As most readers are likely aware, prominent “conservative” Professor Josef Seifert was recently dismissed from his position at the International Academy of Philosophy by Archbishop of Granada, Francisco Javier Martinez, for the high crime of daring to criticize Amoris Laetitia.
This act of reprisal comes roughly one year after Archbishop Martinez relieved Seifert, a close personal friend of Pope John Paul II, of his seminary teaching position for stating:
I am still convinced that some of the statements in AL are wrong and even (in some cases) objectively heretical.
Rather than going quietly into the night, Seifert is striking back.
In a recent essay published by First Things, Seifert writes:
I have found it appropriate—on the advice of a very saintly and brilliant cardinal of the Catholic Church—not to accept humbly and silently episcopal slaps in the face for telling the truth and asking questions of the greatest importance to the Church. Instead, I have resolved to fight against misrepresentations of truth and against injustice, both by an ecclesiastic and a civil legal action.
First of all, I applaud his willingness to fight for the truth.
With that having been said, let’s take a closer look at what that truth, and its enemy, actually are.
In his essay, Professor Seifert provides an interesting overview of the steady regression that has taken place in the realm of moral theology in recent decades; beginning with a false notion of conscience as that which alone can determine the relative goodness of an otherwise sinful act, to the present day wherein even God Himself approves of sinful acts in certain concrete circumstances. (See AL 303)
Seifert writes:
In the last fifty years, the crisis that threatened the Church most gravely is one of moral theology … The moral-theological crisis has moved from the bottom to the top of the Church.
Let’s treat these statements individually:
I have to disagree with the notion that the most grave crisis of the last fifty years concerns moral theology.
Indeed, there is a moral theology crisis at hand, obviously. This, however, is not the disease, but rather a symptom, which brings us to Seifert’s second statement:
Regular readers of this space cannot but think of the warning issued by Our Lady at Fatima:
In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top. – Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi
It is apparent that Professor Seifert sees Amoris Laetitia not only as irrefutable evidence that the moral-theological crisis has indeed moved from the bottom to the top of the Church, but also as the very mechanism by which it has so moved.
While some may be tempted to embrace this idea, it is false.
The fact of the matter is that the mechanism by which the present crisis came to be (you know what’s coming…) is the Second Vatican Council.
This is a truth lost on men like Josef Seifert, which is why, in spite of making a number of valid observations, he doesn’t provide any insight into the most crucial question of all:
How has the moral-theological crisis managed to move from the bottom of the Church to the top of the Church?
Surely, there has always been a certain segment within the “bottom of the Church” that is wont to embrace, and to spread, certain unorthodox and immoral ideas.
Throughout the centuries, however, the so-called “top of the Church” has labored to protect both the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine and the faithful by combating such movements; e.g., Pope St. Pius X and his war against modernism.
Clearly, something has changed, but it is not what Professor Seifert apparently thinks it is; namely, the name of the person wielding papal authority.
He writes:
To this [moral-theological] crisis, Pope St. John Paul II reacted most forcefully … there are some formulations in Amoris Laetitia that have caused a deep shock in those of us who have fought, alongside St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, for decades against the immense evil of this false ethics.
These observations ring true to an extent, but they are short-sighted.
In reality, both John Paul II and Benedict XVI had a role in facilitating the present crisis – the same made glaringly obvious in Amoris Laetitia – and they did so by virtue of their commitment to the teachings set forth by the Council, which is not to be confused with a commitment to the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine as it was taught up to that point.
So, how exactly did Vatican II serve to create the conditions that made Amoris Laetitia possible?
Much could be written (and indeed has been written in this space) on the ways in which Amoris Laetitia is “cut from conciliar cloth” as I like to say.
Here, I will suggest three specific ways in which the Council set the stage for the Amoris Laetitia crisis.
- The Council’s ecclesiology, wherein the Holy Catholic Church is presented as but one means of salvation and but one depository of truth.
On this note, let’s turn to Cardinal Walter Kasper, who in a 2014 interview with Andrea Tornielli said:
But there needs to be a distinction between doctrine and discipline, that is, what pastoral action to take in complex situations. Furthermore, Church doctrine is not a closed system: the Second Vatican Council teaches us that there is a development, meaning that it is possible to look into this further. I wonder if a deeper understanding similar to what we saw in ecclesiology is possible: although the Catholic Church is Christ’s true Church, there are elements of ecclesiality beyond the institutional boundaries of the Church too. Couldn’t some elements of sacramental marriage also be recognized in civil marriages in certain cases? For example, the concept of lifelong commitment, mutual love and care, Christian life and a public declaration of commitment that does not exist in common-law marriages.”
