt V2 NO sect. In his soul he knew it was an imposter religion (his writings and homilies show this), yet his intellect couldn’t overcome his will. He simply did not want to believe what his mind was telling him about the false church. Its easy enough to do. Millions of trad R&R’s are doing it still to this day. I was one of them too. That said, I am extemely grateful that the Archbishop preserved the true Catholic priesthood. That is his real legacy. Let us pray that the current SSPX leadership can avoid the temporal temptations of satan and steer clear of the NO V2 conciliar false church.

53. Second thoughts? Fellay was negotiating to see if there was a way. You simple minded people can’t understand such things. Now that Mueller has clarified things for Fellay, the deal is off.

54. You’re modernism is showing again, Rush. Us simple minded people don’t understand all the complexities and nuance that you elites understand. For us rubes, we just wonder why a Catholic would seek recognition from a non catholic. It seems silly to us simple minded folk. Guess one has to be a modern elitist to grasp the intricate details. This thinking of yours is the very cause of the our ills. It is modernist thinking, which you exhibit with each post.

55. Here’s a great line from Yoda to Sedevacantists, “You must unlearn what you have learned”.

56. No.

    The reason the R & R crowd isn’t jumping the gun into the sede conclusion just yet is because precedent shows that if the current arguments used by the Sedes right now were seriously entertained, then the Church ended 200 years ago when the Popes and Church at large abandoned the Magisterium and Teachings of the Roman Pointiffs who upheld Geocentrism in the face of the Enlightenment and Protestant Revolters who wanted to interpret Scripture contrary to the Fathers and Sacred Tradition.

    Even if you did accept heliocentrism as true than that only means the Holy Spirit screwed up between 33 AD and 1700 AD leading the Papacy and Fathers and Trent and Vatican I to completely misread the Scriptures and impose that upon Christendom to the point of undermining the entire Church so that the Scientific Enlightenment could roll around and bury its credibility until Vatican II came along to fix it so that the Scriptures, Popes and Church are only right on more vague criteria of ‘matters pertaining to salvation’ so otherwise please listen to Al Gore and the UN about how bad it is to breed more children into the world to deplete oxygen and produce more cO2.

    I’ve replied back to you and Tom A in ‘Word games’ with regards to this affair, so please follow up there, sorry for the lateness of my replies.

    The point is that how error infests the Church, what the Pope is protected from and when he is or isn’t the successor of Peter becomes a whole lot more complicated than just who follows Vatican II, because that council didn’t happen in a vacuum and the periti simply had the Galileo Affair in mind when it set about to update and reorient things.

    There’s a reason they felt a need to open up those windows. There’s a reason Our Lady of Fatima warned about the 3rd secret being relevant in the year 1960. And there’s a reason God made the Sun dance and move in the sky against a fixed Earth; akin to Joshua stopping the Sun and Moon and King Hezekiah seeing the Sun move back in its course. Both the latter being criteria for condemning Galileo’s propositions as being contrary to the Scriptures, and formally heretical against the Faith.

57. Rush–when Fellay says the deal is off, I’ll believe it and I’ll wait for you to announce it. Hope you’re right! I’ll take this great news from anyone–even the simpleminded.

58. And here I thought that Yoda’s job was simply instructing novitiate Jedis.

59. Dear Johnno,

    In Truth it is all very simple, as Almighty God is Simplicity Himself. Jesus the Christ commanded that only those with the faith of a child will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Faith in love—He who knows My commands and follows them loves Me and as I am in the Father, you are in Me, and I in you (John:14). Thomistic metaphysics is beyond reproach as it approaches the reality as Reality, of Being Himself, who commanded Himself as, “I AM, WHO AM”. It is Lucifer’s work suggesting that there is any error in the true Magisterium of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, as Christ commanded that there simply cannot be, and thus there is not. The Holy Writ tells us (2 Thess 2; 7) that the day would come when the Holy Pontiff would be, “taken out of the way”, and then through all of the power and workings permitted for by Satan, would be made manifest the person of the Antichrist. It was not prophesied how long that period of time would take to unfold. Matters of the positioning and movement of cosmic bodies are simply not matters deFide nor Moral and thus they do not, as they cannot in themselves, that is from their immanence, impact the authentic Magisterium. Until a matter of Dogmatic reality is definitive, as made to be so by the Holy Roman Pontiff in union with his Bishops, there is room for all kind of error within the context of the theological debate and discernment and certainly the Pope as theologian may also err. Once that matter is defined and proclaimed as deFide, there is no longer any room for speculation, query, nor debate, period and end. Cosmic relationship Johnno, is not a matter of Faith now, because it never could have been. Sacred Tradition does not, as it cannot, contradict Sacred Scripture, period and end. Christ commanded so. Whatever conclusions you would like to draw around that reality as Reality, matter not.

    Astronomical position is not, as it cannot be, a matter of Faith, no more than a bath towel can be a matter of principle, as being cannot both be and not be, at the same time, and under the same respect. The “same respect” in this query is “the Faith”, that which was received into the minds of the Apostles at Pentecost. The Faith is that charism of the Holy Ghost which leads eternal souls to their natural disposition, the Beatific Vision. Whether one accepts that the earth is the center of the cosmos, is not the same question as whether one accepts the “Immaculate Conception”, as they are without analogy, as properly understood ontologically. Just as, “extra ecclesia nulla salus” is has no analogy with cosmic relationship. The point being, there is no pronouncement, deFide, on geocentrism, period and end. Further, the Church has not interpreted the Holy Writ specifically on that matter. May Almighty God have mercy on you and me. In caritas.

60. Dear Rushintuit,

    Those who hurl their attack at the person whose argument that they themselves are confronted with, simply tell all those with eyes which see, who they are. Our Blessed Lord and King, Jesus the Christ, commanded such in Matthew 7:20, “20 Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.” Your “fruits” are rotten, Rushintuit, as you attack the character of those with whom you simply do not understand, as this thing itself speaks. You freely choose to subjugate your intellective power, which belongs in the ordinate position, to the passions, and you then attempt to think from your entrails, as that is what remains with the intellect suppressed. In that act, you hurl the vitriol which you hold immanently as, “You simple minded people can’t understand such things.”. In truth, this is how you view yourself, and it is your pride which destroys you, in the end. Pride of what? Your intellective power which you suppress? All good things are gifts from Almighty God to His perfectly miserable creatures, Rush, and I as the first, hold nothing good, immanently. I pray this admonition as admonition helps, as we are all called to assist in the salvation of the other, as much as we yearn for our own. In caritas.

61. Yoda is a ripoff of the Indian false messiah Jiddu Krishnamurti. That line and following line were directly ripped off from J. Krishnamurti: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

62. Makes sense what you say. If he won’t answer four of his cardinals, why would he answer 60 plus rather obscure theologians, priests, and bishops (one of which is not “in good standing,” i.e., Fellay) Given the size of the Novus Ordo sect, this is less than a drop’s drop’s drop in the bucket.

63. Where is Dr. Scott Hahn and Fr. Mitch Pacha?

64. Wrong In caritas, let me quote for you St. Robert Bellarmine in his Letter to Foscarini, and whose job it was to convict Galileo of heresy.

    “Nor can one answer that this [geocentrism] is not a matter of faith, since if it is not a matter of faith ‘as regards the topic,’ it is a matter of faith ‘as regards the speaker’; and so it would be heretical to say that Abraham did not have two children and Jacob twelve, as well as to say that Christ was not born of a virgin, because both are said by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the prophets and the apostles.”

    So “Whether one accepts that the earth is the center of the cosmos” IS INDEED “the same question as whether one accepts the “Immaculate Conception” because both are derived from Tradition and the INERRANT authority of Scripture. Undermine one and you undermine the other. Basic logic and simplicity.

    By arguing that this has nothing to do with the faith that you are obligated to hold is demonstrably wrong from history and can be shown to be directly opposing the Teachings of the Church and the Holy Pontiffs. A ruling that has NEVER BEEN REVOKED, not even by Sede’s claimed V-II group of anti-Popes, who all, including John Paul II and Benedict XVI danced away from affirming the topic only to state that Science couldn’t prove the Church wrong.

    You, like so many other Catholics, as I myself was at one point, are unaware of history of the Church’s stance against Galileo. It begins with defending the plain words of Scripture. Just as Bellarmine argues, there was no need for any absolute definition by the Popes to defend the truthfulness of Scripture about Geocentrism any more than they had to define that a Tree existed in the Garden of Eden, or how many children Abraham or Jacob did have and every other jot and tittle.

    The Church Fathers and commentators unanimously against the heliocentrists of their day defended Geocentrism, which they argued directly as an interpretation of Scripture. Their consensus is BINDING and Infallible according to Trent, Vatican I and other Papal Teachings. On these grounds Copernicus and others books were placed on the Index and Galileo was condemned.

    Read the Inquisition’s ruling against Galileo where both his propositions that the Sun did not move and that the Earth moved were declared as FORMAL HERESY and against the Faith. This was enforced by several Popes throughout Christendom to stamp it out, and held by the Church against the Enlightenment and Protestants for several 100 years, and whenever Catholics become involved in these areas, such as the friars who edited Newton’s works, they had to distance themselves from his beliefs in heliocentrism out of OBEDIENCE TO THE HOLY PONTIFFS.

    “Newton in his third book assumes the hypothesis of the earth’s movement. The author’s [Newton’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.” – Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Isacco Newtono, PP. Thomæ Le Seur & Francisci Jacquier, Genevæ, MDCCXXXIX [1739]. Above translation taken from Rev. William W. Roberts in The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement, p. 53.

    The Inquisition in the 1800s even when relaxing its attitude towards those who wished to inquire into the topic had this warning:

    “Their Eminences have decreed that, for the time being, now and in future, a license is not to be refused to the Masters of the Sacred Apostolic Palace for the printing and publication of works dealing with the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun according to the common opinion of modern astronomers, as long as there are no other contrary indications, on the basis of the decrees of the Sacred Congregation of the Index of 1757 and of this Supreme Holy Office of 1820.” -Antonio Favaro, Galileo e l’Inquisizione, pp. 30-31

    So if you want your authority, go check what the Holy Inquisitors are referring you to which were ratified infallibly by the Popes prior to subsequent updated formulations by latter councils about the exercise of Papal Infallibility, which would basically match the actions of the Popes of the 1600-1700s anyway..

    The undermining of the Church’s Tradition starts right there with the undermining of the Popes and the Church Fathers over how the Bible is to be interpreted when it speaks of the movement or non movement of Astronomical bodies. As time went on, and the world grew heliocentric thanks to nothing other than anti-Catholicism because to this day Science cannot prove the 16th Century Popes or the Inquisition wrong, this teaching was undermined from within the Church itself by modernist men who wanted to follow the fashions of the scientific world which rejected the concept of dogmas and Papal authority so that they could be free to pursue science apart from Revelation.

    “God is dead and we have killed him”, Neitzche wrote, “When we unchained the Earth from its Sun and sent it hurling nowhere.”

    The Popes and Inquisitors of the 1600s knew where this was going. If the Fathers were judged to be wrong on any point of Scriptural interpretation, then the demons would not just stop at Geocentrism. It would next be the Virgin Birth. The nature of Christ. The Eucharist. The Papacy itself, and so on and so forth.

    Heck, the entire Vatican II exercise, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, was because the Church had to deal with the consequences of the Galileo affair fallout and therefore change how it saw and passed on Tradition, how it interpreted Scripture, and how it dealt with scientific advancement in the world itself. Back then it was the Earth and the Sun; today it’s about climate change and gender and homosexuality and psychological excuses to claim we are without sin. Scientists and psychologists know better than some outdated Tradition based on some outdated Scripture. We don’t need the consensus of the Fathers anymore. We have Bishops Synods and individual conferences that can each cater to the times.

    The Catholics in Galileo’s age did not resist the Popes when they obeyed their orders to clamp down on the heresy of heliocentrism.

    Today with great irony we now have Sedes who are heliocentrists calling out the R & R crowd, while in utter ignorance resisting Church teachings and the results of Canonical Trials that defined formal heresies, ratified by Popes, and never abrogated by future Pontiffs, not even John Paul II when he set up a commission to do just that, but was obviously told he couldn’t and instead had to appeal to Relativity and claim through Cardinal Poupard that the granting of imprematurs in the past and removing Copernicus and Galileo from the Index was good enough to suggest that the Church had moved on, when in fat the reasons for those actions are documented to be the result of modernists who lied to get approval for certain books such as Canon Setelle’s by claiming the controversy only had to do with the shape of circular versus elliptical orbits, when access to the Inquisitions’ files were unable to be established due to coming under the control of Napoleon amongst other acts of subterfuge no different than the modernist hijacking of Vatican II, inevitably leading to Popes who were too weak to care, or who themselves began subscribing slowly to defined heresies their predecessors denounced.

