Geocentrism and Christianity.

[RonO]

https://www.scripturecatholic.com/geocentrism/

I do not know who is responsible for this web site, but someone has put
a lot of effort into it.

This reference claims that geocentrism was set in the Catholic theology
by the Church Fathers. The quoted examples seem to all have lived
between 300 AD and 550 AD, and include Saint Augustine.

It also explains that the Catholic church is still geocentric. It never
gave up on the Church Father's understanding of scripture. The Catholic
Church may have ended its prohibition and claims of heresy against
heliocentrism in the 19th Century, but this article claims that the
Catholic Church reaffirmed the geocentric beliefs of the Church Fathers
in the 19th century after it had dropped the moving earth as a heresy
earlier in the 19th century. Pagano is not a heretic, but fits right
in. This article explains that the Catholic Church cannot back away
from the geocentric theology due to the principles set by the Church
Fathers on only changing views of natural phenomena if the existing
theology is found to be wrong in terms of natural explanations.
Apparently science can change theology, but the level of proof needed is
set very high, and has not been met for a moving earth. According to
this extensive article on the Catholic Church and geocentrism,
geocentrism has never been proven to be wrong by Catholic Church
standards. It just is no longer a heresy to believe that the earth moves.

So Geocentrism has been a part of Christian theology long before
Copernicus put up an alternative.

I found other articles on the web, that back up Burkhard's claims that a
moving earth was not an official heresy until after Bruno was burned
alive. It was not a good idea to claim that the earth moved, but it
wasn't something with a death sentence. Galileo did face that death
sentence if he had been convicted of the heresy. The alternative views
were gaining more wide spread attention after Bruno and among Protestant
sects, and the Church decided to make it an official heresy.

Even though a moving earth is no longer a heresy, the Catholic Church is
still geocentric.

Ron Okimoto

[dale]

On 8/9/2020 6:45 PM, RonO wrote:
> ... It also explains ...

somewhere there is an eternal emanation?

--
Minister Dale Kelly, Ph.D.
https://www.dalekelly.org/
Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner
Board Certified Alternative Medical Practitioner

[Glenn]

On Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 3:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ron O wrote:
> https://www.scripturecatholic.com/geocentrism/
>
> I do not know who is responsible for this web site,

Don't let that stop you.

You are one weird dude. One thing missing from some anonymous source above;

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture....
— Pope John Paul II, L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) – November 4, 1992"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

[Bill]

The RCC is no longer the authoritative source for Christian
theology. There was a Protestant Reformation along the way
that introduced all manner of new heresies. Geocentrism just
doesn't matter much any more. The RCC follows it traditions,
honoring them above everything which is part of why
Protestants don't take it seriously.

It really doesn't make much difference anyway if one is
hoping to validate atheism.

Bill

[Glenn]

That is irrelevant. Truth is truth. The Catholic Church is not "geocentric".

"We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe and that it does move—it simply orbits the center of the galaxy rather than the earth."

https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy

>
> It really doesn't make much difference anyway if one is
> hoping to validate atheism.
>

You have a point there.

[RonO]

It was the geocentric Protestants of the reformation that kicked up the
most fuss and made the Catholic Church finally take a similar stand on
the issue. That is what you can find on the web about it. Before the
Protestants made the fuss the Catholic Church was apparently willing to
let the Copernican heresy just be something that didn't matter that
much. It was the reformers that decided to set things right and set
their beliefs above questioning, and they made the moving earth an
official heresy. Sort of unexpected, but that seems to be the way that
it was.

The reformation had been going on for over half a century, and the
Catholic Church had to complete in terms of theology with the
protestants. Apparently the protestants started to claim that the
Catholics were not taking the Copernican heresy seriously enough, and
Christianity was going to hell in a hand basket because of the
newfangled notions about God's creation. So the Catholic Church banned
Copernicus' book and made heliocentrism an official heresy. One of the
things that I read was that before Copernicus' book was banned in the
17th century some Catholic seminaries were teaching using the book. It
apparently took the Catholic church around 60 years to ban Copernicus' book.

I was googling Copernican heresy, Heliocentric heresy, and I put
Catholic church in the search after the first round.

Ron Okimoto

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

This was 350 years after Galileo was convicted.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html

The source that I link to does not recognize the papal apology over the
Galileo affair as a change in theology.

Glenn, you have to try to learn something instead of remain willfully
ignorant. You should try it. This is just something that I never
bothered to look into, and went by what had been put up on TO before.

If you read the source it sounds like it takes quite a lot to change the
theology set up by the Church Fathers.

Ron Okimoto

[Glenn]

You are one really friggin weird dude.

[Ernest Major]

On 09/08/2020 23:45, RonO wrote:
> I do not know who is responsible for this web site, but someone has put
> a lot of effort into it.

John Salza

He's an anti-Mason, and a Catholic apologist. (The last being obvious.)
He's not a schismatic. (As as I know we never got a definite answer on
whether Tony Pagano was a schismatic.) Wikipedia thinks that he's not
notable.

A web search finds hims being attacked by even fringier Catholics for
accepting the validity of the current Pope.

He broadcasts on EWTN, which is connected to the official organs of the
Roman Catholic Church, so he seems to be less fringy than I would have
expected from the ecclesiolatrist position on geocentrism.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Burkhard]

Oh, that guy! Rare case of a catholic YEC - rejects evolution and old
earth in addition to heliocentrism. Most certainly not mainstream as far
as the attitude to science is concerned.

[RonO]

You could learn something from this episode. Your Wiki reference does
not state the simple fact that heliocentrism was not an official heresy
at the time Bruno was burned. It likely did not carry the death
penalty. I do not know what discretion the Church granted over this
issue, but it was only at Galileo's time that it had the official death
penalty.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

On 8/10/2020 4:46 AM, Burkhard wrote:
> Ernest Major wrote:
>> On 09/08/2020 23:45, RonO wrote:
>>> I do not know who is responsible for this web site, but someone has
>>> put a lot of effort into it.
>>
>> John Salza

I looked at the home page and contact information and could not find who
was responsible for the web page.

>>
>> He's an anti-Mason, and a Catholic apologist. (The last being obvious.)
>> He's not a schismatic. (As as I know we never got a definite answer on
>> whether Tony Pagano was a schismatic.) Wikipedia thinks that he's not
>> notable.
>>
>> A web search finds hims being attacked by even fringier Catholics for
>> accepting the validity of the current Pope.
>>
>> He broadcasts on EWTN, which is connected to the official organs of the
>> Roman Catholic Church, so he seems to be less fringy than I would have
>> expected from the ecclesiolatrist position on geocentrism.
>>
>
> Oh, that guy! Rare case of a catholic YEC - rejects evolution and old
> earth in addition to heliocentrism. Most certainly not mainstream as far
> as the attitude to science is concerned.
>

On this issue he seems to be on to something due to the Catholic
backtracking after the Pope's apology about Galileo in 1992. It does
seem that it takes quite a lot to change the theology of the Church
Fathers. It is likely why evolution is just "more than an hypothesis".
Heliocentric views seem to still be at the stage of "more than an
hypothesis". They only dropped it as a heresy with major penalties in
the 19th century, but did not accept it into their theology. Other
sources on the web state that. That seems to be why you can still have
geocentric Catholics.

Ron Okimoto

[Ernest Major]

He seems very keen on deferring to the Church Fathers, but not so far as
to defer to Augustine's instruction to let empirical data trump
scriptural interpretation.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ernest Major]

On 10/08/2020 12:17, RonO wrote:
>> Ernest Major wrote:
>>> On 09/08/2020 23:45, RonO wrote:
>>>> I do not know who is responsible for this web site, but someone has
>>>> put a lot of effort into it.
>>>
>>> John Salza
>
> I looked at the home page and contact information and could not find who
> was responsible for the web page.

I did notice the web site was rather coy about the identify of its
author, but the book "The Biblical Basis For The Catholic Faith" was
tied to the author. Feeding that into a search engine find it on Amazon,
with John Salza as the author, and feeding his name in finds a number of
references associating him with the website.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Robert Carnegie]

I'd query that it's "theology" or is "Christian whateveritis", at least
outside that Web site. (This Web site did not exist in Copernicus's
lifetime.) This is cosmology, or astronomy.

I don't recall that Christian doctrine treats the sun, moon,
stars, and planets as other than convenient lights in the sky,
that God created. Their only involvement in religious
practice or thought being to set the date of Easter -
why, I don't know. Nothing else appears here:
<https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/science/faith-and-science/the-sun-in-the-church.html>

Some bible verses refer to immobility of the earth, leaving
aside earthquakes presumably. And to hell being underground,
and God living in a region of the sky that is possibly accessible
from a sufficiently tall tower. And that time the sun stopped
moving in the sky (and the moon). Sooo. There's that.

> I found other articles on the web, that back up Burkhard's claims that a
> moving earth was not an official heresy until after Bruno was burned
> alive. It was not a good idea to claim that the earth moved, but it
> wasn't something with a death sentence. Galileo did face that death
> sentence if he had been convicted of the heresy. The alternative views
> were gaining more wide spread attention after Bruno and among Protestant
> sects, and the Church decided to make it an official heresy.
>
> Even though a moving earth is no longer a heresy, the Catholic Church is
> still geocentric.

Some of it is. That guy is, I take it.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system>
is Tycho Brahe's argument that the earth doesn't
rotate or orbit around the sun but it all just looks
exactly as if it does, and the answer to your first
question is "Don't ask!"

[RonO]

He states St Augustines advice that our understanding of the natural
world can change the Churches literal interpretation of scripture. This
guy cites the reaffirmation of geocentrism after the church lifted the
ban on Copernicus' book and dropped a moving earth as a heresy in 1822
and 1831. He claims that the reaffirmation was around 1850. Apparently
the Catholic Church does not believe that St. Augustine's level of proof
has been met for a moving earth. My guess is that this is why it
circulated a few years ago (citations that I pulled up were from 2014
and it was discussed on TO at the time) that the Catholic Church was
backtracking on the Galileo apology of 1992. Apparently the apology did
not mean that the Catholic Church was giving up on geocentrism. They
may not care one way or the other, but they can't bring themselves to
deny the theology set forth by the church fathers that included St.
Augustine. Just a weird situation.

Ron Okimoto

[dale]

On 8/9/2020 6:45 PM, RonO wrote:

> This reference claims that geocentrism ...

emotions of the divine heart is the center of the universe?

[Ernest Major]

I don't see where you get the 1850 date from.

It's not the role of the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church to
take positions on empirically investigable scientific questions. That
they've transgressed that in the past doesn't mean that they should
transgress in the present. This means we shouldn't be expecting the
Catholic Church to expound a position on the nature of the solar system.
But that does leave a gap in which fringe Catholics can claim to speak
for the faith.

Should we send Martin Harran over to make comments on his website?