Clearly, Amoris Laetitia has answered Kasper’s questions in the affirmative.
- The role reversal at play in the Council’s treatment of the relationship between the laity and the sacred hierarchy. For example:
Let the spiritual shepherds recognize and promote the dignity as well as the responsibility of the laity in the Church. Let them willingly employ their prudent advice … Attentively in Christ, let them consider with fatherly love the projects, suggestions and desires proposed by the laity … A great many wonderful things are to be hoped for from this familiar dialogue between the laity and their spiritual leaders: … [the sacred hierarchy], aided by the experience of the laity, can more clearly and more incisively come to decisions regarding both spiritual and temporal matters. (cf LG 37)
How often have we shuddered to hear Francis speak as if the Church stands in dire need of the laity’s guidance; in particular as it concerns the matters addressed in Amoris Laetitia? In truth, he was simply echoing the sentiments of the Council.
- The simple fact that the Council put fort propositions that stand in stark contrast with pre-conciliar teachings that are based on sacred Scripture and on the Tradition of the Church; e.g., as it concerns religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) and the Church’s relation with the Jews (Nostra Aetate).
If, indeed, the Church is able to do an about face in these matters, why not in the realm of moral theology?
In conclusion, while there is reason to be pleased by Professor Seifert’s vow “to fight against misrepresentations of truth,” let us pray that he is given the grace to identify the real enemy.
Louie’s post goes well alongside Joseph D’Hippolito’s article in The Remnant today.
http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3460-killing-capital-punishment-how-pope-john-paul-set-precedent-for-pope-francis
There is a trend of revising Church Teachings, notable in the VII Popes, and in VII itself.
But when did it actually start? It goes back to the 1800s, when the Papacy was slowly reorienting itself away from the Papal condemnations against Copernicus and Galileo.
Modernists in the Church were impressing upon her the need to respond to the laity and people of other faiths who were turning away towards new fashions in Science. Towards Heliocentrism, Darwinism, and Einsteinian Relativism. This culminates in the Vatican II Council where the periti entering it wanted to overturn these ‘mistakes’ by the Church and reinterpret Papal Infallibility, Tradition, and Scripture. They didn’t get everything they wanted. But those same modernists are always trying again and again.
There’s a very good reason that when the Queen of Heaven came to warn us about the diabolical disorientation that would affect the Church and infest the priesthood and clergy right up to the Popes, that the great Miracle of Fatima involves the Sun dancing in the sky. God DOES NOT just arbitrarily do things!
Human beings are made to exist in reality and properly interpreting that reality is a key component. What they believe about the Origins of Mankind and their place and significance in the Universe MATTERS!
With Copernicism which led to Relativity, the universe is a place where nothing is certain, our home is just another planet that is unspecial and a product of random chance whose journey through the coldness and dark of space has no special direction, no destination, and holds no significance. In defiance of the Catholic Faith which says the Earth was made first, is at the center, is at rest with the entirety of the cosmos made to serve it and inspire those creatures that live upon it, one of whom would be both Human and Divine, would dwell as the Tabernacle amongst its people, be its King and Saviour and upon which the Passion and Crucifixion, the most significant moment in all of Creation would occur.
With Darwin, man was told he was a outcome of a mindless process of an endless cycle of death, disease, predatory practices and cruelty red in tooth and claw, who is descended from ape-like beings descended from pre-mammals, amphibians, fish, and scum struck arbitrarily by lightning or seeded from some other part of the universe upon an insignificant rock. In Defiance of the Catholic Faith which states that death and all its ills are a consequence of original sin, that man was made special apart from the other creatures, crafted lovingly by God IN THE BEGINNING who breathed into him life, who would make form his side a wife, both made in God’s image, of whom God’s image is not that of an ape and a predecessor fish. And this God would also be incarnated in that same flesh from an immaculate woman created as the first of a new Creation. All Ex Nihilo in their perfect forms and not some process of tinkering until God got it right a billions of years later.
Science and our understanding of our environment are a necessary part of mankind. Scientific progress informs man in many philosophical ways. For example, the era of industrialization and factories inspired in the minds of men a political system of fascism as a means to likewise order human society. Man was a cog in the machine of human progress and if the parts don’t work they need to be replaced or eliminated to reach maximum efficiency.
Technology changes our lives significantly too! Consider the advent of the record player and gramophone. Back then the only method to experience music as best as possible for the common man to have a community band or to hire musicians. Families, especially large ones would teach their children to play and instrument or sing and all would gather around the piano together to enjoy music. The record players leading up to the age of MP3s has largely reduced this common practice amongst families. Thus it was not unnatural to see opponents of technology who wanted to consider who would benefit and who would lose with each technological or scientific innovation. How would human society be affected? How would jobs be affected? What consequences would there be?