    Please look into this further because what you are doing is dangerous and you are directly undermining the faith through ignorance and appeals to the historical revisionism of the same modernists you claim to be against, who would like for nothing more to forget all about the Galileo affair so that we can play nice with Darwin, Copernicus and Einstein and be ecumenical with atheists and canonize the teachings of Chardin and Lemaitre.

    But I believe the real reason you are likely to resist this is that it throws a wrench into the Sedevacantist argument that Popes are forever and ever magically immune from error and heresy and anything that would destroy the faith, when demonstrably either the Popes from 33Ad to 1700Ad were led by a completely false and distorted understanding about the Scriptures entrusted to them to interpret, or they began slipping after the 1800s until today.

    Either way, either the Holy Spirit according to Sede logic screwed up by failing to inform all the Jews, Apostles, Fathers and Commentators and Fathers of Trent and Vatican I and every Papacy from Peter to Pius VIII. Or the Holy Spirit screwed up from Gregory XVI onwards who pulled a Francis by removing Heliocentric works off the Index for either no reason, without addressing the doctrines taught before, or under subterfuge such as false arguments about the shape of orbits or that stellar parallax proved the Church was wrong, when in fact such observations were perfectly in accord with Geocentric models.

    Either way, the charter of limitations runs out for the papacy according to the popular sede thesis that Popes are protected from error always and forever or else they cease to be Popes. In which case we’ve had a long line of Popes favourable towards heliocentrism since the 1800s, or the Holy Spirit was too incompetent to inform any Catholic prior to Copernicus showing up, who was inspired to place the Sun at the center because he was an apostate cultist of Apollo.

    Yeah, I don’t think so. And given the vast amount of astonishing scientific data we have today that rips the scientific establishment to shreds about the uniqueness of the Earth and its central place in the universe that they now have to run to parallel universes to escape this, it looks like many pieces of the puzzle are coming together as to how the devil began infiltrating the Church and reorienting the world. The last part being what precisely to do with erroneous Popes and who gets to declare the chair vacant?

    Considering all the above, the current Sede logic is erroneous. Even if certain Sede conclusions about who are valid Popes in our times could potentially be correct, this will have to be based on other criteria. The most pertinent one being establishing formal heresy and obstinacy, which in this case must be canonical trials and Councils. Either imperfect without a Pope, or under a future pontiff and more cadaver synods.

65. Johno, I agree with you assessment but not the conclusion. For the sake of argument, lets assume the Church did teach de fide on geocentrism (which you have not convinced me yet and which by the way as a sede I am partial to. You are right, science has not proven the helio model), you would have to still prove that after the 1600s the Church contradicted itself and taught the helio model. I believe after the 1600s, the Church simply gave up defending the geo model. So, if anything, they are guilty of negligence. I just do not see your conclusion that this episode refutes infaillability or the sedevacantist position. And to label all sedes and sede logic as somewhat beholden to heliocentrism baffles me.

66. Hello Johnno,

    Your prose is vexing as it is replete with conjecture, non-sequiturs, and conflated arguments. The Catholic Church according to Johnno, it would seem. Let’s critically look at a very early comment from your essay:

    “So “Whether one accepts that the earth is the center of the cosmos” IS INDEED “the same question as whether one accepts the “Immaculate Conception” because both are derived from Tradition and the INERRANT authority of Scripture. Undermine one and you undermine the other. Basic logic and simplicity.”

    You see Johnno, there is a chasm of separation between matters of inerrant truth and matters deFide, while at once both are true. They are not one in the same, as you suggest. They are no more “the same” than the words, “implicit” and “explicit” are the same, as those are the two words which in fact differentiate one’s belief in the “Tree in Eden” versus the, “Immaculate Conception”. Yours’ is a conflation of “similar” but not “the same” realities. Both are true and yet one has the requirement of the assent of the will to make it to Heaven and the other does not, as explicitly understood. Just as we are not required to give willful assent to the reality of the “Tree” existing in the “Garden of Eden”, as an explicitly understood matter deFide, in order to make it to Heaven, so we do not have to give willful assent to the reality of geocentrism, explicitly, as “geocentrism” has not been “explicitly defined” as deFide. This is a nuance which is at once utterly important and utterly misunderstood.

    Your frustration Johnno although understandable, must as it only can be, known within the Mystery of Love, as Christ’s Mystical Bride, His Church simply Is–this “Mystery of Love”. The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as His Mystical Bride, can in Truth only ever remain spotless, and that means free of one iota of any error in the true as authentic Magisterium. Because Almighty God deemed that this side the veil His miserable human creatures would be shrouded in mystery, indeed we are.

    In my miserable attempt to sum this up, the “Immaculate Conception” is known “explicitly” by the Universal Church, as a matter deFide. The Holy Pontiff defined this, while under the protection of his charism of Papal infallibility, as the “ex-Cathedra” proclamation. In contrast, the “Tree in Eden” (or “geocentrism”) is a matter of divinely revealed Truth which is “implicitly” understood as Truth, as are all matters contained within the Holy Writ, and this because we know as a matter of the Faith, that all contents of the Holy Writ are inerrant. Thus said, if you were explicitly asked the question, “do you believe in the Immaculate Conception?”, you can respond, and in fact you must respond under the pain of an eternity in hell, a resounding “YES”, and that “yes” to be understood as an “unequivocal YES”, as the Immaculate Conception is “explicitly” defined as deFide. Now in contrast to the reality as Reality of the Immaculate Conception, we have “geocentrism”. “Geocentrism” has not been “explicitly” defined as deFide, in and of itself. Geocentrism is a reasoned conclusion, as an ideological application of that which is “specifically described” in the Holy Writ itself, about the earth and its physical relationship to the sun and the moon.

    Therein lies the catch, Johnno. Only the Holy Father under his exclusive protection of Papal infallibility, as making an “ex-Cathedra” proclamation of “geocentrism”, or the Holy Father in union with his Bishops defining and teaching the Faith, while then together under the protection of Ecclesiastical infallibility, can “geocentrism” itself be understood as being something “deFide”, requiring then the same assent of the will as the Immaculate Conception. And this has not been done. Because “geocentrism” is not explicitly stated as “geocentrism” in the Holy Writ, in order for “geocentrism” as understood to be, “the same question as”, the “Immaculate Conception” in its manner and mode of belief, “geocentrism” would have to be placed into Sacred Tradition, into the deposit of Faith, in like manner as the “Immaculate Conception”, which also as you know Johnno, is not “explicitly” stated in the Holy Writ. I pray this helps. In caritas.

67. Dear Johnno,

    Just a simple afterthought. The reality as Reality that the “Immaculate Conception” was not yet defined as deFide, in the time of the Angelic Doctor as Saint Thomas Aquinas, is the reason why Saint Thomas could have had some doubt regarding his own theological understanding of the “Immaculate Conception” because in his time, he did not have to give his free will assent to its belief, because it hadn’t yet been clarified and defined as deFide. Once defined deFide, there is no more doubt nor debate. It is done and as it is done, there can NEVER be another question posed about it. This reality as Reality is not the case for “geocentrism” and that is why the debate may continue. Again, just as the “Immaculate Conception” as the “Immaculate Conception” is not stated as such in the Holy Writ, neither is “geocentrism” as “geocentrism”. Amen. Alleluia. Thanks be to God. In caritas.

68. Tom A

    Indeed negligence would be the primary charge, but that still leads to Popes who have failed in their duties, and Popes who held to heliocentrism, a defined heresy by their predecessors.

    They defined this heresy as a result of Sacred Scripture and its consistent interpretation by the Fathers, even against the claims of heliocentrism in their own days.

    So either the Holy Spirit misled the Church to such as astronomical error in the past, which you and I would agree did not occur, or the Holy Spirit did not prevent the Church from negligence afterwards. This is apparent. We’ve gone from Popes who were deceived to Popes who were negligent, to Popes who took direct action to foster heliocentrism through direct laxation of discipline on the topic. Likewise for what Vatican II and Francis have done. Never once speaking out lous that adultery is no longer a sin, but treating it through disciplinary changes and action and laxation against rogue heretics as if it was no longer sin.

    This is evident. And this trai of thought has directly led to VAtican II and the present situation where Copernicism’s stepchild Darwinism completes the picture such that the Church too must ‘evolve’ her doctrine and understanding with the fashions of the times.

    When I label Sedes as beholden to heliocentrism, I only wish to point out the extent of invincible ignorance many possess about the subject, which does not make of one a formal heretic nor mean that they are outside the Church. This too applies to the Papacy. But according to the Sede arguments I hear the Papacy is immune to this. But here we have historical demonstration that it is not so.

    As Bellarmine and others state, the Papacy does not need to define belief in Geocentrism as an article of faith necessary for salvation, any more than they are to define articles pertaining to archeological studies of the Davidic Kingdom necessary for members of the general public to know in order to go to Heaven. But Geocentrism, just as the historical existence of the Davidic Kings and Kingdom are implicit realities by virtue of their existence as historical and scientific facts in Inerrant Holy Scripture, given by the Holy Spirit. To argue otherwise that a Papal decree manking it binding on the faithful is necessary is the same sort of argument levied by modernists and neo-CAtholics of every stripe that if the Pope doesn’t define something then we are free to interpret it or act or behave otherwise. Which you and I will both agree is false.

    Whether we like it or not. The Church through the judgment of the Holy Office and ratified by numerous Popes have defined in their ruling against Galileo that his two propositions are FORMAL HERESY. The first proposition that the Sun does not move is no longer controversial because everybody today agree that the Sun moves. The second proposition that the Earth moves is what is controversial. The Inquisition agreed that the Earth was only subject to internal movements with regards to Earthquakes and reference that God Himself will shake the Heavens and the Earth. But it defined that to state the Earth moved with respect to the Sun and the Heavens was heresy. This is heresy on the books, but not heresy binding on individual salvation, because a common Catholic is not to be held responsible for having no knowledge of complicated science or archeology any more than that they be thoroughly informed about every definition and errorneous opinion of what is or is not the Holy Trinity. They need only acknowledge the basic mystery of the Trinity as fact. Likewise the Geocentrism issue was relevant to the matter of whether the Scriptures were reliable alongside the Tradition of the Church and the patrimony the Church relied upon to transmit and protect the True Faith and its authority as the final interpreter and guardian of it.

    The 16th and 17th Century Popes saw this as their duty and acted to protect the Church from the claims of modernist scientists that demanded an interpretation of the cosmos at odds with the Scriptures and Tradition. They were not to be resisted then, and they are not to be resisted now, especially since none of their predecessors have acted to overturn their decisions and enforcement, only to ignore it, and from the 1800s on this was so, due to the pressures of the world which grew more heliocentric and more Protestant and more atheistic and used heliocentrism as a point to undermine the authority of the Popes and the credibility of the Church.

    If we are likewise to accuse Francis or the Vatican II Popes of deliberate ambiguity and of turning away from the teachings of their predecessors and then declare them to not be true Popes, then this same criteria extends to the Popes going back to the 1800s.

    That is the point.

    So therefore we can see that material heresy is possible in the Papacy, and that establishment of formal heresy must be a necessary component to make certain of before we declare that there is no Pope and a state of Sedevacantism exists.

69. In caritas

    See my above reply to Tom A. I completely agree with you with regards to whether or not Geocentrism is an article of faith necessary for Salvation.

    But my point still stands with regards to the situation of sedevacantism and whether or not the Holy Spirit makes Popes totally immune from error.

    it is a fact that the Galileo Affair has been of major relevance to the Salvation of Souls, not because it is an article of faith to be held as necessary for salvation, but because it is a matter of faith that upholds the reliability of the Church, the Papacy, Tradition and the Holy Scriptures.

    If the Bible is wrong about the Cosmos and details of reality then that undermines its testimony and trustworthiness in matters of salvation. Could an erroneous product really come from God?

    If the Fathers and long-standing Tradition of the Church is wrong in its interpretation of the Scriptures, then can it really be said that the Church’s Tradition is free from human error, and that the Holy Spirit really safeguards it?

    If Dogmatic Church councils were wrong to declare that the Fathers unanimity about interpreting certain passages of Scripture shows that they were following Apostolic Tradition, then can the Church really be capable of defining Dogma?

    Therefore as I said and as St. Robert Bellarmine argued, if you destroy the authoritative source and foundations for belief in the Immaculate Conception, then the necessity for belief in the Immaculate Conception is as good as gone or based entirely on nothing.