--
alias Ernest Major

[Burkhard]

Indeed - or as John Paul II put it:

"The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the
centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the
physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal

sense of Sacred Scripture. Let us recall the celebrated saying
attributed to Baronius "Spiritui Sancto mentem fuisse nos docere quomodo
ad coelum eatur, non quomodo coelum gradiatur". In fact, the Bible does
not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the
understanding of which is the competence of human experience and
reasoning. "

So the main evolution of catholic teaching was not from "geocentrism is
true" to "heliocentrism is true", or even from "geocentrism is the right
theological position" to "heliocentrism is the right theological
position", but from "geocentrism is the right theological position" to
"why on earth (or heaven) do you think we should have any view on that,
this is not a theological problem to begin with, get a science book".

1850 may be a typo for 1950? That's when Humani Generis was issued by
Pope Pius XII, and it has a general defense of "literal" biblical
interpretation, which by some is read too, well, literally, as the term
has a specific meaning within Catholic exegetical methodology, But HG is
sometimes used to claim that it rebuts earlier attempts to reconcile
science and faith (I don't think it did, myself)

[jillery]

Please don't. Nobody should suffer Harran's jerky knees.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[RonO]

He notes it somewhere in the article. It may have been associated with
the Trent Papal conclave.

>
> It's not the role of the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church to
> take positions on empirically investigable scientific questions. That
> they've transgressed that in the past doesn't mean that they should
> transgress in the present. This means we shouldn't be expecting the
> Catholic Church to expound a position on the nature of the solar system.
> But that does leave a gap in which fringe Catholics can claim to speak
> for the faith.
>
> Should we send Martin Harran over to make comments on his website?
>

Why not. It doesn't look like they post comments.

Ron Okimoto

[Martin Harran]

Wow, I take a break from TO for a few weeks and come back to find much
of the same old shit being posted - on both sides of the fence.

Ron, you regularly castigate people here who post stuff from sites
like Answers in Genesis and Uncommon Descent. At least on those sites,
the articles are written by named authors whose background and
credibility can easily be checked; you present something as a reliable
analysis of Catholic teaching yet you admit you don't even know who
developed the site, who is responsible for it or who even wrote the
article. That makes your behaviour worse than those whom you
castigate.

>
>I found other articles on the web, that back up Burkhard's claims that a
>moving earth was not an official heresy until after Bruno was burned
>alive.

The way you have worded that, whether intentional or not, suggests
that Burkhard agreed that a moving earth became an official heresy
sometime after Bruno; Burkhard can correct me if I'm wrong but I don't
recall him saying any such thing - I would be surprised if he had
because geocentricism was never defined as heresy within the Catholic
Church, either before Bruno after Bruno.

> It was not a good idea to claim that the earth moved, but it
>wasn't something with a death sentence. Galileo did face that death
>sentence if he had been convicted of the heresy.


>The alternative views
>were gaining more wide spread attention after Bruno and among Protestant
>sects, and the Church decided to make it an official heresy.
>
>Even though a moving earth is no longer a heresy, the Catholic Church is
>still geocentric.

No it isn't.

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 13:36:44 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>take positions on empirically investigable scientific questions. rThat

>they've transgressed that in the past doesn't mean that they should
>transgress in the present. This means we shouldn't be expecting the
>Catholic Church to expound a position on the nature of the solar system.
>But that does leave a gap in which fringe Catholics can claim to speak
>for the faith.
>
>Should we send Martin Harran over to make comments on his website?

Talk of the devil… lol. The really weird thing is that after a very
busy few months, I came back to TO yesterday to post something
entirely different about Galileo (nothing to do with his problems with
the Catholic Church) and there is Ron posting this tripe.

I think I will leave the other topic I wanted to start until we get
rid of this distraction.

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 13:36:44 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

I understand the point you're making but that rather ignores the fact
that the Catholic Church has played a major role in the development of
our scientific knowledge over the centuries; in regards to the solar
system, most of the research at the time of Galileo was driven by
Jesuits and even today both the Vatican Observatory and the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences are highly regarded within the scientific
community.

>But that does leave a gap in which fringe Catholics can claim to speak
>for the faith.

In regards to evolution and science in general, we don't treat
unqualified writers as reliable presenters of science; for example, I
don't think anyone in the science community would regard Phillip
Johnson as representing the views of the scientific community. When
someone does make rash claims about what science says, the stock
answer here is to tell them to go and check what science is *really*
saying; that applies both ways. One particular aspect of the Catholic
Church is that its teachings are extremely well documented and
accessible so claims about those teachings are easily checked.
Unfortunately, some people - like Ron in this example - treat
something as being true without checking it out, just because it
endorses their existing beliefs.

[…]

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 10 Aug 2020 10:46:19 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

One of the most hardline, traditionalist groups within the Catholic
Church is the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). These are the guys who
totally rejected the decisions of Vatican II and broke away from the
Church in 1970 under the leadership of Marcel Lefebvre; they
eventually consecrated their own bishops for which the Pope JPII
excommunicated them; that was later lifted by Pope Benedict in an
attempt to persuade them back into the mainstream Church though that
never really went anywhere.

Just to illustrate how hardline these guys are, they instruct their
followers to forego Sunday Mass rather than attend "modern" non-Latin,
traditional Mass as doing the latter could put their souls in mortal
danger, Although they profess recognition of the Pope, they have been
consistently critical of all the popes since Vatican II and have
treated Pope Francis with particular venom, accusing him of promoting
heresy through various words, actions and omissions during his
pontificate.

If any group within the Catholic Church were to embrace geocentricism,
it would be this group. Here, however, is what they say about on
their website:

"PLATTE CITY, MO (8-30-2011) A recent news report implied that the
Priestly Society of St. Pius X promotes the scientific theory of
geocentrism as a Catholic teaching based upon the Bible. The SSPX
holds no such position.

The Church's magisterium teaches that Catholics should not use Sacred
Scripture to assert explanations about natural science, but may in
good conscience hold to any particular cosmic theory. As a religious
congregation of the Catholic Church, the SSPX holds to these
principles and does not teach any solar scientific theory."

People like John Salza and Robert Sungenis and Tony Pagano are
outright mavericks and do not represent any significant view within
the Catholic Church. To paraphrase the old "not even right"
expression, they're not even a minority.

[Martin Harran]

Apparently the best you could find was an anonymous article where you
couldn't even find out who was responsible for the site; that really
should have given you pause for thought.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 09:57:10 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:

>[...]

>To paraphrase the old "not even right"
>expression, they're not even a minority.

Grrr - "not even wrong"

[Burkhard]

ermm, you mean heliocentrism? Geocentrism was indeed never declared a
heresy, and I don't think anyone ever argued that

was never defined as heresy within the Catholic
> Church, either before Bruno after Bruno.

Well, what I said can in all fairness be read like this. As the point
was about Bruno, I didn't feel the need to be overly technical when
describing what happened afterwards.

For the Bruno trial the case is clear, whether or not one argues that
heliocenrism became a formal heresy later often boils down to an issue
of semantics and extremely technical canon law distinctions.

What is clear of course is that Galileo was convicted of "something".
What is equally clear is that his books, and also other books endorsing
variants of the Copernican system came on the Index. It is equally clear
that they were removed from the Index between 1718 and 1835, step by step.

So the question is how these two can be reconciled - or maybe even more
broadly, the Council of Trent with the 2. Vatican Council. There are
several possible answers

a) Galileo was correctly convicted for the heresy of heliocentrism, and
the Church has now realized that was a bad law and changed it

b) the Galileo trial was a mistake in law. The heliocentrism he espoused
was not a heresy then, and he should therefore not have been convicted.
The law did not need changing, only its application had been faulty

c) Galileo was rightfully convicted under the law as it then was, and
the law did not, and need not changing. That's obviously the more
difficult view to take, and it can take at least 3 different version
c.1: heliocentrism is and was heretical. A position only
held by a couple of fringe theologians these days
c.2: he wasn't really convicted because of heliocentrism

c2 can again be subdivided:

c.1.1 he was convicted of something that looks like holding heretical
heliocentric views, but really wasn't, once you look more closely.

There are again numerous variations of this. One is that he was only
convicted of a specific version of heliocentrism that was heretical, a
specific version of Copernicanism that nobody any longer holds. Or it
was not the content of the theory, but his "ontologising" what should
have been an epistemological issue (this line looks at the compromise he
was offered). Or his mistake was not the substance of the theory, but
that he proposed it with insufficient evidence, which is on procedural
grounds the wrong way to challenge established teaching, so the heresy
is one of general disobedience. And of course now we have the evidence.
So heliocentrism isn't heretical as such, just heliocentrism without
enough evidence. Or he wasn't convicted of a formal heresy, but
something less serious, like a suspected heresy.

c.1.2.: the trial had nothing to do with heliocentrism at all, and he
was convicted of another heresy altogether. A candidate for this is the
idea that he was "really" convicted of atomism, which he may have
endorsed in "The Assayer" - that is a minority view among some academics

The church obviously does not like a),and has used some ingenuity to
argue for various of the alternatives, from individual theologians and
church historians right to the top. John Paul II seems to have veered
towards b), though I suspect in his heart of hearts he knew that as a
matter of history, rather than canon law, a) probably is closest to how
the actors understood it at the time. Benedict seemed to go for one or
several of the c.1.1 versions. John Paul set up the commission of course
to look at the Galileo affair, but after 10 years of (regrettably
secret) debate, what it delivered was meh... If anything it muddled the
water further.


Some of the data that needs to be accommodated, emphasis added by me


The Qualifiers, unanimously, ruled in 1616 that:

------------------------------------------------------

Assessment made at the Holy Office, Rome, Wednesday, 24 February 1616,
in the presence of the Father Theologians signed below.

Proposition to be assessed:

(1) The sun is the center of the world and completely devoid of
local motion.

Assessment: All said that this proposition is foolish and absurd in
philosophy, and FORMALLY HERETICAL since it explicitly contradicts many
places the sense of Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of
the words and according to the common interpretation and understanding
of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology.

(2) The earth is not the center of the world, nor motionless, but
it moves as a whole and also with diurnal motion.

Assessment: All said that this proposition receives the same
judgement in philosophy and that in regard to theological truth it is at
least ERRONEOUS IN FAITH

------------------------------------------------------------------

So this clearly reads like an official denouncement of heliocentrism.
Why can one argue that it nonetheless is not a smoking gun? Two reasons:

First, a decision of the Qualifiers is not technically binding on the
Church - but as a body directly appointed by the Pope it is highly
persuasive also in canon law as an interpretation of existing rules,
though not creation of a new one. Unlike the Bruno case, it is a
sufficient basis to bring charges.

The second is the difference in the analysis between 1 and 2. 1 is
declared a formal heresy, 2 merely "at least erroneous in faith" -
leaving open if it is a formal heresy.

Since "heliocentrism" normally requires 1 and 2, one can just about
argue that this means "heliocentrism" isn't a formal heresy, just the
belief that the sun is the center of the world and fixed - but that is
for obvious reasons a bit odd

In the next step, there is the the official decree of the Index from 5th
of March 1616) which bans a whole range of books that endorse the
Copernican system

This is more guarded than the assessment It declared that the
Copernican theses were “false and altogether contrary to Holy Scripture”
but made no mention of heresy explicitly, so it is ambiguous what that
means, in canon law. Copernicus’s book was to be “suspended until
corrected”, and again, that leaves ample room for interpretation
depending what you think the corrections were supposed to do.