What does digitization, the smartphone, and apps at our fingertips do for our patience, relationships, socialization and general attitudes? Why are there now those who imagine that the ‘human soul’ can be digitized and made immortal through technology and transhumanism? These movements didn’t just pop out of the ground!
The Popes of the 1600s and 1700s understood what the Copernican revolution would do, and how it was contrary to the Scriptures and Tradition, little gems of knowledge that God informs us of just as God, being simple plainly creates a universe where we truly do observe what we see, that we are at the center of all things.
What we understand about ourselves in the natural world has an impact on our beliefs. It is just as important philosophically for the same reasons we fight for the Traditional Mass, its reverence, its practices, its orientation, its disciplines, its dress code etc. because all those things, big and little, matter and inform and reinforce those who practice it about the Truths of the Faith.
Nothing God has made or told us is superfluous! The Vatican II revolution finds its roots in Copernicus!
Dear Johnno,
I have noticed you keep going back to the way the Church dealt with Copernicus in the 1800s, and duly noted, after the Church stood firm against them prior. I am a big fan of the Universal Ordinary Magisterium and would like to know of any examples you can provide of the Church teaching that the Earth is not the center of the universe, or that Copernicus and Galileo were right, or that the Church was previously wrong on the Geocentric model, of course prior to Vatican II. I seriously want to know because if the Church taught via the Universal Ordinary Magisterium something that conflicts with previous teachings of the same nature and touching on faith or morals, then I would have to consider your position more. As of now, though, I am not seeing how the Church taught error concerning Copernicus. And though I agree that the location of Earth in the universe is important, I am not sure it can be categorized as “faith or morals”.
God bless.
None dare call it heresy. As an example, it’s a matter of doctrine that God created everything in six days. Scripture, the Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, Councils all agree. To buy into the errors of theistic evolution and the so-called Big Bang, you have to reject Catholic doctrine in favor of pseudo-scientific speculation claiming at least a trillion days have passed since “the beginning” with countless instances of death, disease, and destruction before the Fall. Since so many modern day Catholics, especially members of the hierarchy, reject such a basic doctrine as six days of Creation, how can they ever be expected to straighten out the mess of VII? The modern Church is teeming with heretics who go along without any hint of correction. In practice, heresy is the rule and not the exception. Bergoglio needs correction, and so do the vast majority of Catholics. Unfortunately, these days it’s in extremely short supply. Heresy runs amok.
http://www.populationconference.com
One huge disaster for the the Church and therefore the world was calling evil ‘good’. Protestanism is an objective evil that has done untold damage to Christendom over 500 years of misery. Aggiornamento called it ‘Good’. We were suddenly all singing Protestant hymns at our Calvinized liturgies and being told that these “church communities” had so much to teach us. That alone opened an immense, diabolical portal to the underworld.
@Pigg0214
Read Galileo Was Wrong The Church Was Right the magisterial work by Robert Sungenis. Or go to his website wwwgalileowaswrong.com. It is only in the last couple of hundred years that the Church has flirted with accepting the Copernicus/Galileo thesis. Up until then the Church has always propounded the geocentric model of the universe. The Holy Spirit has not allowed the Church to accept these wayward theories into Church teaching. Cardinal Ratzinger said that it was the Galileo theories which pushed the Church into VII in order to accept these theories. So the Council was based on accepting false theories. Hence Galileo/Copernicus is the casus belli of VII. We have to right those errors in order to right the errors of VII.
Johnno——Bravo! Vatican II sprung from the loins of Copernicus. I would also include the Church’s “reorientation” on usury to be part and parcel of the root issue.
Fr Rodriguez latest talk
https://youtu.be/rPhtVWEKUdA
Robert Sungenis is right on many things, and I think he is right about Geocentrism. I read some of his books which refute the protestant heresies of Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide when I made my way back into the Church and they were an immense help. But no one is perfect.
When I watched him debate the Australian sedevacantist John Lane in 2006, I realised that Sungenis is not across everything as I had previously thought. Robert can point you to the Church, but has a faulty understanding of what the Church essentially is, as the debate shows.
John Lane was much stronger in his position, and obviously far more well-read on this subject. It is one of the most important issues for a Catholic to resolve as best as he can in our time.
It’s a great debate to watch. Both sides give it their best, and both clearly love the Catholic Church and the Papacy, but one side flounders and the other remains in control.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3C115C63B95AD74B
The Pope Francis Effect?? As far as I can remember before Pope Francis came along , Siefert together with his “close personal friend” and all those like them, including the dubia cardinals, WERE THEMSELVES once considered the “real enemy” of tradition.