    This is the SAME ARGUMENT made by the Modernists who imagine that we can still hold onto certain dogmas and understandings in our time so long as we are able in our current culture, despite destroying our credibility by having to believe in Genesis, the Miracles of the Old Testament or even what really happened in that event known as ‘The Resurrection.’ So with a neutered Bible riddled with historical criticisms that might not be accurate alongside erroneous outdated beliefs about science, and stories that might’ve been copied from Gilgamesh and other pagans and given Jewish spins etc. we are to fight abortion, gay marriage and the errors of communism and believe that Jesus will take us to Heaven because we need to ‘love’ and show up to Church for Christmas and Easter.

    It is the same argument made by Francis’ apologists and neo-caths today that changing the Disciple, does not contradict the Dogma. Or that changing the Mass does not change what we actually pray or what we actually believe.

    So what side are you going to take In Caritas? Is this really the foundation on which you want to rest? That we can simply ignore parts of the faith that are not defined ‘de Fide’?

    Is it okay then that you are free to state that maybe there did not exist a Kingdom of David? That Genesis is poetic musings and that we are therefore free to believe something else about how Original Sin got started? Are we free to ignore Pius XII’s Humani Generis which defines Polygeneris as heresy because it it not binding de Fide teaching necessary for salvation and side with Darwin’s idea that different parts of mankind are descended from different beasts?

    Would you now state that the disciplines or practices of the Mass or discipline have no effect on the people’s faith or that it is entirely within the rights of the Conciliar Popes to reorganize how they approach the world and spread the Gospel via means of ecumenism, local synods, altar-girls, different sacramental formulations, different means of transmitting Holy Orders etc. etc.?

    Therefore what is the Sede argument? Or is it only relegated to de Fide articles and have the goalposts now been moved?

    Would you, back in the 16-1700s have ‘Recognized and Resisted’ the Popes who demanded that Catholic academics, Catholic Universities and Catholic noblemen, princes and dukes, forbid the teaching of Heliocentrism? And if you resisted them would they have ceased to therefore be Popes? Or would they still be Popes whilst you resisted their imposition against Heliocentrism upon you?

    ““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…”
    -The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe, 1917, pp. 67-68.

    “Yet in his characteristic duplicity, in the intervening years between 1597 and up until 1613, he (Galileo) had been teaching against Copernicanism quite vigorously, complete with charts and graphs. A 1601 manuscript of his musings still survives today. Galileo was in a constant whirlwind: saying one thing and doing another, and doing one thing and saying another. Suffice it to say, after the Church gave him every grace and favor to treat Copernicanism as a hypothesis, not fact, Galileo refused to comply, claiming he had proof when, indeed, he had none at all. The Church hierarchy simply could not put up with his roguery any longer. His former confidant, Cardinal Barberini, later became Urban VIII, and, as pope, made it a point to condemn Galileo for lack of proof. Urban upheld the 1616 Sacred Congregation’s verdict of “formal heresy” for Copernicanism and “vehemently suspect of heresy” for Galileo after obtaining Galileo’s renunciation in 1633. He sent notice of the condemnation to all the inquisitors and papal nuncios of Europe, making it an official proclamation of the Vatican.”
    – Galileo Was Wrong, the Church was Right Vol. 2, Cp 11, p.34

    But all in all In Caritas, you and Tom A would no doubt wish to be obedient to Dogmatic Councils, so once again listen to St. Robert Bellarmine, and the COuncils of Trent and Vatican I –

    “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.”
    – St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, Letter to Fr. Paolo Antonio Foscarini. 1615

    “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.”
    – Vatican Council I. Ch. II

    “Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, It decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall, in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never intended to be at any time published. Contraveners shall be made known by their Ordinaries, and be punished with the penalties by law established.”
    – Council of Trent, Session IV.

    The Councils declare DOGMATICALLY that NO ONE shall interpret the Scriptures CONTRARY to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. The Fathers were unanimous in interpreting the Scriptures as Geocentric. Galileo and the heliocentrists wanted to disobey this. St. Robert Bellarmine, Pope Urban VIII and his successors upheld Tradition and Dogmatic Council Teachings against them, and therefore condemned Galileo’ theses as FORMALLY HERETICAL.

    Therefore do you In Caritas, despite that Geocentrism and a University degree in Science is not a de Fide teachings necessary for your salvation, feel you can safely ignore the dogmatic Council’s and Inquisition’s rulings and Papal condemnations of Heliocentrism, because they were not made ‘de fide’ for the uneducated common man?

    Would you resist these councils and the implications and disciplines enforced as a result of what they demand?

    Were then these Councils led into error because the Holy Spirit was not invited, and therefore those Council Fathers and Popes were not true Popes and we have been in a state of Sedevacantism longer than necessary according to the logic of some sedevacantists that the true Church and the Popes are immune from leading the Church into error? Or did that only happen after Vatican I and during the 1800s where later Papal successors in a more Heliocentric world felt pressure to just ignore it and proclaim it as more than a hypothesis and allow their modernist Cardinals to go about writing, teaching and delivering imprimaturs to books that were on topics once condemned and placed on the Index?

    This is the point. So drawing any distinction between what little criteria Catholics are obligated to hold in order to be saved, versus the enormity of the rest of the Church’s Teachings that are not binding as a matter of salvation doesn’t take away from the implications I’ve stated.

    If you were to criticize the VII Popes for dropping the ball as being false Popes in a false Church, then logically that same criteria must extend back to those Popes who set the ball in motion for Vatican II to pick and and reorient themselves in order to reconcile for the Galileo Affair and avoid future incidents like that by opening themselves up to the world. If Francis is the step child of John Paul II, the John Paul II, Paul VI and John XXIII were only following from the Popes who were negligent of the Church’s dogmatic admonishments against interpreting the Scriptures contrary to the Geocentric Fathers because the Science and world of their respective eras had moved on, where the Church’s credibility was shot, where Popes could be wrong, where the Tradition was unreliable and the Scriptures were in error or too ambiguous to interpret and since the Pope and Fathers couldn’t get it right it was best to make every man his own interpreter. And maybe the Church instead could learn something from these non-Catholic men rather than the other way around.

70. In Caritas,

    You are more likely to find the Fathers diverge in opinion on the “Immaculate Conception” than you are to find any divergence with regards to Geocentrism. There was virtually none. Geocentrism was more obvious Scripturally than the Immaculate Conception.

    But Vatican I and Trent DOGMATICALLY taught, as I explained above, that no one can interpret the Scriptures contrary to the Fathers. In fact, even Vatican II upholds this necessity, but in softer language.

    So you are indeed beholden to their Geocentric interpretations, by virtue of what Dogmatic Councils command you to hold.

    If the Fathers can be undermined with regards to how they interpret the Bible and be found to be factually unreliable, then the entirety of Catholic Tradition is in jeopardy. If something as well documented as the Church’s long-standing Tradition of Geocentrism is false, then that holds little certainty for other doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception.

    Because as you and I will both agree – Popes cannot just arbitrarily make up new doctrine wholesale and then bind us to it. They are custodians of what has been passed on to them, later defined only when necessary, or with natural developments such as authentic Marian Apparitions, which still conform to what has always been believed.

    But destroy the source of Tradition and not even the Papacy can just arbitrarily define anything any more, there needs to be a foundation even for Papal Ex Cathedra statements, least Francis’ God of Surprises now wishes to bind us to Heliocentrism, Darwin and Al Gore instead.

    That was why the Popes and the Holy Inquisition condemned Heliocentrism as FORMAL HERESY. Tradition and the Fathers and Councils left them no alternative. Contrary to neo-cath apologists today who distort history to make these holy men out to be some idiots who stuck their mitres in the wrong place thus allowing the Devil to take advantage of their ‘hubris’ to destroy the Church’s credibility for generations to come, and provided the new intellectuals with a new philosophy that would further develop the course of humankind into further errors, the blind leading the blind and throwing the world into existential despair –

    “Modern man’s skepticism in this respect has chilled his enthusiasm for politics and world-reform; more than that, it is the worst possible basis for a smooth flow of psychic energies into the outer world, just as doubt concerning the morality of a friend is bound to prejudice the relationship and hamper its development. Through his skepticism modern man is thrown back on himself; his energies flow towards their source, and the collision washes to the surface those psychic contents which are at all times there, but lie hidden in the silt so long as the stream flows smoothly in its course. How totally different did the world appear to medieval man! For him the earth was eternally fixed and at rest in the centre of the universe, circled by a sun that solicitously bestowed its warmth. Men were all children of God under the loving care of the Most High, who prepared them for eternal blessedness; and all knew exactly what they should do and how they should conduct themselves in order to rise from a corruptible world to an incorruptible and joyous existence. Such a life no longer seems real to us, even in our dreams. Science has long ago torn this lovely veil to shreds. That age lies as far behind as childhood, when one’s own father was unquestionably the handsomest and strongest man on earth. Modern man has lost all the metaphysical certainties of his medieval brother, and set up in their place the ideals of material security, general welfare and humanitarianism.”
    – The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man, Carl Jung

    “Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the Earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?”
    – The Gay Science, Thus Spake Zarathustra – Frederich Neitzsche

    —-

    Salient Points of the Church Fathers’ Consensus on Geocentrism
    – From Galileo Was Wrong, the Church was Right by Dr. Sungenis & Dr. Bennet

    • 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.

    A sampling:

    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. For by a nod and by the power of the Divine Word of the Father that governs and presides over all, the heaven revolves, the stars move, the sun shines, the moon goes her circuit, and the air receives the sun’s light and the aether his heat, and the winds blow: the mountains are reared on high, the sea is rough with waves, and the living things in it grow, the earth abides fixed…”

    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.

    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.

    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. If there is anything in this system which might appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of such perfect order, for the wisdom of God. Grand phenomena do not strike us the less when we have discovered something of their wonderful mechanism. Is it otherwise here? At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason.

    Basil: 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.

    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. The derangement is of their own state, not from any affection of the element.”

    Chrysostom: For He not only made it, but provided also that when it was made, it should carry on its operations; not permitting it to be all immoveable, nor commanding it to be all in a state of motion. The heaven, for instance, hath remained immoveable, according as the prophet says, “He placed the heaven as a vault, and stretched it out as a tent over the earth.” 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, but the waters are continually in motion; and not the waters only, but the clouds, and the frequent and successive showers, which return at their proper season.

    Clement of Rome: the Creator, long‐suffering, merciful, the sustainer, the benefactor, ordaining love of men, counselling purity, immortal and making immortal, incomparable, dwelling in the souls of the good, that cannot be contained and yet is contained, who has fixed the great world as a centre in space, who has spread out the heavens and solidified the earth.

    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…”

    Gregory Nanzianzus: There have been in the whole period of the duration of the world two conspicuous changes of men’s lives, which are also called two Testaments,(a) or, on account of the wide fame of the matter, two Earthquakes; the one from idols to the Law, the other from the Law to the Gospel. And we are taught in the Gospel of a third earthquake, namely, from this Earth to that which cannot be shaken or moved.

    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; while, as a sort of bond and stability for the things that were made, the Divine power and skill was implanted in the growth of things, guiding all things with the reins of a double operation (for it was by rest and motion that it devised the genesis of the things that were not, and the continuance of the things that are), driving around, about the heavy and changeless element contributed by the creation that does not move, as about some fixed path, the exceedingly rapid motion of the sphere, like a wheel, 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.

    Gregory of Nyssa: 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 any one 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.

    Gregory of Nyssa: “…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…”

    Gregory Thaumaturgos: And the life of men weareth away, as day by day, and in the periods of hours and years, and the determinate courses of the sun, some are ever coming, and others passing away. And the matter is like the transit of torrents as they fall into the measureless deep of the sea with a mighty noise. 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.

    Hippolytus: [Refuting the view of the Greek Ecphantus]: “And that the earth in the middle of the cosmical system is moved round its own center towards the east.”

71. Johno, thank you for the history lesson comcerning this affair. Again, your assessment is very well stated. It is your conclusion that totally escapes me. If a true Pope were to tell me the earth was a triangle and that I had to hold that belief else I would be cast into hell, then I would have to hold that belief even in the face of human ridicule. I do not however think your facts and premises point to the Church ever teaching definitively on this subject. You do show that the geo model was widely held by churchmen of that age. For this there is no disagreement.

72. Dear Johnno,

    In charity, the more you write, the more convoluted your argument becomes. Bottom line, our Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ prayed for Peter in Luke 22 and commanded thus:
    “31 And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.”
    In that very command of our Lord and God rests the divine revelation of reality as Reality, that Peter as Peter, WILL NOT lose the Faith, ever. Thus, Peter as Pontiff cannot fall into heresy. He is protected with both charisms of Papal and Ecclesiastical infallibility in union with his Bishops. You can, if such thing were possible, write an essay into eternity attempting to work your “heliocentric vs. geocentric” path around this reality as Reality and you would fail, just as you are failing, as you only can in truth.