"At the palace of the usual residence of the said Most Illustrious Lord
Cardinal Bellarmine and in the chambers of His Most Illustrious
Lordship, and fully in the presence of the Reverend Father Michelangelo
Segizzi of Lodi, O. P. and Commissary General of the Holy Office, having
summoned the above-mentioned Galileo before himself, the same Most
Illustrious Lord Cardinal warned Galileo that the above-mentioned
opinion was erroneous and that he should abandon it; and thereafter,
indeed immediately, before me and witnesses, the Most Illustrious Lord
Cardinal himself being also present still, the aforesaid Father
Commissary, in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole
Congregation of the Holy Office, ordered and enjoined the said Galileo,
who was himself still present, to abandon completely the above-mentioned
opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the
earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way
whatever, either orally or in writing; otherwise the Holy Office would
start proceedings against him. The same Galileo acquiesced in this
injunction and promised to obey "

and finally from the verdict:

"We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the above-mentioned
Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and confessed by you
as above, have rendered yourself according to this Holy Office
vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed a
doctine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture:
that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to
west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that
one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been
declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture. Consequently you have
incurred all the censures and penalties imposed and promulgated by the
sacred canons and all particular and general laws against such
delinquents. We are willing to absolve you from them provided that
first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in front of us you
abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and
every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic
Church, in the manner and form we will prescribe to you."

Now, it depends a bit if you think of this as a historian, lawyer or
theologian, but apart from the noted outliers above, every answer seems
to have some problems with some of the things we know, andeach of them
has some arguments in its favour. There are lots of inconsistencies in
the events as they unfolded, again all leave room for interpretation -

What shall we make of it e.g. that Bellamy certified, on Galileo's own
request, and after meeting with him in private that he had “only been
notified” of the Pope’s declaration that the Copernican doctrine was
contrary to Scripture and therefore “cannot be defended or held” -
which, as Galileo did not reject that notification, should have been the
end of it - and yet in 1632 we see that he has been served with an
injunction.

My own, tentative view is

a) this is a mess and will remain one. Part of it is that the catholic
church was on the defense here from the word go. The initial
condemnation was triggered by the reformation which ironically made the
catholic church look wishy washy, modernist and liberal, and hence lead
to a conservative backlash, and then in a reversal of roles 19th and
20th century liberal protestants using the affair to argue that the RCC
was hopelessly reactionary, anti-science and outmoded. Being
wrong-footed both times, it chose to fight battles it really should not
and need not have to

b) while from an abstract legal -doctrinal perspective, we tend to look
for neat, consistent solutions, history is much more muddled than that,
and especially the 16th and 17th century papacy was by far not as
organized, coherent, legalistic etc as it is sometimes depicted. Even
modern secular legal systems don;t always make coherent sense, 17th
century canon law in a highly politicized environment def didn't

c) the trial, but not the earlier injunctions, violated procedural rules
or a pretty big scale.

d) Pope Urban sifted his attitude to Galileo's work significantly
between 1616 and 1630 - however, the issue for him is not primarily
heliocentrism, but the question whether God would have been free to set
up the world otherwise, something that contradicts the way Galileo
presents the theory

e) however, for a number of reasons that may be more political than
substantial (including a big Swedish army), the verdict against Galileo
does not make this explicit, and as worded condemns heliocentrism
instead at the very least as "suspected heresy" (note, "suspected heresy
is not a something that may or may not turn out to be a heresy, but a
less serious form of heresy)

[Burkhard]

well, that is definitely true for Pagano, but Sungenis and his
"traditionalist Catholics" are in organizations like the Kolbe Center
is part of an identifiable group - and Salza does get a platform on
official catholic channels such as EWTN. That is the flipside of the
coin when you say that scientific theory is not a theological concern -
it means that there is also no obstacle to argue for geocentrism as
equally compatible with the faith

[Oxyaena]

On 8/12/2020 4:09 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> Wow, I take a break from TO for a few weeks and come back to find much
> of the same old shit being posted - on both sides of the fence.

This is your summoning ritual, I take it?

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 14:08:22 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Leaving aside the not insignificant fact that the Kolbe Center has no
official standing within the Catholic Church, I don't think they
endorse geocentrism. As you rightly point out, since scientific theory
is not a theological concern, Sungenis's oddball views in that area
would not disqualify him from membership. Indeed, I suspect that they
would welcome his hardline views on things like creationism in general
and the rejection of evolution - a sort of Catholic equivalent of the
'big tent' that the ID movement tries to achieve.

EWTN certainly doesn't endorse geocentrism. I'm not a regular user of
EWTN but, as far as I can figure out Salza's appearances have been
about his posion on Free Masonry, not geocentrism.

A search on "geocentrism" in EWTN, turns up just 4 articles; one of
them is irrelevant (it uses 'geocentric' in the sense of our human
focus on things of the world); the other 3 are the Catholic
Encyclopedia article on Galileo; George Sim's account of the Galileo
Affair and an article by Cardinal Ratzinger about " Relationship
Between Magisterium and Exegetes"; all three of those articles
explicitly accept heliocentricism.

FWIW, here are the views of David Palm, another EWTN contributor,
about geocentrism:
https://www.geocentrismdebunked.org/1992-2/

Also, interestingly, in trying to find out more about Salza, I came
upon this:

"Catholic Geocentrist Self-Censored

In what I consider a sad and unfortunate development Catholic
Apologist John Salza, J.D. has deleted his very excellent geocentrism
material from his website. I had often used that material for
purposes of reference as well as for helping to educate others on the
subject of the proper traditional Catholic perspective concerning
geocentrism. Since I had already downloaded the material before Mr.
Salza decided to self-censor the material from his site (which has
been given a new name - johnsalza.com), I thought it would be nice to
share that material with Cathinfo for anyone who would like to archive
the material for themselves. Thus, I have pasted the material between
the asterisks below.

I have also included a powerfully riveting talk -- seen in the video
below -- given by Mr. Salza on the subject of geocentrism It was
presented at a Catholic conference put on by Dr. Robert Sungenis who
can be seen introducting Mr. Salza.

I would like to point out that the material which I have pasted
between the asterisks can still be found on the Internet, but not on
Mr. Salza's current website eventhough the link to same which I give
here may give you that impression: GEOCENTRISM It seems like somewhat
of an anomaly that the material is still found on the Internet via
this link, but the fact remains as I said the material is no longer
found on Mr. Salza's current site.

Finally, I should mention that Mr. Salza upon my personal inquiry
assured me that he remains "a geocentrist and will publicly defend the
position." I was most glad to hear that. On the other hand, I
believe (based on my communication with Mr. Salza) that I am not at
liberty to disclose the reason he gave me as to why he self-censored
the geocentrism material from his current website."

https://www.cathinfo.com/general-discussion/catholic-geocentrist-self-censored/

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 10:48:24 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Sorry, I can't answer that question as I simply haven't a clue what
you're talking about.

[RonO]

You should talk, your own reference was clear as mud last time and only
reflected what Glenn put up for Wiki which didn't clear up the situation.

You could give a better reference.

Why can there be geocentric Catholics, and what was that business about
half a dozen years ago about waffling about the Galileo apology?

It looks like the anonymous reference is a lot better than anything that
you have put up. That is why I put it up in the first place. It seemed
to be better than Wiki and what you had put up before. You might
demonstrate that it is not.

The guy may be a hard line conservative, but what does that say about
how screwed up the situation is with geocentrism and the Catholic
Church. What is their official position even today?

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Put up something better, and demonstrate that it is better. You didn't
do that last time. Your reference was no better than Wiki.

>
>>
>> I found other articles on the web, that back up Burkhard's claims that a
>> moving earth was not an official heresy until after Bruno was burned
>> alive.
>
> The way you have worded that, whether intentional or not, suggests
> that Burkhard agreed that a moving earth became an official heresy
> sometime after Bruno; Burkhard can correct me if I'm wrong but I don't
> recall him saying any such thing - I would be surprised if he had
> because geocentricism was never defined as heresy within the Catholic
> Church, either before Bruno after Bruno.

If you look up heliocentric heresy and put the Catholic Church in the
search you will get articles that claim that it wasn't until after Bruno
was executed that the moving earth was given the death penalty as a some
type of designated heresy. Galileo supposedly faced that death penalty.
One reference I pulled up claimed that Copernicus's book was finally
banned and the heresy was made some type of official heresy due to
protestant Geocentists stirring up trouble. The protestants didn't give
up on all the theology of the Church, and it was likely something that
the Catholic Church had been negligent in dealing with for decades.

Burkhard put up the claim that it wasn't a heresy with the death penalty
until after Bruno, but I couldn't check it out with his reference so I
started searching. The Catholic ban on Copernicus' book and the change
in heresy status did not occur until after Bruno was executed. The Ban
on Copernicus' book and dropping heresy claims didn't occur until 1822
and 1831. Something that the reference that I cite above deals with and
claims that it may have been dropped as a punishable heresy, but the
Catholic Church did not drop the geocentrist theology. If you read that
reference it claims that it was reaffirmed around 1850. My guess is
that is how it had been until the Galileo apology in 1992, but
apparently that apology did not include ending geocentrism as part of
the Catholic theology.

You can put something up that would counter that inference from what can
be found on the web. It would be nice to have something clearly stated
by the Catholic Church besides the apology, that apparently didn't
change things.

It would be nice to settle the issue, so it isn't an issue any longer,
but that doesn't look like it is going to happen any time soon.

>
>> It was not a good idea to claim that the earth moved, but it
>> wasn't something with a death sentence. Galileo did face that death
>> sentence if he had been convicted of the heresy.
>
>
>> The alternative views
>> were gaining more wide spread attention after Bruno and among Protestant
>> sects, and the Church decided to make it an official heresy.
>>
>> Even though a moving earth is no longer a heresy, the Catholic Church is
>> still geocentric.
>
> No it isn't.
>
>

Put up your evidence. Why isn't it clear from the papal apology? It
may no longer be a heresy, but the moving earth isn't part of the
Catholic theology. Why was there backtracking on the Pope's Galileo
apology around 2014. You probably participated in that TO discussion,
but I pretty much ignored it back then. What is the current situation
so that this hard liner still has a beef, and there could be
backtracking on the papal apology?

It is sort of stupid that this can still be an issue, and your reference
last time didn't do anything to help things.

Ron Okimoto

[Robert Carnegie]

I thought you and St Augustine had established that
the proper thing for the church to do is to leave science
to scientists.

Let me remind you that Sherlock Holmes wasn't aware
that the earth goes round the sun. He just wasn't interested
and the knowledge did not apply to him. He also was fictional
if you want to get technical, but I think the argument stands.