It’s funny how Seifert is saying the same sort of things about Pope Francis that Arch. LeFebvre was saying 30 years ago about Seifert’s “close personal friend” PJPII but he and many others obviously can’t make that hypocritical connection.
Thank you paultdale. I like Sungenis, have the book and others, can’t say I read it from cover to cover, and I believe in Geocentrism. You also seem to agree with me that the Church never adopted the wayward theories of Copernicus into her teaching office.
God bless.
Thank you for the link. I will be watching these soon.
God bless.
Thank you Zara. I registered.
Diogenes and the Three Sestertii
————
Man must not forget his highest and final end.
————
Once upon a time Diogenes, the Grecian sage, set up a tent in the market-place at Athens, and wrote up outside it: “Wisdom is sold here.” A gentleman, seeing this notice, laughed heartily at it, and calling one of his servants, he gave him three sestertii (twelve cents) and said to him: ” Go and ask that braggart how much wisdom he will let you have for three sestertii.” The servant went as he was desired, handed the money to Diogenes, and delivered his master’s message. Diogenes pocketed the three sestertii, and said: “Tell this to your master: ‘In all your actions look to the end.’ ” The gentleman approved so highly of this axiom, when it was repeated to him, that he caused it to be inscribed in letters of gold over the entrance to his house, that both he him self and every one who entered might be reminded of the end of life. Now, no one ever reminded us mortals of the highest end and aim of our existence more frequently and more forcibly than Jesus Christ did. Would that every Christian kept his eyes constantly fixed upon his final end! Everlasting happiness —our last end —should be the guid ing star of our existence, the lodestone of all our affections.
Anecdotes and Examples illustrating the Catechism
Spirago 1904
I would give a plea not to conflate continuity too much; it is aa too-easy thing to do when studying history. Just because we see patterns doesn’t mean that which was before was responsible for what came after. I maintain that between Benedict XVI and Jorge Bergoglio there is a gulf that cannot be bridged. I grieve as well over how modernism crept into the Vatican II Council, but it was very uneven in its documents: some of them were renewing biblical and gospel – or pauline – truths, while some of them were too modernist (Nostra Aetate) or sociological (Gaudium et Spes). We can rise above this ambiguity of the VII Council if see it as pastoral and not doctrinal – not doctrinal in the sense of being able to supplant legitimately the Magisterium of the Ages. Again, there is an inseparable gulf between Benedict XVI and Kasper, one that would take an Aquinas to delineate, but I think basically its because if you weighed in the balance, as in the biblical history of Israel, whether a Leader of the people did good or evil, Holy Writ is not afraid to make generalization: “Ahab did evil in the sight of the Lord” while “Josiah did good in the sight of the Lord.” You can spot continuity between Ahab and Josiah, or even Ahab and Hezekiah – but Scripture boldly declares a generality that is valid and important. SImilarly with John Paul II and Kasper: there is an inseparable gulf between the APostasy of Kasper reaches into “the Essentials.” I believe one can say, inspite of his sins, like Josiah, that “John Paul II did good in the sight of the Lord,” not when, God forbid, he kissed the Koran, no, but in the accumulated weight of all his works, when compared with his predecessor Paul VI. He eventually got rid of Mafia control of the Vatican Bank, he wrote many inspiring encyclicals, he forbid in “Familias Consortio” the very things Jorge Bergoglio is unleashing like an Antipope and False Shepherd. This is my belief: it will be said though, Kasper and Bergoglio “did evil in the sight of the Lord.”