    You are blind to the reality of “explicit vs. implicit” realities, apparently. The “Immaculate Conception” is an explicit, deFide teaching of the Holy Catholic Church. Geocentrism is not. Therefore, as it is not explicitly understood, deFide, it is proper to have theological discourse around it. If one were to reject and specifically so, any revealed Truth in the inerrant Holy Writ, he would be an heretic as he would be opposing the Faith. There has not been a Pope in union with his Bishops who has defined as deFide “geocentrism as geocentrism”, therefor all one can do is query about those particular areas of the Old Testament that contain said commentary about cosmic relationship, but one cannot condemn another for not “believing in”, “geocentrism as geocentrism” because the Church, as we write, is blind to that reality because She hasn’t defined it, for God’ purposes. In all humility, you really should spend your precise time on learning the Faith as taught in the authentic Magisterium and let that which the Holy Church has not officially taught deFide go, as those matters do not lead us to Heaven. If they were important in that understanding they would have been or will be defined. The holy Church Fathers are not the Holy Roman Pontiff, and as such they do not have the power to define, only to clarify that which has been revealed or defined. Amen. May Almighty God have mercy on you and me. In caritas.

73. Then let try again for you so that it is less ‘convoluted.’

    The Council of Trent, and the Vatican I Council reiterating Trent, as per the quotations I’ve provided you above explicitly state –

    – No One May Interpret Scripture Contrary to the Consensus of the Fathers.

    – Trent and Vatican I are Dogmatic Councils binding on the Catholic Faithful de Fide.

    – This is because Tradition and Dogma rest upon them, and when they are especially unanimous or if there is an overwhelming consensus in their interpretations on matters of Scripture or the Faith, then these are believed to be of Apostolic origin.

    – The Fathers were unanimous when interpreting the Scriptures as Geocentric.

    – They interpreted it this way as a direct result of Scripture and Tradition long held by the Jews and believed to come from the Apostles themselves.

    – They held this and defended it against contrary cosmologies of their own days indicating they were well aware of alternative views, but rejected them on the basis of Scripture.

    – Galileo, Copernicus’ works and other heliocentric propositions were therefore contrary to the Fathers interpretations and therefore directly contradicted what is laid down in Trent and Vatican I.

    – Heliocentric works were therefore condemned as Formal Heresy on two occasions by the Holy Office and ratified by numerous Popes who used every opportunity and secular power at their command to keep this heresy from spreading.

    – Geocentrism was also obviously implied as a doctrine of the Tridentine Catechism in 1566 by Pope Pius V which only states of the Sun, stars and planets as “He so ordered the celestial bodies in a certain and uniform course, that nothing varies more than their continual revolution” whereas in contrast “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.”

    – 2 Popes in Pope Paul V in 1616 and Pope Urban VIII in 1633 approved official and binding condemnations against Heliocentrism. Heliocentric works were placed on the Index by Pope Alexander VII. Every Pope up to the 1800s upheld these decisions. This is why even the Catholic friars who edited Newton’s works distanced themselves by stating they rejected his premises out of obedience to the Holy Pontiffs.

    – The French Revolution also had its part to play. As the historian 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” (Retrying Galileo, pp. 175-176).

    – So the Papacies caught up in these vents had an uphill battle and on occasion were negligent in their duties to reign in several modernist clergy from themselves being taken in by Revolutionary ideas, including Heliocentrism. For example Pius VII, who was ill and long tired after being incarcerated by Napoleon, with little power, and the Inquisition’s records confiscated. It was during such a period that the Church was at a disadvantage while being pressured to give in to Heliocentric claims. Only the ‘Traditionalists’ stood by what was always believed. But their efforts would fail.

    – Circa the 1800s, imprimaturs began being granted by Popes in direct opposition to their predecessors and Galileo and other works began being removed off the Index with either no reason or for fabricated reasons or because certain books were promised to be amended to remove the heresy.

    -This reform of the Index began under Pop Benedict XIV, providing the Books were to be corrected, while some remained such as Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus and others.

    -Then more subterfuge carried on with Pius VII who was lied to that the controversy had only to do with the shape or orbits and during which time access to the archives of the Inquisition was not available. Even then the Pope was still being warned by other Cardinals that heliocentrism was a heresy versus the modernists faction who claimed that the Church was actually lenient about it because it allowed others to study it as a hypothesis, which is a half-truth because while the Inquisition did allow access to Heliocentric works to academics to study and write about it did so on the stipulation that their works not contradict the 1616 and 1633 decrees.

    -This culminated in Pope Gregory XVI removing heliocentric works off the Index, presumably based on the false premise that stellar parallax had proven heliocentrism. All this time pressure was being put on the Vatican to be lenient as the world had moved on, Galileo and Copernicus were widely read alongside Newton and whose ideas were now dogma for the wider scientific community and the Protestants were using this as a weapon to attack the Church. Therefore the Church needed to update itself.

    – Such efforts were being undertaken by the Jesuits like Pietro Lazzari who would attempt to stack the deck with as many heliocentric proponents as they could to pressure the Papacy to change, appealing to, what else, but the scientific consensus of the times. Not to mention that so many academic priests within various orders were also finding it difficult to reconcile the Scientific ‘facts’ about heliocentrism with the Catholic Faith which was ‘binding their intellects’ from admitting that geocentrism was ‘improbable according to all natural reason’ and ‘modern discoveries.’ Enter in more attempts to claim that Scripture must be interpreted poetically or in relative terms with regards to statements on cosmology etc. as if the Fathers and Inquisitors and 16th century Popes didn’t consider that. Everywhere the newspapers in Germant, France and Holland would decry the Papacy’s ecclesiastical censorship of science.

    – As times went on future Popes and bishops and priests would simply shut up or avoid the topic. Meanwhile modernists within the Church would simply take things into their own hands under the noses of the Papacies to follow, some cooking up alternate histories about what actually occurred to save face for the Church and the Popes. Their efforts were for naught as the anti-Catholic would continue to chastise and ridicule the Church.

    – Eventually we culminate to the 1900s where Pope Benedict XV speaking ambiguously in the encyclical ‘In Praeclara Summorum’ on the works of Dante says “… and though this earth on which we live may not be the center of the universe as at one time was thought…” So even up to the 19th Century the Church was still not admitting to Heliocentrism, but we can see the cracks in the dam.

    – It is here that I will end, as it is sufficient enough with regards to the sede issue. If deliberate ambiguity is grounds enough to accuse the Vatican II papacies of meeting the criteria to become false popes and therefore instigate a state of sedevacantism, then that argument can be taken back much much further.

    – The Papacy since the time of the 1800s was beginning to fold for one various reason or another, either through neglect, from being fooled, subterfuge, pressure etc. to slowly and surely cave in on and against the teachings of their predecessors. This for their part can at least be chalked up to material heresy, not formal. The history demonstrates that the Holy Spirit did not prevent them from slipping into this error over time that would provide ammunition that would undermine the Church.

74. Least the Immaculate Conception vs Geocentrism difference be made yet again, here I quote the Anglican Fr. William Roberts, who himself was a critic of how the Church handled this issue and had to deal with Catholic Apologists making the same argument as In Caritas in order to hand-wave this away.

    “When the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was defined, all the conditions of an ex cathedra Act were so abundantly and clearly fulfilled that no Roman Catholic theologian would be permitted to raise doubt on the subject. I do not for a moment pretend that heliocentricism was condemned by any judgment of which the same may be said; neither have I attempted
    to prove that it was. My contention was a very different one; and I will try to explain and vindicate it.

    I have found it laid down by such distinguished representatives of the
    Ultramontane school as Cardenas, La Croix, Zaccaria, and Bouix, that Congregational decrees, confirmed by the Pope and published by his express order, emanate from the Pontiff in his capacity of Head of the Church, and are ex cathedra in such sense as to make it infallibly certain that doctrines so propounded as true, are true.

    Moreover, it seemed to me…that this opinion was powerfully supported by
    certain utterances and Acts of the Holy See itself. Take for instance, the language I quoted in my pamphlet, used by Pius IX in the Brief Eximiam tuam, in reference to the original decree prohibiting Günther’s works. That decree was a simple edict of the Index, having the usual notice that the Pope had ratified the decision and ordered its publication. Yet the Pope speaks of it as
    having been approved “by his supreme authority,” and remarks that, “sanctioned by our authority and published by our order, it plainly ought to have sufficed that the whole question should be judged finally decided – penitus dirempta, and that all who boast of the Catholic profession should clearly and distinctly understand…. that the doctrine contained in Günther’s books could not be considered sound (sinceram haberi non posse doctrinam Güntherianis libris contentam).” [Roberts asks]: “How, in the name of common sense, could a decree possibly erroneous have made it clear to all Catholics that the doctrine of the books thereby prohibited could not be sound? And how could such a decree have plainly sufficed to determine the whole question at issue?”

    “Roberts argues that well known Catholic canonists, such as Bouix in his book Tractatus de Curia Romana (part 3, ch. 7, p. 471), teaches that congregational decrees may be infallible if they are specifically confirmed by the pope. Roberts writes: “On turning to M. Bouix’s Tractatus…we learn that there are three kinds of Congregational decrees:

    1. Those which the pope puts forth in his own name after consulting a Congregation.

    2. Those which a Congregation puts forth in its own name with the pope’s confirmation, or express order to publish…

    3. Those which a Congregation with the pope’s sanction puts forth in its own name, but without the pope’s confirmation or express order to publish. Decrees of the first and second class, we are told, are certainly ex cathedra, and to be received with unqualified assent under pain of mortal sin. According to Zaccaia – a very great authority – even decrees of the last class are not fallible, in the sense that they can ever condemn as erroneous a doctrine which is not so”
    -The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement, p.60.

    As the Catholic Dr. Robert Sungenis with regards to what Roberts stated, “Roberts’ analysis of the situation should give pause to faithful Catholics to consider that, even though a particular doctrine may not be couched in the technical formula of infallible language, it is, for all intents and purposes, infallible in the practical sense, since such decrees were understood to be true and abiding statements, binding on the Christian faithful. Papal decrees of this sort, especially when the action is not merely disciplinary but involves the determination on a matter of faith (stipulated in the 1633 decree against heliocentrism as: “that which has already been declared and defined to be contrary of the divine Scripture,” or as Bellarmine called it: ex parte dicentis), can never be erroneous regarding the very issue it condemned. It is generally safe to posit that God will not permit the pope to use his supreme authority to impose on the mind of the Christian faithful doctrines that are false.

    Surely we would not want to say that God ignores the pope and allows him to require, under pain of excommunication, the Christian faithful to assent to
    heretical, erroneous, or rash propositions of the faith, even ex parte dicentis, whether we deem those doctrines infallible or merely authoritative. Until the Catholic Church and her apologists come to the stark realization that their attempts to save the doctrine of infallibility has inadvertently put them in a position of sullying, perhaps beyond repair, the canonically lesser but still authoritative and binding decrees of the popes, they will continue to be the object of criticism from those outside the Church (like Roberts) who wonder if, indeed, this is the honest and forthright institution established by Jesus Christ that it claims to be.

    In the mid-1800s a publication from the Dublin Review raised this very question in the midst of the debates occurring just prior to Pius IX’s 1870 declaration on papal infallibility. The author writes:

    –“We are inclined, however, to think, that the Pope does give a general test, whereby we may certainly know that some letter, addressed to an individual bishop, is intended as an instruction to the whole Church ex cathedra. We speak here with diffidence, as we are not aware of any theologian who has treated the question; but we observe that in the recent Encyclical Pius IX unites all the apostolic letters from which the Syllabus is compiled, under the common category of “having been published by him.” If the Pope writes to a bishop for his individual instruction, of course there is no secret in the matter, and the letter becomes universally known; yet its publication takes place by the mere force of circumstances. But if the Pope himself commands its publication and promulgation, but this very fact he seems to indicate, that the letter is not intended for the bishop alone, but as a public act affecting the whole Church…

    We have just seen that the Pope’s letter to an individual bishop, is often, in fact, a doctrinal instruction addressed to the whole Church. May it not similarly
    happen, that what is in form the doctrinal decree of a Congregation, is in fact a doctrinal decree promulgated by the Pope as universal teacher? We must maintain that under particular conditions this is the fact.”

    Along these lines of argumentation, it is a fact that Urban VIII promulgated: (a) the 1633 decision that heliocentrism was “formally heretical” and
    “erroneous in faith,” and (b) Galileo’s detailed abjuration admitting to the same, to all the Catholic leaders of Europe. Obviously, this was by no means
    a private affair.”