[RonO]

Yes, but apparently the level of certainty about nature hasn't been met
that St Augustine set up to determine whether our understanding of
nature trumps scripture. Biological evolution is still just "more than
an hypothesis", and it looks like earth orbiting the sun is still just
more than an hypothesis.

https://entirelyuseless.com/2015/09/20/st-augustine-on-science-vs-scripture/

When I took Christian history in college and we had to read a book with
that St Augustine quote at the beginning of the link above, the
professor told us that he did not know what natural phenomena that St.
Augustine was talking about. It might have been the flat earth and
firmament because by that time they understood that there wasn't just
one dome above a flat earth because they knew that some stars (the
planets along with the sun and moon) did not move with the other stars,
and Erathsthenes had estimated the circumference of the earth before
Christ was born. Kepler was still working with the notion of multiple
crystal spheres when geocentrism was still a big deal.

It should be alright to admit that they don't know and don't care. That
is about what the Methodists do. I don't know if there are any
geocentrist Methodists, but There are YEC factions. It likely wouldn't
matter if there were any geocentrists, because even if they are wrong it
doesn't matter to the core beliefs. There was some stirrings about part
of the YEC faction breaking away and starting their own branch of the
Methodists, but it doesn't look like it ever happened. Where ever they
went they would still have to deal with people with different beliefs.

Ron Okimoto

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:55:55 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Sorry, my bad.

That is a very comprehensive analysis of the various issues. Rather
than replying to specific issues in line, I'll make the following
general comments.

I think there are three main aspects that rule out any genuine heresy
being involved.

Firstly, the Church's own stated view on this. In that regard, I find
the Catholic Encyclopaedia particularly useful as it was published
over a hundred years ago, at a time when of the Church apologising for
something or admitting it had got something wrong was almost
unimaginable. Here is what it says:

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm
<quote>

As to the decree of 1616, we have seen that it was issued by the
Congregation of the Index, which can raise no difficulty in regard of
infallibility, this tribunal being absolutely incompetent to make a
dogmatic decree. Nor is the case altered by the fact that the pope
approved the Congregation's decision in forma communi, that is to say,
to the extent needful for the purpose intended, namely to prohibit the
circulation of writings which were judged harmful. The pope and his
assessors may have been wrong in such a judgment, but this does not
alter the character of the pronouncement, or convert it into a decree
ex cathedra.

As to the second trial in 1633, this was concerned not so much with
the doctrine as with the person of Galileo, and his manifest breach of
contract in not abstaining from the active propaganda of Copernican
doctrines. The sentence, passed upon him in consequence, clearly
implied a condemnation of Copernicanism, but it made no formal decree
on the subject, and did not receive the pope's signature. Nor is this
only an opinion of theologians; it is corroborated by writers whom
none will accuse of any bias in favour of the papacy. Thus Professor
Augustus De Morgan (Budget of Paradoxes) declares you

All "It is clear that the absurdity was the act of the Italian
Inquisition, for the private and personal pleasure of the pope - who
knew that the course he took could not convict him as pope - and not
of the body which calls itself the Church."

And von Gebler ("Galileo Galilei"):

"The Church never condemned it (the Copernican system) at all, for the
Qualifiers of the Holy Office never mean the Church."

It may be added that Riccioli and other contemporaries of Galileo were
permitted, after 1616, to declare that no anti-Copernican definition
had issued from the supreme pontiff.

</quote>

Notwithstanding your comments about the subtleties and nuances of
theology, I think that is a pretty clear statement from the Church
itself. Indeed, I am somewhat surprised considering the context of the
time it was written, how direct criticism was of not just the Vatican
officials but the Pope himself.

I think the second thing is something you refer to later, the
reduction of charge to being *suspect* of heresy; as I understand it,
that means being heretical without knowing you are being heretical and
I think that is de facto admission by those trying him that there
wasn't an existing heresy that they could actuallycharge him with. I
also get the impression that having found him guilty of that, they
tried to cover their tracks by trying to create a new heresy but, as
the article above points out, that didn't actually have the authority
to do that.

The third thing that I think argues against heresy, is that Galileo
was commissioned by the Pope to write "Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems"; the Pope instructed him to treat the arguments
for and against heliocentrism in a *neutral* manner - it was Galileo's
failure to do that that largely contributed to his treatment. I don't
think the Pope would have instructed him to write about it in a
*neutral* manner if there had been any question of heresy involved in
the fundamental arguments.

>
>My own, tentative view is
>
>a) this is a mess and will remain one. Part of it is that the catholic
>church was on the defense here from the word go. The initial
>condemnation was triggered by the reformation which ironically made the
>catholic church look wishy washy, modernist and liberal, and hence lead
>to a conservative backlash, and then in a reversal of roles 19th and
>20th century liberal protestants using the affair to argue that the RCC
>was hopelessly reactionary, anti-science and outmoded. Being
>wrong-footed both times, it chose to fight battles it really should not
>and need not have to

I agree with everything there, it reflects my own general view. I
don't think, however, that you can examine what happened without
considering Galileo's own contribution to the problems. [1]

Something that tends to get overlooked by those using the Galileo
affair to castigate the Church is that it wasn't simply a case of the
Church refusing to accept his findings - it was his fellow scientists
who refused to accept them as conclusive. The Church then, as now,
does not make decisions on matters of pure science, it goes with what
is generally accepted by the scientific community. One of the few
things that are right in the original article posted by Ron is that
the Church's approach to Scripture is that it takes it at face value
unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. In regard to things
like the sun standing still in Joshua, there was no specific problem
relating to that in the geocentric theory held by science at the time.

When scientific evidence comes along that appears to contradict
Scripture, the Church accepts that it is up to them to reconcile the
Scripture with the science, not the other way around. That is
highlighted by Cardinal Bellarmine, a key figure in the whole Galileo
affair, who at the very start of Galileo's problems back in 1615
stated that if conclusive proof of heliocentric became available "then
one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures
that appear contrary; and say rather that we do not understand them,
than that what is demonstrated is false." He went on to express a
personal opinion that he didn't think Galileo would ever find that
proof and he turned out to be right, at least in the short term; it
took another 200 years for heliocentricism to be conclusively proved
through work by Bradley (1727), Besset (1851) and Foucault (1851).

Galileo refused to accept the arguments of his fellow scientists and
also took it upon himself to lecture the Church and how it should
interpret Scripture to reconcile it with his findings. In his
(in)famous letter to The Grand Duchess Christina, he aggressively
attacked his fellow scientists and leading theologians such as
Bellarmine, for their "hypocritical zeal" and accused them of
"invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful
purposes", stating that "I hope to show that I proceed with much
greater piety than they do …"

Whatever the underlying significance about his findings and ideas, it
wasn't exactly the best approach to winning friends and influencing
people about them.

[1] For the benefit of those who have previously struggled to
differentiate between *explanation*and *justification*, can I make
clear that when talking about Galileo's own contribution to the
problems, I am not suggesting that anything in that justifies the
Church's treatment of him - that treatment was truly dreadful and
nothing excuses it. If however, we want to learn from mistakes of the
past, we cannot fully do so unless we look at the How? And Why?
regarding how those mistakes were made.

[Martin Harran]

What reference are you talking about?

>
>You could give a better reference.

If you are talking about the discussion on Bruno a while back, if
memory serves me right, it wasn't Glenn or me who handed you your ass
on a plate, it was Burkhard; if you have an issue with the references
he gave then you should take it up with him..

>
>Why can there be geocentric Catholics,

Well the Catholic Church has over a billion members so there will
inevitably be a few oddballs in it with all sorts of weird ideas which
the Church tolerates as long as it doesn't conflict with Church
teaching. Geocentricism versus heliocentricism has no bearing on
Church teaching so the Church doesn't throw people out for believing
in the former any more than it would throw people out for believing
that the earth is flat.

> and what was that business about
>half a dozen years ago about waffling about the Galileo apology?

What waffling?

>
>It looks like the anonymous reference is a lot better than anything that
>you have put up. That is why I put it up in the first place. It seemed
>to be better than Wiki and what you had put up before. You might
>demonstrate that it is not.
>
>The guy may be a hard line conservative, but what does that say about
>how screwed up the situation is with geocentrism and the Catholic
>Church. What is their official position even today?

You have been told time and time again that the Catholic Church does
not include matters of science in its teachings; in regard to its
"position" on scientific matters, it goes with whatever scientific
consensus is at any point in time. Back in the 17th century,
geocentrism was the scientific consensus and the Church went with
that; over the following two centuries, scientific consensus moved to
heliocentrism and the Church accepted that change in consensus. It
beats me what your problem is with that.


>
>Ron Okimoto
>

[Martin Harran]

I get the impression that we're getting to the real heart of the
matter there; your problem is not so much "Catholic Church versus
science" as it is "Catholic versus Methodist".

[Martin Harran]

That's not how it works around here - it's not me who has to prove a
negative, you're the one who is making the claim that the Catholic
Church is still geocentric yet you haven't produced a single piece of
evidence from the Catholic Church. All you can come up with is an
anonymous article from someone with no authority to speak on behalf of
the Church. As I said above, that is even worse than the behaviour for
which you castigate IDers.

>Why isn't it clear from the papal apology?

It seems clear to everybody else except you and you seem totally
impervious to rational argument on the matter.

>It
>may no longer be a heresy,

You have been told time and time again that it was never a heresy.

>but the moving earth isn't part of the
>Catholic theology.

Why should it be part of theology, what has it to do with faith or
morals?

>Why was there backtracking on the Pope's Galileo
>apology around 2014.

What backtracking? You keep talking about this backtracking but never
explain what it is.

> You probably participated in that TO discussion,
>but I pretty much ignored it back then.

I haven't a clue what to discussion you're talking about, can you give
me a pointer to it?

>What is the current situation
>so that this hard liner still has a beef,

You'd really need to ask him what his beef is; I don't know whether it
is significant or not but apparently he has taken the stuff down from
his own website.

>and there could be
>backtracking on the papal apology?

I've already asked you to explain what that backtracking is.

>
>It is sort of stupid that this can still be an issue

That's the truest thing you have said so you really stop trying to
make it an issue when it isn't.

[RonO]

No, misdirection of the argument will not resolve the issue. You need
to come up with better references in order to do that. So far all that
we have is what has been put up. You aren't going to change that by
making your empty statements and running away.

There has obviously been an issue for centuries, and guys like you make
it so that it can be an issue for centuries. All that is required are
some plain and simple statements that are allowed to mean something in
terms of the Catholic Church theology in the case of geocentrism. If
the papal apology in 1992 did not do that, what type of document would
do that? Why isn't such a document available to the public after
centuries of this being an issue? Why are there conservative Catholics
that you have to dismiss as being conservative Catholics, and not
because you have evidence that they do not have a case?

Ron Okimoto

>
>

[RonO]

The one you put up the last time Bruno was put up. It basically said
what you can find in wiki.

>
>>
>> You could give a better reference.
>
> If you are talking about the discussion on Bruno a while back, if
> memory serves me right, it wasn't Glenn or me who handed you your ass
> on a plate, it was Burkhard; if you have an issue with the references
> he gave then you should take it up with him..