You’re just making it easier for the modernists when you conflate heresy with “the denial of “Six Day Creation,” for example. In the Bible, a “day to the Lord is as a thousand years” to man. The scientific record has been coming closer, once again, to Catholic truth. Scientists have recently discovered how our genetic DNA goes back to common ancestral parents. Now, much more is known in the fossil record than in Darwin’s day. The truth actually looks more like a middle point between, on the one hand, evolution of plant and animal, which actually looks more like “LEAPS” in evolutionary history – a Designed “Evolution,” and on the other hand, when it comes to Homo Sapiens, its looking more and more like the account in Genesis – no evolutionary link has been found between Homo Sapiens and earlier primitive Primates who walked erect, such as Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal “man,” let alone Australopithicus. The chromozomes are different, a whole world of difference in our DNA. The truth is much more like Genesis says, a separate and special Creation of man. Besides, whatever our physical ‘home,’ the Church Fathers teach God sends souls as a special creation when we’re conceived. (Shepherd of Hermas, et al). So we don’t have ever need to reject the confirmed findings of science, as was supposed at the time of the earliest modernists. They became science”falsely so-called” as St Paul described it, they ascribed to “scientism,” as a false cult that rejected the Faith. Many still do today, but our best apologists are very skilled at defeating them in their presumption. Such modernists were Schleiermacher (19thc.) and Bultmann (20thc.). But neither did we have to become a scientific ghetto by becoming literalists as the first evangelicals did – and neither do Catholics! We should not feel so threatened that we are one star among 400 hundred billion billion (present-day estimates of the number of stars), for the LORD “stretches out the heavens like a curtain” and we can see that the heavenly bodies in space merely serve to give Him greater glory: we do not have to be at the PHYSICAL “Centre of the Universe,” but the SPIRITUAL centre, and therefore important enough to Our Creator as to take part in the “spiritual heavenly places to which we’ve have been called, not on the things of this earth (Ephesians).” The Early Church Fathers believed that this is the place of our exile, so we should not be alarmed or ruffled that our Sun is on the outer spiraling arm of our friendly “Milky Way.” We have been exiled from Paradise, but Blessed be God, through the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, He the Apple Tree of our salvation has won the way back to it, and now Heaven and Earth are married in His Holy Incarnation, and He shall rule in the New Jerusalem, and in a “New Heavens and a New Earth” for the old things will all pass away.
This is conflation. Physics and Astronomy should NOT be conflated with Theology. No confirmed truth of science hurts a scratch of the Catholic Faith.
Study Lefebvre: He never once “condemned” Pope John Paul II. He condemned modernism, the degree of which ruined not John Paul II (Familiaris Consortio), but Jorge Bergoglio. Some of it affected him too much, but he knew what it was and didn’t like it any more than you do! If you say the erroneous idea that ALL the Popes since the Council are heretics and the seat of Peter vacante, you take the Church into chaos. With no truths or facts as foundational.
Monk, sedes create chaos? Really? Its those who think modernist heretics like JP2 are popes who have created chaos. There is nothing but chaos in the conciliar church. The whole goal of modernism is to remove all foundational truths and facts. Sedevacantism brings clarity and preserves the foundational truths by rejecting the conciliar church. It removes the chaos and leaves us with the mystery of when Christ will restore His True Church.
Yeah, the D’Hippolito who defected from the Catholic Church, promotes ecumenism with “righteous Protestant and Orthodox” (EENS? Fugheddaboutit!) and writes Zionist columns is now being given space in so-called “Traditionalist” publications.
Just another day in the mad, mad world of Catholic Internet Bloviation. =)
Either the earth is moving or it is not. Does the “confirmed truth of science” have an answer?
And note how all of a sudden, Seifert is being interviewed by Fr. Z, Skojec, etc.
The temptation towards 15 minutes of fame is not one that many can resist, even Catholic philosophers.
Monk- I’m no sede, but Tom A couldn’t be more right. Yes, it is Modernism for sure, but the modern popes, including without question, JPII, are the heart and soul of the chaos. Sedevacantists may not have it right with the pope thing, but as far as I can tell, they’re a darn sight closer to the truth than every one the post-Conciliar popes and bishops.
Monk—I would only add one more point in response to one of your earlier comments, above. Vatican II was wrong from its inception. You say you “grieve as well over how modernism crept into the Vatican II Council”? Modernism WAS the Council! The Modernists had been working toward that end for a half century. It didn’t simply creep into it. Suggesting that the error we make is considering it a “doctrinal” Council vis-a-vis a “pastoral” Council is something I’d expect to read from BXVI in defense of the Council. There is little doubt that the Blessed Mother warned the Church not to even call the Council, so to find ways to now defend it is troubling.
You’ve bought into fake science.
JP2 did good in the sight of the Lord? We cannot compare him to P6 and then declare him good, just because we’ve dropped the bar so painfully low!
NO. JP2 did good in the eyes of MODERNISTS, not our Lord; he did not protect all that was handed down to him, but dragged the Church through all sorts of stupid novelties and worse, heresies. To deny he was eye-ball deep into heresies is to deny reality. His papacy was a failure to anyone with eyes that will see.