    The point is this – Prior to the criteria affected years later upon the clarity of Papal definitions on de Fide teachings such as done for the Immaculate Conception, in the past Papal Authority was expressed far differently through enforcement and through canonical trials and ratification of their findings with regards to this or that heresy. Geocentrism was not defined as something Catholics had to believe in to be saved. Rather it is the propositions of a moving Earth through space that were condemned. Therefore any model that adopts it was binding on Catholics to reject. The only alternative as a result left for the Catholic was a Geocentric model, unless any Catholic wishes to propose an alternative cosmological model that meets the criteria of a non-moving Earth. And it is not necessary for the Popes to define it further any more than there must now be made a binding definition that a Little Town of Bethlehem or that the Davidic Kingdom existed. It was seen as obvious from Scripture. But I would doubt the salvation and theology of any ‘Catholic’ going around claiming there was no King David or a place called Bethlehem and if you wanted him to admit it then you had better provide a de Fide teaching by a Pope.

75. Johno, lots of facts do not make an argument. Yes the Church is the sole authority on interpreting Sacred Scripture. If we were to follow your approach to this issue, we would be stuck with a fundamentalist literal interpretation of Genesis and the Old Testament. You are basing your whole argument on the fact that the Church is the sole authority on interpreting Scripture without addressing whether that interpretation is infaillable. The interpretaion can never be heretical but it need not be wholly defined as de fide and necessary to hold. Given that science cannot prove any motion at all in any celestial body, and only relative motion of one body vis a vis another, the objective truth remains shrouded to science. Yes, the temporal power of the papacy made erroneous judgments in the Galileo affair for many different reason. But the Magesterium has NEVER definitively and authoritatively taught error on this subject that bound any soul to assent to under pain of damnation. The Church used temporal and ecclesial powers to silence proponents of a helio model and eventually TOLERATED the helio opinion in individual Catholics. The Church never contradicted itself by changing its interpretation of Sacred Scripture to declare the Earth in motion. Your ultimate goal in this while debate is to interject a stain of Gallicanism onto the Papacy and to question the Magesterial authoritative teaching on papal infaillability found in Pastor Aeternus from the First (and only) Vatican Council. So it is you, Johno, who have, unwittingly I suppose, revealed to me your acceptance of the operation of error by wanting so much to prove sedevacntism wrong, that you are willing to slyly deny a de fide teaching on the Papacy. Namely, infaillability.

76. Good Friday evening, Tom A,

    Beautifully stated argument in reality as Reality. Johnno is attempting, in the end, to suggest that the infallible Magisterium is fallible. May Almighty God allow the reception of His grace, such that Johnno is relieved of the “operation of error” to believe the lie as the Truth, which takes souls to hell all day and everyday, as clearly and inerrantly taught by Saint Paul. There is NO QUERY to be undertaken regarding the perfect, as infinite, degree of infallibility of Christ’s Church, as properly understood. Many a Pontiff is in hell but not because he opposed the Faith, deFide. Any speculation in this regard has also led many a theologian to hell. Saint Robert Bellarmine made the case that every Pontiff in question of heresy was ultimately a diabolical distortion of reality and we did not need him to do this. Our Blessed Lord prayed such that Peter’s faith fail not in Luke 22, period and end. Any speculation around this defies the very Word of the Eternal Word Himself. May Almighty God have mercy on these pathetic souls. We pray that you lose your diabolical obsession around cosmic positioning Johnno. It is infinitely more than enough, as the Holy Writ inerrantly speaks as It speaks, and not as Johnno wills it to speak. Amen. In caritas.

77. I am very grateful for Johnno’s detailed argument; far from any “diabolical obsession around cosmic positioning”, he has actually defended Divinely revealed Eternal Truth.

78. Ursala, which Divinely revealed Eternal Truth did Johno defend? Geocentrism? Again we are back to square one. It is not Divinely revealed as much as a good theological and scientific argument can be made for the model. As I said, I prefer the geocentric model and am prepared to assent to its teaching as de fide if it ever is authoritatively defined by Papal authority. It simply has not been defined in my opinion. And since there is no Pope at the moment it looks like this issue is not going to be decieded for quite some time. While this exercise has brought up many interesting and relevant facts it has not once presented a de fide teaching on the matter nor an example of the Church contradicting itself, which is the implication Johno is subtely making to question an actual de fide teaching of the Church, namely Papal infaillibilty. Like Siscoe ans Salsa, Johno again demonstrates the willingness of some to tear down the historic Church and its nature simply to preserve the illusion that we have a Pope.

79. Dear Ursula,

    The Holy Writ says what the Holy Writ says. The Holy Writ does not say, “geocentrism”, period and end. As the Holy Writ does not say, “geocentrism”, the Holy Writ does not say, “geocentrism”, as the Holy Writ does not say what the Holy Writ does not say, as the law of non-contradiction commands. At the risk of appearing redundant, it is clear that such things must be said. It requires a specific definition of the Holy Writ, which can only come from the Holy Roman Pontiff himself or the Holy Roman Pontiff in union with his Bishops, period and end, to take any specific language from the Holy Writ and apply ideology, which is all we mere miserable human creatures can do. Neither Johnno, nor the Holy Office, the Church Fathers and Doctors, or any of the Saints, etc., have the power given them by the Son of God to invoke the charism of Papal or Ecclesiastical infallibility in order to “define” such an ideological conclusion as “geocentrism”, period and end. It is not possible for anyone as anyone else, to define and teach Dogma and Morality, as Jesus the Christ deemed it to be as such.

    Read Tom A’s explanation as he is clear and crisp as he typically is. The only place I differ in what Tom A said is in this statement of his, “It simply has not been defined in my opinion.”, and where I differ is that “geocentrism” as “geocentrism” has not been defined, period and end. It is not simply a matter of Tom A’s “opinion”, it is reality as Reality.

    In closing, indeed this is a matter of diabolical obsession as any ideological paradigm which puts into query anything which has been defined as deFide, as has Papal infallibility been and as properly understood, is the work of Lucifer. This in his attempt to lure souls to hell for all eternity. Amen. I pray this helps. In caritas.

80. You are correct, In Caritas. I should have omitted “in my opinion.”

81. “In Caritas”, quod scripsisti est vere sine caritate. Deus caritas est.
    In caritate.

82. Whoa whoa whoa there! Tom A –

    —“we would be stuck with a fundamentalist literal interpretation of Genesis and the Old Testament. “—-

    You really sure this is what you want to say buddy?

    Are you a believer in Darwinian Evolution too?

    Are you aware that the first charges of such ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘literalism’ were first hurled at the Catholics for believing “This is My Body. This is My Blood” were literally what Christ meant, and literally how we are to intrepret the Scriptures?

    And where do we get this from and prove it? Tradition. And what makes up the bulk of that Tradition? The Fathers. Particularly when the overwhelming majority of them declared the same thing. Meaning, therefore, that this is what the Church always believed at every time and that it is of Apostolic origin.

    So if Tom A wants to declare in DISOBEDIENCE to Trent and Vatican I, which are DOGMATIC COUNCILS, BINDING on Tom A and In Caritas, that Toma A and In Caritas, if they wish to remain Catholic must NEVER interpret the Scriptures CONTRARY to the Holy Fathers – Which includes GENESIS and all reference to a non-moving Earth and a moving Sun and Moon – then Tom A and In Caritas are obligated by faith to submit themselves to the Church’s Infallible Teaching Authority, which means that the Fathers are right, Tom A and Charles Darwin and Galileo and Nicola Copernicus and Kepler and Albert Einstein and the entire edifice that is the basis of the modern scientific establishment – the Copernican Principle, in honor of his philosophy overthrowing the Church and the Pope – are Wrong.

    Are you seriously going to say that Genesis is not what it says? That is is not a factual event or history nor did it literally depict the true account of original sin which is the basis for our entire religion’s existence and the Death and Resurrection of our Lord, our Lord who by the way, referenced Genesis’ events and personalities as actual historical facts?

    —-“whether that interpretation is infaillable.”—-

    So… When Holy Scripture plainly states something, we are not to take it seriously because no Pope has ever infallibly enforced us to believe in it? So we are free to undermine and reinterpret anything at all we like in it so long as we carefully dance our way around only infallible proclamations? Tom A, are you sure you are a sede? Because you sound awfully a lot like a liberal Catholic right now. They use the same excuses.

    Let me add some more quotations here. Yes I understand that whoever has the most quotations doesn’t win, but lest some here accuse me of promoting a ‘Gospel According to Johnno’ because they have no counter-argument other than to repeat that there is some distinction between infallible pronouncements now versus Papal infallible acts then, because they feel St. Peter’s words and actions must accord with the new formulation of Papal infallibile pronouncements from a Coucil held 1000 years after he was martyred, because inerrant Scripture isn’t good enough, I must provide as many details as possible.

    Here’s Renee Decartes, for example, trying to maneuver his way out in order to have his heresies published, by… what else… clinging onto the idea that there was never any infallible declaration about a great many things he promoted and thus he felt free to spread error with legal certainty-

    “….But I will tell you that recently I made inquiries in Leiden and Amsterdam about whether Galileo’s System of the World was available…I was told that indeed it had been printed, but that all copies had been simultaneously burned in Rome and he had been condemned to some penalty. This has shocked me so much that I have almost decided to burn all my papers, or at least not to let anyone see them. For I surmise that he, who is Italian and as I understand
    well liked by the pope, was convicted for no other reason than that he undoubtedly wanted to establish the earth’s motion…and I confess that if it
    [heliocentrism] is false, so are also all the foundations of my philosophy; it is easily demonstrated from them, and it is so connected with all parts of my treatise that I would not know how to detach it without rendering the rest flawed. However, just as I would not want for anything in the world to produce an essay containing the least word that was disapproved by the Church, so I would rather suppress it than publish it maimed.”

    “….I have decided to entirely suppress the treatise I had written and lose almost all my work of four years in order to render full obedience to the Church, insofar as it has prohibited the opinion of the earth’s motion. However, because I have not yet seen that either the pope or a Council has ratified this prohibition that was issued by the Congregation of Cardinals in charge of book censorship, I would be very pleased to learn what one thinks about it in France nowadays, and if their authority is sufficient to make it an article of faith.”

    “Undoubtedly you know that a short time ago Galileo was reproved by the Inquisitors of the Faith and that his opinion on the earth’s motion was condemned as heretical. Now, I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise, including also this opinion of the earth’s motion, depend so much on one another that it is sufficient to know that one of them is false to realize that all the reasons I employ have no force at all; and although I think they are based on demonstrations that are very certain and very evident, nevertheless I would not want for anything in the world to maintain them against the authority of the Church. I know well that one could say that nothing decided by the Inquisitors of Rome is thereby automatically rendered an article of faith, and that it is necessary that it first be approved by a Council.”

    As Dr. Sungenis points out –
    “Descartes decides to forge a safe haven by recourse to an anachronistic lacuna between the Sacred Congregation and a hypothetical Council, leaving aside the fact that: (a) the pope was the supreme authority behind the condemnation of Galileo, and (b) that even if there were such a Council, its decision must be approved by the reigning pope, otherwise it is null and void, a
    situation that has occurred more than once in Catholic history. Since from Pius V in 1616, to Urban VIII in 1633, to Alexander VII in 1664 and beyond, the pontiffs were in one accord on condemning any cosmology that required the Earth to move, no Council that affirmed heliocentrism would have been approved by the pope. The pope would have had the final say on the outcome of a Council just as he had the final say on the outcome of his Sacred Congregation.”

    As Catholic apologist, John Daly, notes:
    “…no single act of the Sacred Congregations took place without the fullest authorization of the then reigning popes who, in fact, supervised and directed
    every step of the entire procedure; moreover the pope is himself the ex officio
    prefect of the Holy Office; so just as all of the Sacred Congregations are in fact no more than the instruments through which the pope governs the Church by delegating certain of his powers, the Holy Office is that which has the least possibility of acting independently of the pope. Moreover it is certain that it was the pope who ordered the sentence of the Holy Office condemning Galileo on the 22nd of June 1633 to be promulgated and circulated throughout the Church, and in 1664 and 1665 it was unquestionably the pope acting motu proprio who promulgated anew the decrees condemning all works in favor of heliocentrism in the two editions of the Alexandrine Index of Forbidden Books.

    No single detail in any of the official acts of the Holy See…can be construed as
    showing the slightest hesitation in rejecting heliocentrism as absolutely and
    unconditionally false owing to its conflict with Divine revelation as contained in the Bible. Nor is there any basis for pretending that the prohibition to defend heliocentrism was limited exclusively to Galileo. Certainly on the 25th of February 1616 he was forbidden in a special way to treat the subject. But on the 5th of March 1616 all writings in favor of heliocentrism were
    condemned, no matter by whom they were written, and the minutes of the proceedings of the Holy Office in 1633 show that the reason why the pope ordered wide circulation to be given to the decree condemning Galileo was in order that it might serve as an indication to others of the position of the Holy See on the subject and thereby prevent other writers from falling into the same aberrations as Galileo himself. And in 1664 and 1665 the prohibition became even more general, if possible, when Pope Alexander VII extended it specifically so as to include not only books but even periodical articles,
    manuscripts and other writings – whatever could be used to promote heliocentrism.”