It wasn't Burkhard back then. It was you with your reference that you
put up and then would not defend, because I could put up the evidence
that it was ambiguous, just like Wiki.

>
>>
>> Why can there be geocentric Catholics,
>
> Well the Catholic Church has over a billion members so there will
> inevitably be a few oddballs in it with all sorts of weird ideas which
> the Church tolerates as long as it doesn't conflict with Church
> teaching. Geocentricism versus heliocentricism has no bearing on
> Church teaching so the Church doesn't throw people out for believing
> in the former any more than it would throw people out for believing
> that the earth is flat.

Why don't you have a document that would indicate how much the Catholic
Church views have changed? They obviously have been allowed to change
for most, but why isn't the papal apology in 1992 good enough to claim
that things have officially changed?

>
>> and what was that business about
>> half a dozen years ago about waffling about the Galileo apology?
>
> What waffling?

You can look up on the web google Galileo apology and you will bring up
the 1992 apology and claims years later that it didn't mean what most
people thought. It was discussed on TO back then.

>
>>
>> It looks like the anonymous reference is a lot better than anything that
>> you have put up. That is why I put it up in the first place. It seemed
>> to be better than Wiki and what you had put up before. You might
>> demonstrate that it is not.
>>
>> The guy may be a hard line conservative, but what does that say about
>> how screwed up the situation is with geocentrism and the Catholic
>> Church. What is their official position even today?
>
> You have been told time and time again that the Catholic Church does
> not include matters of science in its teachings; in regard to its
> "position" on scientific matters, it goes with whatever scientific
> consensus is at any point in time. Back in the 17th century,
> geocentrism was the scientific consensus and the Church went with
> that; over the following two centuries, scientific consensus moved to
> heliocentrism and the Church accepted that change in consensus. It
> beats me what your problem is with that.

That may be a given, but apparently biological evolution is still just
more than an hypothesis, and the earth has never been proven to move.

So there seem to be limits on how much science can matter. That wasn't
even the issue this time around. The issue was how clear the Bruno
event is in terms of this issue, and the reason it isn't clear on this
issue is because the guys responsible haven't been very clear on the issue.

Why doesn't wiki mention Burhard's claim that the moving earth was not a
heresy with the death penalty when Bruno was charged? You can find
other references on the web that make that same claim, but my guess is
that it is controversial. Why should it be controversial? Something
changed after Bruno. The Catholic church finally got around to banning
Copernicus' book, and the Burhard's claim is that the moving earth got
the death penalty around the same time. Galileo faced that death
penalty. Why is that controversial?

My guess is that the heresy held the death penalty when it was part of
the charges against Bruno, but there was just more discretion involved
in whether they wanted to toast the guy for it. Uncontroversial
documents that would weigh one way or the other seem to be missing. I
could not confirm Burkhard's claim using his reference because I don't
have access to it, but the only review of the book that I found was
negative, and claimed that the authors had just rehashed what has been
gone over for the last century. Sounds par for the course.

This is what Glenn put up and it basically has what your reference had.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

After all this time why isn't there anything better than this where they
can put up evidence for multiple claims? You'd think that some papal
commission would have written something up on it by now. They
apologized about Galileo 350 years later.

Ron Okimoto

>
>
>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>>
>

[RonO]

You have a claim. I told you what I had, and you run.

I just googled "Copernican heresy and Catholic Church" and this is the
first reference that came up.

http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism#:~:text=In%20February%2DMarch%201616%2C%20the,theory%20of%20the%20earth's%20motion.&text=Since%20antiquity%2C%20this%20idea%20had,the%20center%20of%20the%20universe.

The second reference that came up.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-and-the-Church-What-the-history-books-don-t-say

Now, counter them without running away. You would need some evidence
that the Catholic church never did what these guys claim.

>
>> Why isn't it clear from the papal apology?
>
> It seems clear to everybody else except you and you seem totally
> impervious to rational argument on the matter.

Isn't clear to the conservative Catholics. Nor the guys that put up
their interpretation of the 1992 apology years later.

>
>> It
>> may no longer be a heresy,
>
> You have been told time and time again that it was never a heresy.

The references linked to above would indicate that you are just plain
wrong. One of them even claims that it wasn't a big deal for the
Catholic Church until after Bruno.

>
>> but the moving earth isn't part of the
>> Catholic theology.
>
> Why should it be part of theology, what has it to do with faith or
> morals?

Why are there still geocentric Catholics and YEC Christian creationists?

The reasons do not seem to be what you think they should be, but what
does that matter?

>
>> Why was there backtracking on the Pope's Galileo
>> apology around 2014.
>
> What backtracking? You keep talking about this backtracking but never
> explain what it is.

What did the Pope apologize about, and what were his claims about the
motion of the earth in that letter. Why can some Catholics still claim
that the Pope was not claiming that the earth moves, and that, that
position is still up for debate?

>
>> You probably participated in that TO discussion,
>> but I pretty much ignored it back then.
>
> I haven't a clue what to discussion you're talking about, can you give
> me a pointer to it?

I didn't pay much attention to it either.

>
>> What is the current situation
>> so that this hard liner still has a beef,
>
> You'd really need to ask him what his beef is; I don't know whether it
> is significant or not but apparently he has taken the stuff down from
> his own website.

He put up his reasoning, and it seems to be backed up by a lot of church
history, and what do you have?

>
>> and there could be
>> backtracking on the papal apology?
>
> I've already asked you to explain what that backtracking is.

What do you think that it is in terms of the moving earth and
geocentrism? What did the apology really mean in terms of geocentrism
and the Catholic church? How do you know that it means that?

>
>>
>> It is sort of stupid that this can still be an issue
>
> That's the truest thing you have said so you really stop trying to
> make it an issue when it isn't.

You are making it as stupid as it currently is. Do your own Google
searches and try to find counter claims. Wouldn't it be nice to have
some simple and understandable document on the issue after centuries of
it being an issue?

Ron Okimoto

[Bill Rogers]

What exactly would you like the Catholic Church to do or say? It does not insist on geocentrism, and I'm pretty sure that most Catholics are not geocentrists. The Papal Observatory has made actual contributions to astronomy. The Church is certainly not a passionate advocate of scientific research, but that's not what it sees as its mission, in any case. I wouldn't expect the New York Philharmonic to be a passionate advocate of science, either.

In the name of their religious mission, and not specifically in an attempt to repress science, they've committed terrible atrocities. They've been slow to apologize about it, but they have. They're a large, powerful human institution, and like most such things they've done a bunch of good stuff and a bunch of awful stuff and they like to see themselves in the best possible light. I don't think there's anything very shocking there.

[Robert Carnegie]

Ron, do you want the Catholic Church to be against geocentrism?

Do you want Christians to do to geocentrists what they did to Bruno?

And how does the question bear on our business here of evolution?

[Burkhard]

OK, there is quite a bit on that page that I think is not well supported
by what we now know about how these events unfolded, but leaving this
aside for now and looking only at the quote, it does not argue, I'd say,
that heliocentrism wasn't heretical - and this was after all the issue.

This would only follow if only beliefs that contradict ex Cathedra
pronouncement are heretical. I don't think that's true, not even under
Canon Law now, where the rules have been narrowed down substantially,
and I doubt that it was the case in the 17th century (a bit difficult to
find out, as this was all non-codified and rather messy.

Can. 753 in particular states that"
"Although the bishops who are in communion with the head and members of
the college, whether individually or joined together in conferences of
bishops or in particular councils, do not possess infallibility in
teaching, they are authentic teachers and instructors of the faith for
the Christian faithful entrusted to their care; the Christian faithful
are bound to adhere with religious submission of mind to the authentic
magisterium of their bishops."

which expands 751 which defines heresy as "the obstinate denial or
obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to
be believed by divine and Catholic faith"

Now, it's been ages that I did canon law, so a bit out of my depth here,
but a bit of digging lead to any rejection of an article of faith, and
your own source gives a wide definition of that term
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01755d.htm

So I'd say it is possible to be heretical without violating an ex
cathedra judgement, or being declared heretical ex cathedra - it's just
that the opposite holds, every rejection of an ex cathedra ruling makes
you heretical.

As for heliocentrism, I don't think the 3 events can be separated teh
way the NA page does. because together, they follow a typical pattern of
rule making that you'll also find in modern secular contexts:

A specially convened and authorized body of experts gives an official
but advisory opinion on what they think the law says (today that would
be the Law commission, the Advocate General for Scotland, or maybe an
advisory opinion by the Advocates General of the ECJ. Here that's the
Qualifiers

These are then either accepted or rejected by the executive, and
acceptance can take the form of simply acting on it - here that's
putting the writings on the Index

Finally, that executive action is tested in court, but the judicative
power - that's the trial. These interpret, and in some cases reject, the
adoption of the executive of the expert opinion. That's here the trial
of Galileo

Taken together, they give a clear picture of what the law, at that time, is

>
> As to the second trial in 1633, this was concerned not so much with
> the doctrine as with the person of Galileo, and his manifest breach of
> contract in not abstaining from the active propaganda of Copernican
> doctrines.

That has been argued, but is not consistent with what we (now) know
about the way the charges were framed - a mere disobedience charge was
considered but rejected

The sentence, passed upon him in consequence, clearly
> implied a condemnation of Copernicanism, but it made no formal decree
> on the subject, and did not receive the pope's signature. Nor is this
> only an opinion of theologians; it is corroborated by writers whom
> none will accuse of any bias in favour of the papacy. Thus Professor
> Augustus De Morgan (Budget of Paradoxes) declares you
>
> All "It is clear that the absurdity was the act of the Italian
> Inquisition, for the private and personal pleasure of the pope - who
> knew that the course he took could not convict him as pope - and not
> of the body which calls itself the Church."
>
> And von Gebler ("Galileo Galilei"):
>
> "The Church never condemned it (the Copernican system) at all, for the
> Qualifiers of the Holy Office never mean the Church."
>
> It may be added that Riccioli and other contemporaries of Galileo were
> permitted, after 1616, to declare that no anti-Copernican definition
> had issued from the supreme pontiff.

The last two represent the scholarship of the late 19th century, I don't
think that can be argued any longer - see e.g. the analysis by
Finocchiaro in Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992 - the idea that the Pope
duped the Inquisition to reach a manifestly theologically unsound
verdict for personal pleasure" motives just does not fit what we now
know about the events - it is based on an popular myth that he was
offended as being portrayed as the idiot in the dialogues, and we know
that this just wasn't the case.

>
> </quote>
>
> Notwithstanding your comments about the subtleties and nuances of
> theology, I think that is a pretty clear statement from the Church
> itself.

I don't think New Advent can speak on behalf of the church in that way,
not any more, and indeed less so, then the Qualifiers whose right to do
so you repudiated above

Indeed, I am somewhat surprised considering the context of the
> time it was written, how direct criticism was of not just the Vatican
> officials but the Pope himself.