Hi pigg0214,
One need only to reference the Church Fathers who overwhelmingly interpreted the Inerrant Scriptures as leading to a Geocentric Universe. This is gleaned from passages referring to the Earth as the Center of the Universe directly, or implicit from the Creation account where the Earth existed first before everything else. Also the Scriptures refer to the Earth as an immovable object and use it as an analogy to God’s immutability. References to the movements of the Sun and Moon and other heavenly bodies are always with respect to the Earth. Miracles such as those of Joshua and King Hezekiah explicitly state the Sun is moving and this causes changes to the day/night cycle on Earth, and don’t state the Earth itself ceases to move or revolve. The Sun’s movement is equivalent to the same motion as the Moon in Joshua where he directly commands both to cease, but doesn’t state the Earth itself should cease to move or rotate. For these reasons, including the Jewish Tradition, the early Christians and the entire consensus of the Fathers interpreted the Scriptures consistently this way and therefore defended the Geocentric model of the cosmos against the heliocentric pagans who believed the Earth went around the Sun, as well as the geocentric pagans who believed the central Earth was the lowest place and anus of the universe because the gods inhabited the heavens, whereas the Christians saw Earth as the apple of God’s eye, a jewel unique amongst the entire universe, blessed with life upon which the Climactic History of Salvation would take place and upon which God Incarnate would come down and dwell amongst His people and sacrifice Himself for them. The Earth was His inheritance and a seat upon which He, the Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords would rule. It is His Throne and His Footstool. Analogous objects that imply a state of rest and stability.
Because the Church lives by its consistent Tradition, the Church dogmatically states in the Council of Trent and Vatican I that no one could interpret the Scriptures contrary to the Fathers and thus provide an interpretation at rupture with theirs. This is because whenever the Fathers overwhelmingly interpreted portions of Scripture the same way, this was believed to be the only factual interpretation, one that was long standing Tradition and one which comes directly from the Apostles. Therefore if the Fathers consensus could be declared wrong on one thing, it could also be declared wrong on other things.
So if one wished to say the Fathers were wrong about Geocentrism, then one could logically argue that the Fathers could be wrong about many other articles of faith – the Eucharist, Holy Orders, Marriage, The Virgin Birth etc. etc. Therefore Tradition would be unreliable, the Church and the Papacy has no consistent basis, and Protestantism would have a better rationale and the Scriptures and the Faith had to be open to the changing times and subject to the knowledge of the world and of scientific consensus apart from the faith who could scrutinize it.
Likewise, if Scripture itself could be found to be errant on scientific matters, then even its very history and credibility would be at stake. For this reason St. Robert Bellarmine and others stated that Geocentrism is a matter of faith just as if one were to question the Virginity of Mary, or whether or not Jacob had 12 sons, were matters of faith.
So that while it is correct to say that Geocentrism is not a de Fide doctrine necessary for Salvation, amongst numerous other teachings, because neither the Church nor God would expect the common uneducated man to hold scientific or theological degrees on complex topics in order to be saved, it does not mean that Catholics are free to ignore it any more than to ignore and find it necessary for a Pope to define belief in Jacob having 12 sons as necessary dogma, or to make a ruling against modernist archaeologists that the Monarchy of David was a factual historic legitimate Kingdom. Or that Catholics could openly believe otherwise about Mary’s perpetual virginity or her Immaculate Conception until it was formally defined.
For this reason the Holy Office under the direct supervision and authority of the successive Popes ruled in 1616 and restated in 1633 against Galileo –
————————————–
“This Holy Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Holy Faith, by command of His Holiness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the sun and the motion of the Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:
“The proposition that the sun is the center
of the world and does not move from its place is absurd
and false philosophically and formally heretical,
because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture”
The proposition that the Earth is not the
center of the world and immovable but that it moves,
and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and
false philosophically and theologically considered at
least erroneous in faith”
But whereas it was desired at that time to deal leniently with you, it was decreed at the Holy Congregation held before His Holiness on 25 February
1616, that his Eminence the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine should order you to
abandon altogether the said false doctrine and, in the event of your refusal, that an injunction should be imposed upon you by the Commissary of the Holy Office to give up the said doctrine and not teach it to others, not to defend it, nor even discuss it; and failing your acquiescence in this injunction, that you should be imprisoned. And in execution of this decree, on the following day, at the Palace, and in the presence of his Eminence, the said Lord Cardinal Bellarmine, after being gently admonished by the said Lord Cardinal, the
command was enjoined upon you by the Father Commissary of the Holy Office of that time, before a notary and witnesses, that you were altogether to abandon the said false opinion and not in future to hold or defend or teach it in any way whatsoever, neither verbally nor in writing; and, upon your promising to obey, you were dismissed.
And, in order that a doctrine so pernicious might be wholly rooted out and
not insinuate itself further to the grave prejudice of Catholic truth, a decree was issued by the Holy Congregation of the Index prohibiting the books which treat of this doctrine and declaring the doctrine itself to be false and wholly contrary to the sacred and divine Scripture.