    Dr. Sungenis again –
    “As we can see, the condemnation of Galileo was no private affair. Every person with authority (nuncios, inquisitors, bishops, priests) and academic
    influence (professors, mathematicians, scientists) knew of the decree and thus their unmitigated cooperation was demanded. As noted, there had never been such a thorough and systematic dissemination of a decision by a pope and his Sacred Congregation. The magisterium’s actions were unprecedented. From this evidence one could argue that such pervasive and regimented procedures were at least reasonably close to the criteria required for a binding and irreformable teaching.

    Unfortunately, the question concerning the infallibility of a given doctrine of the Catholic Church has always been a minefield of debate and dissent. Debates over everything from whether the decree was disseminated to the universal church or if an Index qualifies as universal, to whether it was said in forma specifica, to whether the decree was directly as opposed to indirectly pronounced, to altering the definitions of “declare and define,” to whether the pope can use any medium he wishes as long as he makes clear his intentions, continue to rage today. As good as the doctrine of infallibility is, nevertheless, because of its self-imposed restricted domain as to when it is applicable, it invariably creates a whole new set of problems, one chief problem being how we determine whether a specific Church teaching is infallible. Often the Church does not explicitly and unequivocally state that a given doctrine is infallible. Odd as it may seem, the words “infallible” or “irreformable” are not used in dogmatic proclamations. Even the four criteria for papal infallibility established in the decree of Pius IX in 1870 do not make it foolproof for the cleric or the layman to determine when, precisely, a given papal teaching is infallible, since the doctrine in question, ironically, is never preceded by the explicit words: “This teaching is an infallible and irreformable declaration of the Catholic Church for it fulfills all four criteria of the doctrine of papal
    infallibility.” Adding to the debate, the 1983 Code of Canon Law states that if the Church does not explicitly declare a doctrine infallible, then it is not
    to be considered infallible. The whole process can easily become a quagmire of distinctions and counter-distinctions that turn that which was at first intended to be a simple help to the difficulties of life into tedious, hair-splitting legalese that often confuses more than it clarifies.

    The four criteria for papal infallibility are delineated in prose form in the following paragraph of Vatican I (numerals in brackets are added): “…the
    Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, [1] when carrying out the duty of the pastor and teacher of all Christians [2] in accord with his supreme apostolic authority [3] he explains a doctrine of faith or morals [4] to be held by the universal Church…”. As noted, questions of when and where these four criteria are applicable continue to raise problems. For example, the recent teaching against artificial contraception given by Pope Paul VI in 1969 in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, and the teaching against women’s ordination given by John Paul II in 1994 in the letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, have raised continued questions whether those two teachings are formally infallible. If they are infallible, the documents themselves do not explicitly say so. Although at least the latter uses language that some may interpret as the formula of words often associated with an infallible declaration, still, there remain doubts due to the fact that the pope who issued them never declared them explicitly
    infallible (see Code of Canon Law, ¶ 749.3).865 If they are not formally infallible, then they are technically “reformable,” just as Cardinal Poupard
    said about the decrees against Galileo.

    At this point, advocates for the infallibility of the above documents (Humanae Vitae and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) will sometimes retreat from depending on papal infallibility and make an appeal to the inherent infallibility of the “ordinary magisterium” or the “constant teaching of the Church” as the
    authoritative basis for declaring these two doctrines infallible. Although legitimate, this appeal, however, has its own set of problems, since it is open to the subjective judgment of clerics or laymen on a much lower level of authority than the pope, and thus, it invariably creates diverse opinions as to which specific traditional Church teachings are infallible and which are not infallible. If it is not infallible, but merely authoritative, many feel that, although they could give “assent” to the teaching, they are not bound to obey it if, for the sake of conscience, they find it morally unacceptable.

    …

    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,” and demanded that Galileo sign an abjuration to that
    effect. Obviously, Pope Urban VIII also 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.

    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. 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.

    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. 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. 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 1500 years of tradition on the teaching of geocentrism as her greatest bulwark
    against the new ideas of Copernicus and Galileo.

    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.”

83. So all that above is indeed seen evident in the actions of the Church Magisterium and the Popes.

    Now let’s deal with you last little dodge –

    “So it is you, Johno, who have, unwittingly I suppose, revealed to me your acceptance of the operation of error by wanting so much to prove sedevacntism wrong, that you are willing to slyly deny a de fide teaching on the Papacy. Namely, infaillability.”

    The point and problem here with you Tom A and In Caritas, is that your sedevacantist claim is that
    -True Pope can never be heretics, nor lead the Church into error.
    – Catholics cannot ‘recognize and resist’ the Pope.
    -The Vatican II Council and Popes and clergy put out ambiguous doctrines, and contradict their predecessors and previous councils.
    – Ergo there have been no True Popes or clergy post Vatican II.

    But as I’ve demonstrated, in the past the Church and Popes have failed in their duties to curb erroneous doctrines by their own clergy, that Popes were misled into committing actions that undermined the faith and left Catholics vulnerable to the winds of various heretical revolutionaries. Direct action and non-action by Popes that went against
    a ) The Scriptures
    b ) The Council of Trent
    c ) The 1st Vatican Council
    d) Canonical Trials by the Holy Office with the Pope as its head
    d ) Their Papal predecessors who ratified that heliocentrism was “false philosophically and formally heretical” using the full extent of Papal power and criteria of infallible actions of their eras before the formulations we would encounter later that would give us the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception for example.

    So if Tom A and In Caritas found themselves back in the 1600s, would Tom A and In Caritas, appealing to the scientific trends, recognize and resist Pope Paul V, Pope Urban VIII, Pope Alexander VII and so on? Would these Pope have ceased to be Popes?

    Or if Tom A and In Caritas accepted the Papal condemnations of heliocentrism, would they then recognize and resist the papacies of the 1800s who were for one reason or another beginning to undermine their predecessors, ignore specific declarations of Dogmatic Councils, remove the barriers for heretical works to flourish, and even in their own encyclicals begin to admit that what the Church once taught might not even be true anymore?

    How is that different from the actions of John Paul II and Francis? Pray tell?

    And if Tom A and In Caritas now wish to move the sede goalposts that this is only relevant in matters pertaining to de Fide teachings we must accent to in order to be saved, rather than negative pronouncements of defining heresies we ought not to believe in general, then will Tom A and In Caritas now side with the Vatican II sect that believe that only those matters that Scripture touches upon that regard our salvation are true, and we are free to declare that the Bible can be wrong on scientific and historic and archaeological matters and could contain literary inconsistencies? But none of that matters because only the parts about love thy neighbor and going to confession and receiving Baptism and the Eucharist are important because that stuff gets us to heaven? Is the Novus Ordo Mass now suddenly all well as good for Tom A and In Caritas because it maintains the ‘essential things’ and stripping it of all that overtly but unnecessary Catholic stuff that didn’t accord with the times and stunk of an age where Galileo was condemned and the Church was anti-science?

    It is not I, Johnno, who is undermining Papal infallibility.

    It is Tom A and In Caritas and a host of sedevacantists who utilize logic inconsistent with the Church’s historical reality.

    it is Tom A and In Caritas who are ignoring Trent, Vatican I and resisting previous Papacies and the Church’s rulings over defined heresies that have been ignored but never overturned and still form Tradition in order to uphold their sedevacantist idol.

    According to Tom A and In Caritas, then if the Church can be lenient about Galileo and Copernicus, then why can it not be lenient about Hans Kung, and Teilard De Chardin and why can a legitimate Pope not quote them in his encyclicals, as Pope Benedict XV did?

    Where does consistency begin and end for Tom A and In Caritas about when Popes err to the point of losing the Papacy? Only when they try to bind you to error? Because last time I checked Vatican II wasn’t a dogmatic council, and Francis himself doesn’t care to bind anyone to Amoris Letitia, just letting individual bishops decide, just like the 1800s Popes who began allowing every other person to decide on the matter of cosmological models that ran contrary to what the Church always held.

    Oh, but Tom A and In Caritas say we cannot resist papal encyclicals and Ordinary Magisterium… but… but… the 1600-1700 papacies were not only using their ordinary magisterium… they threw the ENTIRE WEIGHT of the Church against suppressing the heresy their holy offices defined under their direct supervision. You think Francis is authoritarian??? Look up the documentation on what these REAL POPES did! Unless they were not real Popes… because Tom A argues that many were right to resist them, which many did – of course many of those were also not Catholics… and many would become former-Catholics as a result. Because contrary to Tom A and In Caritas living in the year 2017, every Catholic intellectual back then, and the non-Catholic too, recognized that Papal authority was being enforced on something it defined as a heresy, which obviously made it binding upon all of them to such an extent that successive Papacies went out of their way to ensure absolutely every single one of their clergy and royalty and academia understood it as “false philosophically” “formally heretical” and “CONTRARY to the Scriptures” as understood by the Consensus of the Fathers DEFINED as INFALLIBLE by the Coucil of Trent and reiterated by Vatican I and understood by Pope right up to even Pope Benedict XV who ironically himself would simultaneously enforce the Father’s authority on Scripture matters while being lax on the Earth’s centrality by stating it was possible it was wrong. But when the VII Popes and Francis do the same thing today, they automatically cease to be Pope according to the sede thesis.

    So which is it? Because I see talking out of both sides of ones mouth here.

    As I stated before, I’m still willing to entertain the possibility of a sedevacantist period, but the logical arguments and consistency of that espoused by Tom A and In Caritas here is erroneously flawed, and now we have reason to believe Tom A rejects the plain language of Genesis to boot.

    I do not think any of this makes Tom A or In Caritas less Catholic, but I do believe this criteria as it involves the majority of Catholics today, which incliudes myself, who for the past 100+ years have unwittingly been holding material heresy with invincible ignorance.

    History has demonstrated that Popes have been guilty of material heresy and have undermined the Church as a direct result of their action or in-action. They do not cease to be Popes because of this.

    Formal Heresy must be ascertained in order to declare when and where the Sedevacantist state has begun. This will naturally have to be done by canonical trial or a Council. Not a local Sede club.

    Tom A and In Caritas and others may entertain this hypothesis. But have no grounds to declare this as fact. Much the same for Galileo, who at least of his own accord recanted and later in life held to the Church’s teachings, denounced his prior beliefs, and even admonished others in private letters for not obeying the Church and the Holy Fathers, much to the chagrin of those modernists who were hoping to continue using him to undermine the Church. But you’ll never hear that taught to you in College.

84. Actually it is you, In Caritas, who openly choose to disobey Trent and Vatican I in order to hold to your sedevacantist positioning. This is the idol you’ve chosen to serve, where previous Popes and saints, in obedience to those councils, condemned heliocentrism as “False Philosophically” “formally heretical” and “contrary to the Scriptures.”

    It’s all documented there. As is the fallout from the operation of error sent upon the world for rejecting them in favour of scientific trends. Trends that it seems both you and Tom A hold against the Inerrant Book of Genesis from which the Church derives the necessary doctrine of Original Sin. You can’t believe in Original Sin while simultaneously denouncing the Book which contains it as scientifically inaccurate. You can’t claim the Book never intended to be scientifically accurate when the Tradition of the Jews and the consensus of the Fathers tells you it was literal history. Not even if you appeal to one Father, Augustine who only hypothetically entertained the days of Genesis as lasting seconds if the criteria for day concerned only the Light’s revolution period around the Earth, in order to make an entirely different case on Scriptural interpretation by using this as an illustrative example.

    It is not Johnno who tells you how the Scriptures speak. It was the Fathers, Council of Trent, Vatican I, and the Holy Office.

    So In Caritas is now officially and publicly making his opposition to the Church known by deliberately ignoring and refusing to address the references I’d added above from Popes, St. Robert Bellarmine, and Councils and scholars on the Galileo Affair.

    Now In Caritas is engaging in dishonesty and attempting to frame me as the originator of these doctrines without confronting the passages of Vatican I, Trent, and the Fathers.

    In Caritas imagines he can believe in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as he simultaneously demolishes the foundations that are used to establish Tradition and papal Infalliblity.

    And why?