I'm not, tbh. It's the classical "bad apple" stratagem (and people
rarely cite this in full) - the "institution" was right, just
individuals erred (in their private capacity, not wearing their official
hat, which in this case is the triregnum. The Catholic church is not
insane - trying to present all past Popes in a good light is a non
starter, given the type of folks that lead the Church in the Renaissance

>
> I think the second thing is something you refer to later, the
> reduction of charge to being *suspect* of heresy; as I understand it,
> that means being heretical without knowing you are being heretical

No, that would be the distinction between formal and material heresy. A
person commits material heresy when acting in good faith, but
erroneously believing that what they do or believe is legit.

and
> I think that is de facto admission by those trying him that there
> wasn't an existing heresy that they could actuallycharge him with. I
> also get the impression that having found him guilty of that, they
> tried to cover their tracks by trying to create a new heresy but, as
> the article above points out, that didn't actually have the authority
> to do that.

I'd say they do, as I said above. That that would not be infallible is
not relevant. And again, the idea of lesser charges was actively
considered by the players at the time - form the mildest, "rashness", to
personal disobedience, to sententia haeresi proxima, ("opinion
approaching heresy" - but an active decision was taken against this
(again Finocchiaro for sources) They opted instead for "sententia de
haeresim sapiens"- an opinion "tained with heresy" which is indeed less
serious than a full heresy, but a heresy nonetheless

>
> The third thing that I think argues against heresy, is that Galileo
> was commissioned by the Pope to write "Dialogue Concerning the Two
> Chief World Systems"; the Pope instructed him to treat the arguments
> for and against heliocentrism in a *neutral* manner - it was Galileo's
> failure to do that that largely contributed to his treatment. I don't
> think the Pope would have instructed him to write about it in a
> *neutral* manner if there had been any question of heresy involved in
> the fundamental arguments.

Or, the Pope at that time thought it possible that a teaching-
conforming formulation could be found, and the Dialogues showed (to him)
that this was not possible. Which lead to the determination.

[Martin Harran]

Sorry, I still don't know what reference you are talking about, let
alone how it was as clear as mud. You need to give me a pointer to it
something a bit more than "the one [undefined] you put up the last
time".


[… snip stuff already answered multiple times in this thread.]

[Martin Harran]

Do I really need to point out that it was *you* who brought Methodist
vs Catholic into the discussion?

>You need
>to come up with better references in order to do that. So far all that
>we have is what has been put up. You aren't going to change that by
>making your empty statements and running away.
>
>There has obviously been an issue for centuries, and guys like you make
>it so that it can be an issue for centuries. All that is required are
>some plain and simple statements that are allowed to mean something in
>terms of the Catholic Church theology in the case of geocentrism. If
>the papal apology in 1992 did not do that,

It seems to do it for most people except you and a few oddballs
posting on the Internet.

> what type of document would
>do that?

You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
already done.

[RonO]

It only is partly what the Catholic church has not done. Harran will
repeat his non answers that do not resolve the situation, and then leave
only to return with the same non answers. If the situation is resolved
why can't he demonstrate that? I just put up two references that I was
able to find in a few seconds to dispute his version of reality.

They actually support what Burkhard claimed that his source indicated.
For whatever reason Harran wants to dispute those sources, so he should
have some way to do that.

This only came up because Nyikos misdirected the argument to something
that really didn't matter. Since it didn't matter, all that should have
to be done is to resolve that issue and move back to what the argument
actually was. Glenn tried to draw out the distraction, so there should
be some means of claiming one way or the other.

The fact is that there isn't any good way to do that because of the back
and forth that has been going on in the history of this junk.

I was willing to go with Burkhards claims because they made sense, and
other internet souces back it up, but not according to Harran.

>
> In the name of their religious mission, and not specifically in an attempt to repress science, they've committed terrible atrocities. They've been slow to apologize about it, but they have. They're a large, powerful human institution, and like most such things they've done a bunch of good stuff and a bunch of awful stuff and they like to see themselves in the best possible light. I don't think there's anything very shocking there.
>

The atrocities do not matter. The point that I was originally making
was that Christian theology has changed due to what we have learned
about nature. Harran even agrees with that, but he doesn't agree with
the evidence that it did change.

What was once a heresy is no longer a heresy with the death penalty.
There was a papal apology over the issue, but apparently it didn't mean
that the theology had changed. It just doesn't matter enough to kill
anyone over any longer.

It would be nice that if this issue ever comes up again that it would
have been clarified by then. Harran obviously isn't going to do it.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

But it wasn't what you claimed.

>
>> You need
>> to come up with better references in order to do that. So far all that
>> we have is what has been put up. You aren't going to change that by
>> making your empty statements and running away.
>>
>> There has obviously been an issue for centuries, and guys like you make
>> it so that it can be an issue for centuries. All that is required are
>> some plain and simple statements that are allowed to mean something in
>> terms of the Catholic Church theology in the case of geocentrism. If
>> the papal apology in 1992 did not do that,
>
> It seems to do it for most people except you and a few oddballs
> posting on the Internet.

Except that you seem to be the odd ball that can't deal with what is out
there.

>
>
>> what type of document would
>> do that?
>
> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
> already done.

You should be the one to know. You obviously do not have one.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

I hesitate to speak for Ron O, or for anybody else, for that matter.
Nor does he need my help.

WRT to your last question, IMO "our business here" is not limited to
evolution specifically, but instead to any PRATT which replaces
scientific knowledge and hard facts with willful stupidity. That many
of these PRATTs cloak themselves as religious doctrine and/or freedom
of expression isn't relevant. "Our business here" is as much about
geocentrism as it is about evolution denial, regardless of its source.
Apparently your mileage varies.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[RonO]

The Catholic church has a position, it is just that the obfuscation gets
in the way of figuring out what it is. The issue is simply that
Christian theology has changed. Nyikos misdirected the argument to
Bruno, but Bruno was just an example of what the Christian theology was,
but it isn't like that anymore.

All that has to be done in this case is to demonstrate that geocentrism
was once an important part of Catholic theology. You can find
references that claim that the Church fathers were geocentrists.
Burkhard claims to have a reference indicating that a moving earth
cosmology was not a heresy with the death penalty until after Bruno.
Bruno may have been charged with it, but it wasn't something that was
going to get him executed. I put up how I found similar references when
I couldn't verify Burkhard's reference. For whatever reason Harran
wants to deny the evidence a moving earth was made a heresy with the
death penalty after Bruno was executed. Galileo faced that death
penalty. All that matters is that it was once a heresy with the death
penalty, but it isn't like that anymore. Copernicus' book was obviously
banned, you can't drop the ban on a book if you never banned it in the
first place and the same goes for the moving earth heresy. You can't
drop the penalties for such a heresy if those penalties did not exist
for the heresy in the first place. The Catholic church did those things
in 1822 and 1831. The papal apology for the Galileo incident did not
occur until 1992. What apparently hasn't been done is to drop
geocentrism from being a part of Catholic theology.

Biological evolution is just "more" than an hypothesis, and, apparently,
so is a moving earth. The actions of the Catholic church in this regard
are all tainted (in terms of trying to interpret them) by trying to
avoid admitting that the church fathers were wrong. The level of
certainty that Saint Augustine set up for science to trump
interpretation of scripture has not been met at this time for either
biological evolution or a moving earth. Harran may berate the reference
that I put up as being from a conservative Catholic source, but he can't
demonstrate that the source is not correct on this point.

As expected Harran ran from the references that I put up. I found them
again just like I told him that he would find them. He tried to address
all the other posts except this one.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/m0ort1DTb0M/m/prC9_ASSBwAJ

The main reason that this issue needs to be resolved on TO is so that
IDiots like Nyikos and Glenn can't use it to dishonestly run from what
they can't deal with.

Ron Okimoto

[Ernest Major]

On 14/08/2020 16:12, Martin Harran wrote:
>> what type of document would
>> do that?
> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
> already done.
>
>

Humanae Generis reads as considerably more sympathetic to literalism
than I would have expected from general osmosis, or from your posts
here. (Burkhard writes that that is at least in part a misunderstanding
resulting from the use of Catholic theological jargon.)

One could imagine an encylical or approximate equivalent stating in
plain language that the Roman Catholic Church does not take doctrinal
stances on questions subject to empirical investigation, and that the
Bible is not to be used as an inherently persuasive source for positions
on history and science.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Bill Rogers]

The important parts of Catholic theology are the parts that do not change. Therefore you can only see what is really an important part of Catholic theology in retrospect. And in retrospect, geocentrism was not an important part of Catholic theology.

[Martin Harran]

It was *you* who was making claims about the Catholic Church, it was
up to you to prove the claim, not up to me to prove a negative.
Nevertheless, I have given evidence from the Catholic Church's own
documents to show that claim was false.

>I told you what I had,

All you produced was an anonymous website; it beats me how you, as a
scientist, can regard that as conclusive evidence.

> and you run.

No, I didn't run - I answered every point you brought up. You being
unable to deal with the arguments put forward is not me running.

>
>I just googled "Copernican heresy and Catholic Church" and this is the
>first reference that came up.
>
>http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism#:~:text=In%20February%2DMarch%201616%2C%20the,theory%20of%20the%20earth's%20motion.&text=Since%20antiquity%2C%20this%20idea%20had,the%20center%20of%20the%20universe.

That article says:

"On February 24, 1616, the consultants unanimously reported the
assessment that heliocentrism was philosophically (i.e.,
scientifically) false and theologically heretical or at least
erroneous.

The following day, the Inquisition, presided by Pope Paul V,
considered the case. Although it did not endorse the heresy
recommendation, it accepted the judgments of scientific falsity and
theological error, and decided to prohibit the theory."

In other words, consultants studied the matter and come up with a
conclusion that heliocentricism *might* be heresy but the Pope and the
Inquisition rejected that conclusion. Beats me how you think that
supports your claim that heliocentrism was a heresy unless you think
you know Catholic teaching better than the Pope and the Inquisition.

At the end of the article, it describes the various things the Church
is done to unwind its original mistakes with Galileo from the
unbanning of books in the 18th century through to the Pope's apology
the 20th century; how you think that supports your claim that the
Church is *still* geocentric.

>
>The second reference that came up.
>
>https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-and-the-Church-What-the-history-books-don-t-say

That article says:

"It is worth noting, as Stanford University does, that the Catholic
Church had no official stance on Copernican teachings. Pope Clement
VII, who died about a decade before Copernicus, was said to have been
receptive about the astronomer's theories."

How do you think that supports your claim that heliocentricism was
heresy.

>
>Now, counter them without running away. You would need some evidence
>that the Catholic church never did what these guys claim.

I have no problem with what those guys say on the basis that the first
article says that the Pope and the Inquisition rejected the idea that
heliocentricism was heretical and that the second article says that
while the Church had no official stance on it they were receptive to
the ideas. Both those articles undermine your claims rather than
supporting them.

>
>>
>>> Why isn't it clear from the papal apology?

You keep saying the papal apology is clear or ambiguous but you
haven't explained or suggested what you think it should have said.