And whereas a book appeared here recently, printed last year at Florence,
the title of which shows that you were the author, this title being: “Dialogue of
Galileo Galilei on the Great World Systems: Ptolemy and Copernicus”; and
whereas the Holy Congregation was afterwards informed that through the
publication of the said book the false opinion of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the sun was daily gaining ground, the said book was taken into
careful consideration, and in it there was discovered a patent violation of the
aforesaid injunction that had been imposed upon you, for in this book you have defended the said opinion previously condemned and to your face declared to be so, although in the said book you strive by various devices to produce the impression that you leave it undecided, and in express terms probable: which, however, is a most grievous error, as an opinion can in
no wise be probable which has been declared and defined to be contrary to
divine Scripture.
Therefore by our order you were cited before this Holy Office, where, being
examined upon your oath, you acknowledged the book to be written and
published by you. You confessed that you began to write the said book about ten or twelve years ago [1621-1623], after the command had been imposed upon you as above; that you requested license to print it without, however, intimating to those who granted you this license that you had been commanded not to hold, defend, or teach the doctrine in question in any way whatever.
You likewise confessed that the writing of the said book is in many places
drawn up in such a form that the reader might fancy that the arguments brought forward on the false side are calculated by their cogency to compel conviction rather than to be easy of refutation, excusing yourself for having fallen into an error, as you alleged, so foreign to your intention, by the fact that you had written in dialogue and by the natural complacency that every
man feels in regard to his own subtleties and in showing himself more clever than the generality of men in devising, even on behalf of false propositions, ingenious and plausible arguments.
And, a suitable term having been assigned to you to prepare your defense, you
produced a certificate in the handwriting of his Eminence the Lord Cardinal
Bellarmine, procured by you, as you asserted, in order to defend yourself
against the calumnies of your enemies, who charged that you had abjured and had been punished by the Holy Office, in which certificate it is declared that you had not abjured and had not been punished but only that the declaration made by His Holiness and published by the Holy Congregation of the Index had been announced to you, wherein it is declared that the doctrine of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the sun is contrary to the Holy Scriptures and therefore cannot be defended or held. And, as in this certificate there is no mention of the two articles of the injunction, namely, the order not “to teach” and “in any way,” you represented that we ought to believe that in the course of fourteen or sixteen years you had lost all memory of them and that this
was why you said nothing of the injunction when you requested permission to print your book. And all this you urged not by way of excuse for your error but that it might be set down to a vainglorious ambition rather than to malice. But this certificate produced by you in your defense has only aggravated your delinquency, since, although it is there stated that said opinion is contrary to Holy Scripture, you have nevertheless dared to discuss and defend it and to argue its probability; nor does the license artfully and cunningly extorted by you avail you anything, since you did not notify the command imposed
upon you.
And whereas it appeared to us that you had not stated the full truth with regard to your intention, we thought it necessary to subject you to a rigorous examination at which (without prejudice, however, to the matters confessed by you and set forth as above with regard to your said intention) you answered like a good Catholic. Therefore, having seen and maturely considered the merits of this your case, together with your confessions and excuses above-mentioned, and all that ought justly to be seen and considered, we have arrived at the underwritten final sentence against you:
Invoking, therefore, the most holy name of
our Lord Jesus Christ and of His most
glorious Mother, ever Virgin Mary, by this
our final sentence, which sitting in
judgment, with the counsel and advice of
the Reverend Masters of sacred theology
and Doctors of both Laws, our assessors,
we deliver in these writings, in the cause
and causes at present before us between
the Magnificent Carlo Sinceri, Doctor of
both Laws, Proctor Fiscal of this Holy
Office, of the one part, and you Galileo
Galilei, the defendant, here present,
examined, tried, and confessed as shown
above, of the other part –
We say, pronounce, sentence, and
declare that you, the said Galileo, by
reason of the matters adduced in trial, and
by you confessed as above, have rendered
yourself in the judgment of this Holy
Office vehemently suspected of heresy,
namely, of having believed and held the
doctrine – which is false and contrary to
the sacred and divine Scriptures – that the
sun is the center of the world and does not
move from east to west and that the Earth
moves and is not the center of the world;
and that an opinion may be held and
defended as probable after it has been
declared and defined to be contrary to the
Holy Scripture; and that consequently
you have incurred all the censures and
penalties imposed and promulgated in the
sacred canons and other constitutions,
general and particular, against such
delinquents. From which we are content
that you be absolved, provided that, first,
with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith,
you abjure, curse, and detest before us the
aforesaid errors and heresies and every
other error and heresy contrary to the
Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church in
the form to be prescribed by us for you.