    Because In Caritas is committed to… not Sedevacantism… but ‘The Sedevacantism according to In Caritas.’ He has ascribed all power to himself to declare that this or that Pope is a formal heretic without need of correction or trial. Even the Church saw it necessary to dig up a previous Pontiff’s corpse and conduct a show trial to declare him a heretic. In Caritas need dig no further than his own cosmic positioning with his private opinions about the Scriptures and Church Doctrine at the center. Trent and Vatican I are unnecessary, and he obviosly knows better than Bellarmine, Paul V and Urban VIII and so on…

85. Lie 1 – “It is not Divinely revealed as much as a good theological and scientific argument can be made for the model.”

    So Scripture is not divinely revealed, gotcha…

    Lie 2 – “It simply has not been defined in my opinion.”

    Then what does one call the canonical trails against Galileo, the subsequent definition of his propositions of the Sun not moving and the Earth moving as “Formally Heretical” and that he was FORCED to sign a declaration renouncing his errors (because the Church only forces one to sign non-binding things under penalty of death?), and their subsequent enforcement under Papal decree and language used by Popes that this was their magisterial actions and decree that demanded obedience?

    Lie 3 – “it has not once presented a de fide teaching on the matter nor an example of the Church contradicting itself”

    What are the Councils of Trent and Vatican I to you, Tom A? You never answered the question I posed earlier – do you accept the DOGMATIC Councils that demand that you do not interpret Scripture contrary to the unanimous consensus of the Fathers? Yes, or no? Are you also attempting to really say that the Churchmen back then was not Geocentric and that the Churchmen today are not heliocentric and that this doesn’t expose a contradiction? If that doesn’t, then why make a case against Vatican II at all then?

    Lie 4 – “which is the implication Johno is subtely making to question an actual de fide teaching of the Church, namely Papal infaillibilty.”

    Come now, you know better than to allege this. Especially because ever sede argument revolves around where papal infallibility begins and ends, a question that’s dogged the Church for centuries. It is rather you and In Caritas who contradict yourselves while simultaneously attempting to say that True Popes are always immune from error and can never lead the Church astray while simultaneously now arguing with me that this only limited to binding decrees, when not even the VII Popes can be accused by and large of binding anyone to infallible pronouncements. But apparently Tom A and In Caritas are free to time travel to the 1600s and recognize and resist the Popes over heliocentrism because they agree with Descartes that perhaps they are non-binding and see how far that gets them. But if we are to recognize and resist VII Popes who were not even exercising anything close to the power of the Papacies of Galileo’s age to wipe out a formal heresy they defined, then this means we must declare them not-Popes because we cannot resist true ones or something…

    Lie 5 – “Like Siscoe ans Salsa, Johno again demonstrates the willingness of some to tear down the historic Church and its nature simply to preserve the illusion that we have a Pope.”

    Actually it is Catholics like Tom A and In Caritas and many other modernists who try to reinterpret history, tarnish the reputations of the 16-17th century Popes in order to preserve the current Scientific paradigm of Naturalism, Copernicism and Evolutionism, and therefore continue to expose Children to establishment narratives where the Church and the Popes were religious fundamentalists who tried to destroy science, and therefore, according to Ratzinger, the Vatican II Council was necessary to reorient the Church to get more in line with the world, add more ambiguity to its precise language on all matters least they fall into another Galileo situation. A new make-over was also deemed necessary to destroy Church architecture and a modern remake of the Mass to have furniture to match the new Church and remove the embarrassing old-school out-of-date Catholicism of the past that declared that the Earth moving, based on Scripture and Tradition upheld by Popes and Councils.

    So today we discover that Tom A and In Caritas, now agree alongside the modernists that only those matters of faith and scripture necessary for salvation are de fide. Everything else was non-essential. Because of course it was never infallibly defined. It was just discipline. Lex Orandi Lex Cre… oh never mind… Internal logical consistency for our faith is not a matter worth defending. Just go with your heart and consciences…

86. Dear Johnno,

    As you now hurl the ad hominem attack at the persons and not their arguments, it is clear, for all those with eyes to see, just who you are, as you place purported beliefs onto other persons with whom you disagree, who have never claimed such things themselves, which is clear again for all those with eyes to see, from what Tom A and I have written. You freely choose, in the act of the ad hominem assault, to suppress your intellective power and to reach then to the only other place at your disposal, your entrails, as it is in the passions from whence the ad hominem assault comes, its only wellspring. As Tom A so clearly as correctly stated, facts in themselves do not make arguments. The ad hominem is in perfect contradistinction to charity.

    Finally, you had this to say:
    “This is the idol you’ve chosen to serve, where previous Popes and saints, in obedience to those councils, condemned heliocentrism as “False Philosophically” “formally heretical” and “contrary to the Scriptures.” ”
    Herein, once and again, lies the evidence which you yourself posit, that “geocentrism” is contrived in the church according to Johnno and not the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It is one thing for the Church to “condemn helio-centrism” but it remains fully ANOTHER thing to suggest that in that condemnation of helio-centrism is somehow contained immanently, a deFide pronouncement of “geocentrism”. Because “geocentrism as geocentrism” does not appear in the Holy Writ, nor is it claimed in Holy Tradition as such, it would require a deFide pronouncement to cause it, “geocentrism as geocentrism”, to be a matter of Faith, which it is not, as properly understood ontologically. To somehow conclude Johnno, that because helio-centrism is condemned as heresy, that very same condemnation somehow causes “geocentrism” to be a matter deFide, is a metaphysical absurdity, as it once again places an affront to the law of non-contradiction. How does it, you may ask? Simply because “helio-centrism” as heresy does not as it cannot somehow equal, “geocentrism” as a specific teaching of the true Church, as “helio-centrism” and “geocentrism” are distinct as specific realities and as such each has metaphysical being unto itself. May the Blessed Virgin free you of your reception of the operation of error. In caritas.

87. Dear Ursula,

    Here we have In Caritas contradicting the Fathers. martyrs and saints who saw that Holy Writ said “geocentrism”, as Tradition handed down to them from the Apostles and the Jews said that Holy Writ said “geocentrism”. And because the Fathers said that Holy Writ said “geocentrism”, and the Dogmatic Councils of Trent and Vatican I declared we must believe what the Fathers said about Holy Writ, and because they said that Holy Writ said “geocentrism”, the Popes and Saints and Holy Inquisitors defined all opinions contrary to the Fathers saying Holy Writ said “geocentrism” as “False philosophically” “Erroneous in Faith” “Formally Heretical” and “Contrary to the Holy Writ” and enforced this upon the entirety of Christendom.

    In Caritas feels he has authority to deny this. In Caritas, appealing to the law of non-contradiction while calling the VII Sect a bunch of heretics, sides with the same heretics, whose Sect called the Council and reiterated Catholic teachings, because they also believed what In Caritas does, that “geocentrism” is wrong, and that the Popes of the past therefore didn’t know what they were talking about, and Tradition could be flawed because the Fathers obviously interpreted holy Writ wrong… because they didn’t listen to the scientists of the times who first told them Holy Writ did not really say “geocentrism” and then threw Holy Writ in the trash for all the other things they were very certain it did say like “Transubstantiation”, which some also said Holy Writ did not say, and they like In Caritas didn’t want to believe the Fathers who said Holy Writ did say “Transubstantion” because they also said it said “geocentrism” and we know they were wrong about that! a

    And that’s why we need a whole new kind of Pope and Church today that does listen to scientists, because Holy Writ, as In Caritas agrees, also never said anything about Global Warming, or how psychology has advanced today along with our understanding of conscience, and how it can make engaging in sin the most generous response we are capable of giving God at this time. And because Holy Writ does not say what the Holy Writ does not say, as the law of non-contradiction commands, we now have a means whereby all men can be saved. Because the Fathers didn’t think so, but they thought that Holy Writ said “geocentrism” so they could’ve been wrong and we have many reasonable hopes about what Holy Writ doesn’t say.

    The Logical Gospel according to In Caritas. Because Holy Writ said nothing about “sedevacantism” so even that can mean what he wants it to mean, when he wants it to be convenient.

    Who are you going to trust? The Council of Trent and the Fathers or In Caritas? We certainly know who St. Robert Bellarmine and the anti-heliocentric Popes preferred to believe.

88. in Caritas,

    It’s quite rich to be accused of ‘ad hominem” by the guy who began accusing me of inventing a new gospel and leading souls to hell.

    yes I think everyone can read our responses to each other for themselves.

    You have also continued to dance around this point –

    Do you submit yourself to the Dogmatic Teachings of the Council of Trent and Vatican I?

    If yes, do you accept their demands that you do not interpret the Scriptures contrary to the Fathers?

    Do you understand why the Councils demand this of you and all Catholics?

    Lets start there. I’ve already quoted the Councils in my previous posts above, which of course you no doubt actually read?

89. Dear Johnno,

    You site the work of Saint Robert Bellarmine and yet you place an affront to what he taught in Book IV of “De Controversiis On the Roman Pontiff”. The Saint and Doctor taught that all of the claims of heresy as objectively understood (read as material) against any popes, ALL OF THEM, were in error, and contrived by the protestant and/or schismatics’ attack of the singular position of the Holy Roman Pontiff in the Church, as the Vicar of Christ. It is one thing for you to be deceived about what a Saint and Doctor taught but it is fully another for you to posit this claim of yours’:

    “History has demonstrated that Popes have been guilty of material heresy and have undermined the Church as a direct result of their action or in-action. They do not cease to be Popes because of this.”

    This claim of Johnno, places an affront to the words which came from the Eternal Word Himself in His prayer for Peter, as found in the Gospel of Saint Luke, chapter 22, versus 31,32:
    “31 And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.”
    Once again and lastly Johnno, you stake a claim against that which Jesus the Christ Himself commanded. Peter and his Successors cannot at once embrace material heresy and at the same time remain free of heresy, as Christ Jesus prayed that their faith fail not. Heresy is in opposition to faith. That which is in opposition to faith is a failure of that same faith, as that which is in opposition cannot be that which is in union. Again, you must be warned. You are defying the words of the Son of God made Man. May you receive His mercy. In caritas.

90. In Caritas, I believe you know well enough that just because something isn’t defined de Fide, doesn’t mean its’s not of importance.

    Especially considering that de Fide teachings are usually positive ones that demand a Catholic believe something.

    Versus negative pronouncements that demand a Catholic not believe something. This latter one containing the bulk of what the Church has dealt with – Heresies. And into which the condemnations of the heliocentric system fall, whereas the prior would contain the Immaculate Conception.

    For example, Catholics are only to believe in the existence of the Trinity in order to be saved, de Fide.

    But Catholics are not obligated to believe or understand the entire eschatology of work about the nature of the Trinity, which more often defines what the Trinity is not rather than what it actually is, which is a Divine Mystery. not to mention that a Theological scholarship necessary to undertake such a work is not necessary for the simple everyday man to enter into Heaven.

    None the less, if a Pope were to undermine even those non de-fide teachings, he would damage the Church by virtue of hurting it by undermining such doctrines in the intellectual realm.

    Let’s face it, the majority of people wouldn’t understand John Paul II’s Theology of the Body or the vast amounts of verbiage in Francis discourses. but you would agree they would still be teaching something erroneous, even if they didn’t intend to infallibly bind anyone to it, but you would than argue they harm the Church by virtue of their ordinary magisterium, which we are not to resist if they are true Popes. Upon this criteria, you declare they are therefore not Popes because no heretic can ever be a Pope.

    But as the Galileo affair shows, that circa the 1800s we know that Popes are capable of falling into material heresy. This is because regardless of whether you like it or not geocentrism was defined by the Popes Holy Office under their direct authority and enforced as Formal Heresy. Very strong language. Reserved for the most extreme errors. This is a logical result from Dogmatic Councils that did infallibly bind the entire Catholic Church to how the Fathers interpreted Scripture in order to defend and protect the reliable transmission of Tradition which the Pope are custodians of.

    So against your sede thesis, evidence of materially heretical Popes have existed prior to VII ever showing up and whose actions and non-cations led logically and directly to Vatican II in the first place.

    You imagine that this somehow contradicts Papal Infallibility, but as others have already taken the sede thesis to task that this does not but rather it is the sedes who have misinterpreted it. While it is true that Heretics canot be Popes, this must be understood as formal obstinate heretics, and even then this must be ascertained.

    You claim that I deny sedevacantism. I do not deny it as a possibility. I only demand logically that a more rigorous criteria be in place to demonstrate it – such as the necessity of correction and establishing formal and obstinate heresy via means of trial or council. Or that such heresy be more thoroughly manifested such that there can be no intellectual escape hatch, because charity demands it.

    This also does not mean that any true Pope was subjected to trial. Because if the inquiry on Friday can ascertain that the Pope in question is a formal heretic and manifested it as such on Monday, then he had ceased to be Pope on Monday, of his own accord, not by declaration of any council or trial on that very Monday, and the one being tried this Friday is not a Pope.