>>
>> It seems clear to everybody else except you and you seem totally
>> impervious to rational argument on the matter.
>
>Isn't clear to the conservative Catholics.


> Nor the guys that put up
>their interpretation of the 1992 apology years later.

I'm not too bothered about people with really oddball views especially
unqualified Catholics writing anonymously who think they know better
than the Pope's theologians

>
>>
>>> It
>>> may no longer be a heresy,
>>
>> You have been told time and time again that it was never a heresy.
>
>The references linked to above would indicate that you are just plain
>wrong. One of them even claims that it wasn't a big deal for the
>Catholic Church until after Bruno.

If by "it" you mean heliocentricism, it wasn't a big deal for science
until Galileo came along.

>
>>
>>> but the moving earth isn't part of the
>>> Catholic theology.
>>
>> Why should it be part of theology, what has it to do with faith or
>> morals?
>
>Why are there still geocentric Catholics and YEC Christian creationists?

Because there are some stupid people around. Sadly, you aren't stupid
person but you see nothing wrong with using the same type of arguments
as they do. What you are trying to do here in regard to the Catholic
Church and heliocentrism isn't really much different from the ID'ers
trying to create the idea that there is real controversy about
evolution; they are both based on taking the opinions of unqualified
people and trying to make them seem significant.

>
>The reasons do not seem to be what you think they should be, but what
>does that matter?
>
>>
>>> Why was there backtracking on the Pope's Galileo
>>> apology around 2014.
>>
>> What backtracking? You keep talking about this backtracking but never
>> explain what it is.
>
>What did the Pope apologize about, and what were his claims about the
>motion of the earth in that letter. Why can some Catholics still claim
>that the Pope was not claiming that the earth moves, and that, that
>position is still up for debate?

I haven't a clue what letter or backtracking your talking about can
you please tell me what letter you are referring to. The only
reference to heliocentricism by the Pope that I'm aware of is what
John Paul II said in his 1992 statement to the Pontifical Academy:

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on
different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the
experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the
center of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a
planetary system."

Nothing ambiguous about that?

>>
>>> You probably participated in that TO discussion,
>>> but I pretty much ignored it back then.
>>
>> I haven't a clue what to discussion you're talking about, can you give
>> me a pointer to it?
>
>I didn't pay much attention to it either.

Actually, I found the discussion you seem to be talking about. It
starts here:

Message-ID: <p07db7$hbp$1...@dont-email.me>

It was actually *you*who introduced the wiki reverence you're now
bitching about in support of your original claim that Bruno was burned
for heresy. I initially took the article at face value then Burkhard
provided details of exactly what did happen; I then re-read the
article and realise that what it said about heresy was entirely
speculative. At that stage, you stopped referring to the article; it
beats me how you figure out that I'm the one at fault in regard to
that article.

>
>>
>>> What is the current situation
>>> so that this hard liner still has a beef,
>>
>> You'd really need to ask him what his beef is; I don't know whether it
>> is significant or not but apparently he has taken the stuff down from
>> his own website.
>
>He put up his reasoning, and it seems to be backed up by a lot of church
>history, and what do you have?
>
>>
>>> and there could be
>>> backtracking on the papal apology?
>>
>> I've already asked you to explain what that backtracking is.
>
>What do you think that it is in terms of the moving earth and
>geocentrism? What did the apology really mean in terms of geocentrism
>and the Catholic church? How do you know that it means that?

I'm still waiting for you to explain what apology and what
backtracking you're talking about.

>
>>
>>>
>>> It is sort of stupid that this can still be an issue
>>
>> That's the truest thing you have said so you really stop trying to
>> make it an issue when it isn't.
>
>You are making it as stupid as it currently is. Do your own Google
>searches and try to find counter claims.


>Wouldn't it be nice to have
>some simple and understandable document on the issue after centuries of
>it being an issue?

We have the Pope's 1992 statement referred to above; I repeat it:

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on
different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the
experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the
center of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a
planetary system."

That seems pretty simple and understandable to me.

[Martin Harran]

So why did you bring it up, what was the relevance?

>
>>
>>> You need
>>> to come up with better references in order to do that. So far all that
>>> we have is what has been put up. You aren't going to change that by
>>> making your empty statements and running away.
>>>
>>> There has obviously been an issue for centuries, and guys like you make
>>> it so that it can be an issue for centuries. All that is required are
>>> some plain and simple statements that are allowed to mean something in
>>> terms of the Catholic Church theology in the case of geocentrism. If
>>> the papal apology in 1992 did not do that,
>>
>> It seems to do it for most people except you and a few oddballs
>> posting on the Internet.
>
>Except that you seem to be the odd ball that can't deal with what is out
>there.
>
>>
>>
>>> what type of document would
>>> do that?
>>
>> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
>> already done.
>
>You should be the one to know. You obviously do not have one.

I have already referred to two separate documents published by the
Church - the 1912 article in the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Pope's
1992 statement to the Pontifical Academy. I am entirely happy with
them - it's *you* who isn't satisfied with them and is calling for
something more so it is *you* who needs to explain what that something
more is.

[Ernest Major]

On 15/08/2020 13:19, RonO wrote:
>
> Biological evolution is just "more" than an hypothesis, and, apparently,
> so is a moving earth.  The actions of the Catholic church in this regard
> are all tainted (in terms of trying to interpret them) by trying to
> avoid admitting that the church fathers were wrong.  The level of
> certainty that Saint Augustine set up for science to trump
> interpretation of scripture has not been met at this time for either
> biological evolution or a moving earth.  Harran may berate the reference
> that I put up as being from a conservative Catholic source, but he can't
> demonstrate that the source is not correct on this point.

John Salza may argue that the level of certainty has not been reached,
but he also denies that the level of certainty can ever by reached. If
you look elsewhere you'll find other Catholics arguing that he's being
silly - he's turning Augustine's dictum into one lacking all meaning.

You'll find people referring to fundie atheists - people who lack belief
in God, often agressively, but who insist that fundamentalist literalist
Christianity is the correct form of Christianity. Commonly they have the
excuse that they're reacting against their upbringing. You don't have
that excuse for taking the position the fundie Catholics are
spokespeople for Catholicism in general.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 14:04:26 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On 14/08/2020 16:12, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> what type of document would
>>> do that?
>> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
>> already done.
>>
>>
>Humanae Generis reads as considerably more sympathetic to literalism
>than I would have expected from general osmosis, or from your posts
>here. (Burkhard writes that that is at least in part a misunderstanding
>resulting from the use of Catholic theological jargon.)

Yes, when the Catholic Church talks about the literal truth, they are
using it in a different sense from everyday usage and how Creationists
in particular use it. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"116: The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of
Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound
interpretation".

It's a bit like the way scientists use the word "theory" in a
different sense from everyday usage and anti-evolutionists then claim
it is "just a theory".

>
>One could imagine an encylical or approximate equivalent stating in
>plain language that the Roman Catholic Church does not take doctrinal
>stances on questions subject to empirical investigation, and that the
>Bible is not to be used as an inherently persuasive source for positions
>on history and science.

The Church does not generally write encyclicals and similar documents
in particularly plain language because plain language does not always
convey the subtleties and nuances that may be involved. Again, it's a
bit like science - scientific papers are generally difficult for
people to follow unless they understand the underlying science. In the
same way, in order to understand church documents, you have to have
some understanding of the underlying theology.

The nearest thing to plain language is the Catechism of the Catholic
Church but it really only addresses things that matter to people's
faith and morals; there is no real reason to include anything about
specific science, it just states the overall position by quoting from
two other documents:

=========================================
159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never
be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God
who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of
reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever
contradict truth."[37] "Consequently, methodical research in all
branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly
scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict
with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of
faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering
investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the
hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all
things, who made them what they are."[38]

37 Dei Filius 4:DS 3017.
38 GS 36 § 1
=======================================

[Martin Harran]

Actually it is you who is the one not answering stuff.

You been asked to produce something from the Catholic Church that
supports your claims; you haven't.

You have been asked to explain what letter of 2014 that you are
referring to; you haven't.

You have been asked to explain what sort of statement or document from
the Catholic Church would satisfy you; you haven't.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 07:19:17 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:


[...]

>As expected Harran ran from the references that I put up. I found them
>again just like I told him that he would find them. He tried to address
>all the other posts except this one.
>
>https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/m0ort1DTb0M/m/prC9_ASSBwAJ
>

>The main reason that this issue needs to be resolved on TO is so that
>IDiots like Nyikos and Glenn can't use it to dishonestly run from what
>they can't deal with.

Now you are behaving just like Nyikos and claiming someone has run
away just because they haven't replied to your post within 24 hours.
Maybe you find it hard to understand that some of us have a life
outside TO.

And, of course, the really funny thing is that when I did get time to
read your post and the articles referred to, I found that they
actually undermine your claims rather than support them as detailed in
a direct reply to your post.

>
>Ron Okimoto

[Burkhard]

Ernest Major wrote:
> On 14/08/2020 16:12, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> what type of document would
>>> do that?
>> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
>> already done.
>>
>>
> Humanae Generis reads as considerably more sympathetic to literalism
> than I would have expected from general osmosis, or from your posts
> here. (Burkhard writes that that is at least in part a misunderstanding
> resulting from the use of Catholic theological jargon.)

Humani Generis - what number is "generis"? write this a hundred times on
the wall of Jerusalem :o) It is I think more conservative than some had
hoped, also in terms of hermeneutical methodology, just not as bad as it
first reads once the jargon is taken into account.

[Mark Isaak]

I don't trust things that don't change. For anything complex, people
never get it entirely right the first time. Adjustment is necessary,
and usually more adjustment after that, to correct the problems and
weaknesses. And if the system is expected to operate in the real world,
more adjustment is necessary because the world is changing, too.

Religions often have it worse than other organizations because of a
sense that it comes straight from God and therefore must be infallible.
It does not seem to matter that God is working through fallible people,
or that all major religions show major historical changes. Catholicism
in particular is, at its core, nothing but a change in theology from
Judaism.

Of course, religions can go too far in the opposite direction, too,
trying to attract congregants by appealing to whatever fad is popular at
the moment. I think some Protestant churches and New Age groups have
been guilty of this. Still, it is vital for organizations to attend to
(which includes noticing in the first place) areas that are not working
well, and not just using the excuse that that's how it has always been.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Omnia disce. Videbis postea nihil esse superfluum."
- Hugh of St. Victor

[Bill Rogers]

On Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 11:15:07 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Ernest Major wrote:
> > On 14/08/2020 16:12, Martin Harran wrote:
> >>> what type of document would
> >>> do that?
> >> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
> >> already done.
> >>
> >>
> > Humanae Generis reads as considerably more sympathetic to literalism
> > than I would have expected from general osmosis, or from your posts
> > here. (Burkhard writes that that is at least in part a misunderstanding
> > resulting from the use of Catholic theological jargon.)
>
> Humani Generis - what number is "generis"?

Generis is singular genitive of the neuter noun genus. The problem with Humanae Generis is with the gender of the adjective "humanae," not with the number.