And, in order that this your grave and pernicious error and transgression may not remain altogether unpunished and that you may be more cautious in the future and an example to others that they may abstain from similar delinquencies, we ordain that the book of the “Dialogue of Galileo Galilei” be prohibited by public edict.
We condemn you to the formal prison of this Holy Office during our pleasure, and by way of salutary penance we enjoin that for three years to come you repeat once a week the seven penitential Psalms. Reserving to ourselves liberty to moderate, commute, or take off, in whole or in part, the aforesaid penalties and penance. And so we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, ordain, and reserve in this and in any other better way and form which we can and may rightfully employ.”
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The Popes then enforced this throughout Christendom by their supreme authority to the Universities, Religious Orders and Royalty. Catholic academics and editors of works such as Newton’s distanced themselves from such ideas out of obedience to the Holy Roman Pontiffs.
Historians states that these rulings by the Popes were not reformable. Even Pope John Paul II’s commission reached the same conclusion and Galileo could not be exonerated. Therefore John Paul II appealed to the current day consensus of Relativity which according to Einstein could not detect the Earth’s motion because it was being ‘masked’ by fluctuations of time and space, and thus science could not prove the Church was wrong, but the Church has since then allowed free inquiry and granted imprimaturs to various works and removed Galileo and Copernicus off the Index so this shows that we are all getting along very ecumenically now and the Church apologizes for any (unspecified) unnecessary things it has done in the past etc. etc.
But this speech by John Paul II in no way overrides the rulings by his predecessors or undoes the results of a Canonical Trial, especially one so strongly worded and enforced and defined as Heresy and enforced by Papal power for over 100+ years. This is simply John Paul II trying to find an ecumenical compromise. Not to mention that even the references to the Church granting imprimaturs and removing works of the Index is documented as occurring under suspicious grounds or under false criteria and blatant deception, no different than the same machinations we observe by Modernists occurring in Vatican II, the Synods on the Family and Amoris Letitia’s implementation and the turning of blind eyes towards every heretic and homosexual in priests’ clothing going about today excusing sin and distorting Tradition. The modernist playbook hasn’t changed.
Galileo was forced to write and sign a formal recantation of his heresies. How many heretics today would be forced to undergo what Galileo did?
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“I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals Inquisitors- General against heretical pravity throughout the entire Christian commonwealth having before my eyes and touching with my hands the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God’s help will in the future believe all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But, whereas – after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this Holy Office to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth is not the center of the world and moves and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine, and after it had been notified to me that the said doctrine was contrary to Holy Scripture – I wrote and printed a book in which I discuss this new doctrine already condemned and adduce arguments of great cogency in its favor without presenting any solution of these, I have been pronounced by the Holy Office
to be vehemently suspected of heresy, that is to say, of having held and believed that the sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the earth is not the center and moves:
Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all
faithful Christians, this vehement suspicion justly conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies and generally every other error, heresy, and sect whatsoever contrary to the Holy Church, and I swear that in future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but, should I know any heretic or person suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office or to
the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be. Further, I swear and
promise to fulfill and observe in their integrity all penances that have been, or
that shall be, imposed upon me by this Holy Office. And, in the event of my
contravening (which God forbid!) any of these my promises and oaths, I submit myself to all the pains and penalties imposed and promulgated in the sacred canons and other constitutions, general and particular, against such delinquents. So help me God and these His Holy Gospels, which I touch with my hands.
I, the said Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as
above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration and recited it word for word at Rome, in the convent of the Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, 1633. I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand.”
——–
How anyone can say the Church and the Popes had no intention of rooting this out as Heresy doesn’t stand to scrutiny. The crop of Catholic Apologists who want to slide this event under the carpet and call the Popes of the past proud and arrogant and overstepping of their bounds into matters that had nothing to do with the faith doesn’t hold water. They absolutely did see it as a matter dangerous to the faith. And indeed it was for the Enlightenment revolutionaries and Protestants used this to reorientate the world. This had enormous psychological consequences on mankind.
But thanks to Pope Urban VIII, Galileo remained with the Church and of his own accord came around and had humbly converted in his heart such that later in life he’d himself admonish other heretics trying to use him to submit themselves to the Fathers and Faithful Teachers of the Church.
That is how the Church exercised true Mercy. With recent scientific findings these Holy Men and Holy Pontiffs have been vindicated, and we are all fools for losing faith in God. This lesson we should take to heart even during the present crisis.
For more information, I’d recommend checking out the work of Dr. Robert Sungenis, and he’ll have a DVD releasing soon that covers the entire history of this affair.
See trailers for both the scientific documentary and the upcoming Theological/History documentary here, his books are also available there:
https://gwwdvd.com/