    Material Heresy alone is not enough. Historically it is demonstrated that Popes have erred. If you are a Geocentrist, they erred circa the 1800s in leading the Church astray. If you are a heliocentrist then the Popes have been erring since 33 AD on a matter of Scripture which falls under their direct authority to interpret, and they set the Church up for a disastrous blow to the faith 1800 years later until they finally began getting it right.

    And if you really believe the latter then I really don’t know what more to say to you, except “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

91. Yes I cite the work of St. Robert Bellarmine, because he is directly citing Trent and its dogmatic demands, whereas the cases of Popes falling into heresy and what to do about them or if they ever did were not defined and controversies t be explored in his day. And this is why others who had opinions contrary to Bellarmine were not condemned by him, or the Popes and Holy Office of “formal heresy” as heliocentrism was. So what is your point?

    Also please recall that despite what Jesus said to St. Peter in Luke 22, that Peter would later publicly deny Him. A betrayal second only to Judas Iscariot. Then Peter would even later cause scandal causing Paul to publicly recognize and resist him to the face. Something apparently Sedes like you claim we cannot ever ever do.

    Once again In Caritas, neither Papal Infallibility or Sedevacantism mean what you want it to mean.

92. Dear Johnno,

    You wrote the following:

    “In Caritas feels he has authority to deny this. In Caritas, appealing to the law of non-contradiction while calling the VII Sect a bunch of heretics, sides with the same heretics, whose Sect called the Council and reiterated Catholic teachings, because they also believed what In Caritas does, that “geocentrism” is wrong, and that the Popes of the past therefore didn’t know what they were talking about, and Tradition could be flawed because the Fathers obviously interpreted holy Writ wrong… because they didn’t listen to the scientists of the times who first told them Holy Writ did not really say “geocentrism” and then threw Holy Writ in the trash for all the other things they were very certain it did say like “Transubstantiation”, which some also said Holy Writ did not say, and they like In Caritas didn’t want to believe the Fathers who said Holy Writ did say “Transubstantion” because they also said it said “geocentrism” and we know they were wrong about that! a”

    According to you, Johnno, “In Caritas feels…”. Anything I’ve written Johnno has precious nothing at all to do with my “feelings”, as you suggest in the opening salvo to this paragraph of yet another diatribe. “Feelings” Johnno again, come from the passions and have not a thing to do with the intellective power itself, which God deemed to be in the ordinate position of His human persons, created in His divine likeness and image, with the passions in the subordinate position. Johnno, we think with our intellect thus and not with our entrails.

    Secondly, you wrote these words, Johnno,
    “they also believed what In Caritas does, that “geocentrism” is wrong…”.
    Please demonstrate, by quoting anything I’ve written on this topic, first for my benefit and then for that of anyone else who might read this, God have mercy on them, where I ever wrote that I “believe” that “geocentrism” is “wrong”. Anywhere Johnno? Any single place where I wrote that. You are so invested in your passions that you are even blind to that which is actually as objectively written in this space, yet alone in the Holy Writ or by the Church Fathers and Doctors.

    Lastly Johnno, as you are quoted above as writing the following, suggesting that this is what I believe,

    “and that the Popes of the past therefore didn’t know what they were talking about, and Tradition could be flawed because the Fathers obviously interpreted holy Writ wrong…”

    Let’s compare the above stated quote of yours, which is your accusation of me, with another quote of yours’ from down below in this same combox thread:

    “History has demonstrated that Popes have been guilty of material heresy and have undermined the Church as a direct result of their action or in-action.”

    Now just who is it Johnno that posits the audacious as errant claim that, “History has demonstrated that Popes have been guilty of material heresy and have undermined the Church as a direct result of their action or in-action.”? Those are your words, Johnno. At the same time that you write that, it is you who accuses me of suggesting, “that the Popes of the past therefore didn’t know what they were talking about, and Tradition could be flawed…”, when in Truth it is you who has done this. Holy Tradition would in fact be flawed if the Holy Roman Pontiff could embrace material heresy as you claim, not me. Once and again Johnno, what you have demonstrated here is the signature of those who have no truly intellective argument to offer, so they use conjecture and the ad hominem attack as that is all they have in Truth. By the way, the ad hominem attack is the sine qua non of the Modernist quo Modernist at his best. I pray this admonition as admonition helps. In caritas.

93. Dear Johnno,

    You have the unmitigated audacity to make the statement, “despite what Jesus said to Saint Peter in Luke 22”, as if to suggest that what the Son of God, as God made Man commanded, can be wrong or can somehow be deficient in any way and as infinitely understood? You seem to miss entirely, as you are blinded to the Truth, precisely as pristinely just what the Beloved Son of God said there. Now to quote Luke 22, 31-34 from the Douay-Rheims copy:

    “31 And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
    32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.
    33 Who said to him: Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.34 And he said: I say to thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, till thou thrice deniest that thou knowest me. And he said to them:”

    Jesus the Christ commanded that “being once converted” and after denying Him three times, as Christ also at the same time commanded would happen, that Peter’s faith fail not. Once and again Johnno, you deny the law of non-contradiction and this time from the Son of God Himself, as when Christ commanded that Peter’s faith fail not, Peter’s faith cannot both fail not and also fail, as that is an absurdity that shakes the cosmos as the command comes from God Himself.

    Finally Johnno, in your blindness to Truth once again, you posit the claim that Saint Paul’s correction of Peter suggests that we miserable human creatures can “Recognize and Resist” the authentic Holy Roman Pontiff on matters of Faith. That is a diabolical lie which has and will lead many souls to hell. Saint Paul corrected Peter in a juridical as ecclesial matter and not on a matter deFide, as Peter’s faith could not fail, as commanded by Jesus the Christ. To suggest anything to the contrary places an affront to the Word of God Himself. May Almighty God allow for the reception of His mercy. In caritas.

94. The bottom line: “To assert that the earth revolves around the sun IS AS ERRONEOUS as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.” ~ St. Robert Bellarmine

95. In Caritas,

    Now you’re just spouting complete nonsense that doesn’t address anything.

    The only one reaching nonsensical contradictions and doesn’t understand what he is talking about is you.

    Christ did not contradict Himself.

    – He prayed that Peter’s faith may not fail.
    – That Christ would pray for something is not a guarantee that the object or person He, the Son of God, prays for, will respond to the grace He offers.
    – This is because Christ, as God, allows mankind the Free Will to cooperate with Him.
    – It is a fact that Peter denied Christ 3 times.
    – It is a fact that Peter caused public scandal, necessitating Paul to resist him and correct him publicly.
    – This is because Peter is still a weak human being, and prone to failure at times.
    – Peter still remained the Pope.
    – The Holy Spirit does not make Popes immune from all error or scandal.
    – The Holy Spirit does not override Free Will.
    – When the Church teaches that a Pope cannot be judged or resisted, it obviously has in mind a true Pope carrying out his duty in conformity with Tradition, Dogma and his predecessors, and not one suspected of heresy or contradicting his predecessors or the faith.
    – The History of the Church has a major contradiction from how it treated Geocentrism in the past to the Heliocentrism it began accepting by the 1800s in DIRECT CONTRADICTION to its Papal predecessors who defined it as FORMAL HERESY and enforced it upon the entire world by their supreme authority.
    – If the Sede error was right, then we’ve had anti-Popes since the 1800s who’ve slipped into material heresy, along with 99% of the clergy. So the Church failed according to such erroneous sede logic.

    Those are the facts. And I’ll remind you that facts indeed can make an argument, and if you don’t think so, then the onus is on you to demonstrate why they do not. Thus far all you are doing is waving your hands in the air.

    The only reason you have trouble accepting this is because you have set down your flag upon an erroneous concept of sedevacantism. But it does not line up with the established historical facts, nor Scripture, nor Dogmatic Councils.

    And I notice that you still haven’t answered whether or not you accept the Dogmatic Teachings of Trent and Vatican I that you as a Catholic are obligated to never interpret the Scriptures contrary to the Fathers.

    Why aren’t you doing so? Why are you running away from the question?

    If you can’t answer that, then you should take some time off to think about all this, because as of now you are no longer under invincible ignorance, and you have no right therefore to accuse the VII Papacies of being guilty for something you yourself refuse to acknowledge.

    If you can’t accept this Tradition and its logical outcomes, then you cannot point out the splinters in the eyes of the VII Popes or its bishops or priests. And in fact you must carefully reconsider your position, least you be guilty of leading souls out of the Church in your erroneous zealotry.

    Along with this demonstration that Popes have held to material heresy for a long time, yet remained Popes, there is also the circumstantial evidence where from the Queen of Heaven herself, in apparitions authenticated by miracles and prophecy, she herself whilst warning about the apostasy and diabolical disorientation that would befall the clergy, still refers to these clergy as valid priests, and whose seers still referred to and obeyed the VII Popes as Popes right up to John Paul II. But we can see now that just as Sedes like you avert your eyes from Trent and the Papal teachings of the past, you are likewise easily willing to dismiss such things as ‘private revelation’ despite the very public nature of an event like Fatima, its public imposition on the Church to make known Secrets and perform a public consecration of a particular nation, and which directly had a hand in leading a Pope to define the Immaculate Conception as doctrine and bind the Catholic world as de Fide teaching.

    So no, I must now firmly conclude from all of this that for a state of sedevacantism to be true, then Formal Heresy must be established for a Pope to lose the Papacy. Perhaps we may get that with Francis, but as of now, the VII Popes remain Popes right up to John Paul II pending a Pope or Council investigating them posthumously. Benedict XVI and Francis on the other hand, can still be liable to judgement assuming we can assess that they are in a state where they ceased to be Popes awhile ago. This would naturally have to occur in an open public investigation by the Council of Bishops with them in the dock. If the current corp of clergy are too weak, then naturally we’ll have to wait for God to sort out this mess by his own means of purging the Church of them. And that is not a cop-out argument, considering Sedes have no alternate solution but to rely on God either.

    Finally let’s just consider the sheer stupidity of the sede goal-post-shifting that Popes never err on de Fide teachings. Because this makes of the holy SPirit an incompetent buffoon according to the logic of In Caritas.

    According to In Caritas, the Holy Spirit who is always in control of the Pope’s mind in order to prevent him from error, for some reason allows Popes to state misleading things, until magically much much later, it changes its mind and decides to have a latter Pope define a de Fide teaching? Why didn’t the Holy Spirit just do it right the first time then? What of all the souls who would’ve been lost as a direct result of the interim where heresy still-not-yet-defined was allowed to flourish?

    So instead, In Caritas, in an attempt to pass the buck from the Popes in order to excuse them, must then lay the blame at the feet of the Holy Spirit instead, in whose omniscience, chose to stall, thus undermining the Church it was supposed to protect and exposing souls to error.

    Then In Caritas must explain the contradiction about why Popes would then, led by the Holy Spirit, then pass judgment on their predecessors for failing in their duty, including putting one’s cadaver on trial for failing to observe a doctrine not-yet-established de Fide?

    So according to In Caritas, not only does the Holy Spirit fail at its job to protect the present Pope, but the Holy Spirit decides to wait for a later Pope or Council to define a teaching de Fide, then it inspires the later Pope to retroactively judge and denounce the previous one for not holding faith in a teaching that had yet to be defined…

    I can see now why so many think Martin Luther can be posthumously found ‘not guilty’, because you see, Luther died in Feb 1546, while the Council of Trent convened only right before his death in Dec 1545! The first decrees addressing Protestant errors not being available until April 1946! And would continue to run until 1563 with interruptions! So by this logic Luther too obviously could not have been held guilty of heresy for teachings that of yet hadn’t been made de Fide! Because according to In Caritas, only de Fide errors count! So perhaps Francis is right and we should exonerate Luther! Unless now suddenly In Caritas can explain why an exception for a ‘Get Out of Heresy Free’ card is only given to the Pope, and not every other member of the Church!

    This is how the Holy Spirit and Tradition work according to the sede logic of In Caritas! It simply defies logical sense. But I suspect as usual In Caritas will now accuse me of being ‘blind’ and having the ‘unmitigated audacity’ to make such as statement merely by taking and applying his own logic to its natural conclusions.

    If that is all in Caritas has to offer, then I think we’re done here.

96. “When the Church teaches that a Pope cannot be judged or resisted, it obviously has in mind a true Pope carrying out his duty in conformity with Tradition, Dogma and his predecessors, and not one suspected of heresy or contradicting his predecessors or the faith.”

    This is the error in your logic and why your point fails. A True Pope cannot contradict his predecessors. If a true Pope can contradict a predecessor than everything taught by the Church can be questioned and all opposing views allowed. Heresy would cease to exist.

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