[Burkhard]

Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 11:15:07 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Ernest Major wrote:
>>> On 14/08/2020 16:12, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> what type of document would
>>>>> do that?
>>>> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
>>>> already done.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Humanae Generis reads as considerably more sympathetic to literalism
>>> than I would have expected from general osmosis, or from your posts
>>> here. (Burkhard writes that that is at least in part a misunderstanding
>>> resulting from the use of Catholic theological jargon.)
>>
>> Humani Generis - what number is "generis"?
>
> Generis is singular genitive of the neuter noun genus. The problem with Humanae Generis is with the gender of the adjective "humanae," not with the number.
>

Got me there, but that would have meant to deviate from the canoncial script

[RonO]

On 8/15/2020 9:00 AM, Ernest Major wrote:
> On 15/08/2020 13:19, RonO wrote:
>>
>> Biological evolution is just "more" than an hypothesis, and,
>> apparently, so is a moving earth.  The actions of the Catholic church
>> in this regard are all tainted (in terms of trying to interpret them)
>> by trying to avoid admitting that the church fathers were wrong.  The
>> level of certainty that Saint Augustine set up for science to trump
>> interpretation of scripture has not been met at this time for either
>> biological evolution or a moving earth.  Harran may berate the
>> reference that I put up as being from a conservative Catholic source,
>> but he can't demonstrate that the source is not correct on this point.
>
> John Salza may argue that the level of certainty has not been reached,
> but he also denies that the level of certainty can ever by reached. If
> you look elsewhere you'll find other Catholics arguing that he's being
> silly - he's turning Augustine's dictum into one lacking all meaning.

All you have to do is compare it to the fact that Biological evolution
is still just "more than an hypothesis" to understand that the
conservative Catholics have some type of point. It may be that
Augustine's dictum is lacking all meaning at this time.

What has it been applied to for the last 100 years?

If it has been applied why is the wording as if the process is on going?

It would be nice to have some direct statements about the issue.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Now, you are still running from what the issue is.

Ron Okimoto
>
>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>

[jillery]

Since you mention it, and totally separate from other issues raised in
this topic, I don't know of anybody who "insist that fundamentalist
literalist Christianity is the correct form of Christianity". By
"correct" I assume you don't mean factually correct, but instead being
the most representative form of Christianity. And by "fundie
atheists" I assume you mean people like Aron Ra aka L. Aron Nelson, a
T.O. alumnus and a prolific author of atheist literature.

I agree a foundation of "fundie atheist" argumentation is their
personal upbringing. I don't describe that as an excuse, but instead
as a basis for their authority on the subject. And to the best of my
knowledge, none of them claim "fundamentalist literalist Christianity"
is a majority. Instead, they recognize it is a significant and vocal
part of the current body of Christ, and the part that is most
responsible for denying multiple scientific theories.

[RonO]

It was just an example of how other Christian sects handle the issue.
You tried to misdirect the argument to something that wasn't even being
discussed. Just look what you tried to do.

>
>>
>>>
>>>> You need
>>>> to come up with better references in order to do that. So far all that
>>>> we have is what has been put up. You aren't going to change that by
>>>> making your empty statements and running away.
>>>>
>>>> There has obviously been an issue for centuries, and guys like you make
>>>> it so that it can be an issue for centuries. All that is required are
>>>> some plain and simple statements that are allowed to mean something in
>>>> terms of the Catholic Church theology in the case of geocentrism. If
>>>> the papal apology in 1992 did not do that,
>>>
>>> It seems to do it for most people except you and a few oddballs
>>> posting on the Internet.
>>
>> Except that you seem to be the odd ball that can't deal with what is out
>> there.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> what type of document would
>>>> do that?
>>>
>>> You tell me, you're the one who isn't happy with what they have
>>> already done.
>>
>> You should be the one to know. You obviously do not have one.
>
> I have already referred to two separate documents published by the
> Church - the 1912 article in the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Pope's
> 1992 statement to the Pontifical Academy. I am entirely happy with
> them - it's *you* who isn't satisfied with them and is calling for
> something more so it is *you* who needs to explain what that something
> more is.

All you have to do is demonstrate that those things mean what you claim.

Let's say that the Catholic Church really has dropped geocentrism from
it's theology. That would mean that it was once part of their theology,
right?

The point that you were opposed to was that those references did not
mean that a moving earth was a Catholic heresy.

You can't have things both ways. All that we need to establish in this
case is that theology can change, and you want to deny the evidence that
it has changed. You seem to want to believe that geocentrism was never
an important aspect of Catholic theology, and you have to deny the
evidence that it once was. What were the charges against Galileo? Why
was he facing the death penalty?

What is wrong with the references that claim that the ban on Copernicus'
book was lifted in the 19th century, and that a moving earth was down
graded from some type of capitol heresy, also in the 19th century. You
are claiming 20th century references, and I would gladly agree with you
if you could demonstrate that those documents mean what you claim.
Those references only pertain to the past in that those notions are no
longer taken as they once were.

It looks pretty straight forward, but you claim that it isn't. The
church fathers were geocentists. It was among the charges against
Bruno, but, apparently the heresy wasn't one punishable as a capitol
offense. That changed after Bruno, and by the time they got around to
Galileo it was a heresy with the death penalty, and the Cathlolic church
had banned Copernicus' book before Galileo had to deal with the inquisition.

Over a hundred years later the ban on Copernicus's book was lifted, and
the heresy was reduced in significance.

350 years later there was a papal apology about the Galileo affair.

The only thing that stands in the way of using this as an example of how
theology can change, are the guys like you that are still claiming that
the theology has not changed. The conservative Catholics are still
geocentrists, and you want to deny that the moving earth was ever a
heresy. The papal apology doesn't clarify things for either side of
that denial. If you agree that the theology has changed, your denial of
the evidence provided makes no sense.

Ron Okimoto

[Ernest Major]

On 15/08/2020 18:34, jillery wrote:
> Since you mention it, and totally separate from other issues raised in
> this topic, I don't know of anybody who "insist that fundamentalist
> literalist Christianity is the correct form of Christianity". By
> "correct" I assume you don't mean factually correct, but instead being
> the most representative form of Christianity. And by "fundie
> atheists" I assume you mean people like Aron Ra aka L. Aron Nelson, a
> T.O. alumnus and a prolific author of atheist literature.
>
> I agree a foundation of "fundie atheist" argumentation is their
> personal upbringing. I don't describe that as an excuse, but instead
> as a basis for their authority on the subject. And to the best of my
> knowledge, none of them claim "fundamentalist literalist Christianity"
> is a majority. Instead, they recognize it is a significant and vocal
> part of the current body of Christ, and the part that is most
> responsible for denying multiple scientific theories.

I don't recall encountering one in the wild myself - hence my words
"You'll find people referring to fundie atheists". (Why would you put
Aron Ra in that category?)

What I've seen is non-fundamentalist Christians describing interactions
with atheists who insist that they are Christianing wrong.

--
alias Ernest Major

[RonO]

My references seemed to do that, you just had denial.

>
>> I told you what I had,
>
> All you produced was an anonymous website; it beats me how you, as a
> scientist, can regard that as conclusive evidence.

Not true, I also reported what I had also found in my searches. I only
put up that reference because it had nearly everything in it. As you
found out below it was easy enough for you to check out my claims, but
you did not do that.

>
>> and you run.
>
> No, I didn't run - I answered every point you brought up. You being
> unable to deal with the arguments put forward is not me running.

You did run.

>
>>
>> I just googled "Copernican heresy and Catholic Church" and this is the
>> first reference that came up.
>>
>> http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism#:~:text=In%20February%2DMarch%201616%2C%20the,theory%20of%20the%20earth's%20motion.&text=Since%20antiquity%2C%20this%20idea%20had,the%20center%20of%20the%20universe.
>
> That article says:
>
> "On February 24, 1616, the consultants unanimously reported the
> assessment that heliocentrism was philosophically (i.e.,
> scientifically) false and theologically heretical or at least
> erroneous.
>
> The following day, the Inquisition, presided by Pope Paul V,
> considered the case. Although it did not endorse the heresy
> recommendation, it accepted the judgments of scientific falsity and
> theological error, and decided to prohibit the theory."
>
> In other words, consultants studied the matter and come up with a
> conclusion that heliocentricism *might* be heresy but the Pope and the
> Inquisition rejected that conclusion. Beats me how you think that
> supports your claim that heliocentrism was a heresy unless you think
> you know Catholic teaching better than the Pope and the Inquisition.
>
> At the end of the article, it describes the various things the Church
> is done to unwind its original mistakes with Galileo from the
> unbanning of books in the 18th century through to the Pope's apology
> the 20th century; how you think that supports your claim that the
> Church is *still* geocentric.

All the reference has to do is demonstrate that a moving earth was a
heresy by Galileo's time.

>
>>
>> The second reference that came up.
>>
>> https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-and-the-Church-What-the-history-books-don-t-say
>
> That article says:
>
> "It is worth noting, as Stanford University does, that the Catholic
> Church had no official stance on Copernican teachings. Pope Clement
> VII, who died about a decade before Copernicus, was said to have been
> receptive about the astronomer's theories."
>
> How do you think that supports your claim that heliocentricism was
> heresy.

Of course you ignore the part of the reference that is all the reference
needed to do was to support the claim that the moving earth was not a
capitol heresy until after Bruno.

How can you do this? Why the denial? What evidence do you have that a
moving earth cosmology did not become a major heresy by the time Galileo
had to deal with the inquisition?

QUOTE:
However, the article also notes that Copernicus gained ridicule from
poets and Protestants, who condemned it as heresy. While the Catholic
Church initially accepted heliocentricity, Catholics eventually joined
the wave of Protestant opposition and banned the book in 1616. The
Protestant churches accepted Copernicus’ findings after more evidence
emerged to support it. The Catholic Church, however, remained ground in
its anti-Copernican beliefs until the 19th century. The ban on
Copernicus's views was lifted in 1822, and the ban on his book until 1835.
END QUOTE:

That is what I was using this reference for, and you want to deny it.

This is consistent with the anonymous' reference history of events, and
is the reason why the ban on Copernicus' book was lifted in the 19th
century, and the heresy was down graded. The anonymous source claims
that it was only down graded as a capitol heresy and never dropped from
the Catholic theology.

This indicates that it was at one time an important aspect of Catholic
theology, but things changed. Pretty slowly, but they did change.

>
>>
>> Now, counter them without running away. You would need some evidence
>> that the Catholic church never did what these guys claim.
>
> I have no problem with what those guys say on the basis that the first
> article says that the Pope and the Inquisition rejected the idea that
> heliocentricism was heretical and that the second article says that
> while the Church had no official stance on it they were receptive to
> the ideas. Both those articles undermine your claims rather than
> supporting them.

But you deny that things changed and that it did become a capitol heresy
by the time of Galileo. The article indicates that the Church found
itself negligent on the issue and took action. Why do you deny that?

You could support that denial in some logical manner when you accept the
other parts of the article.

It can be checked out since you don't seem to be able to deny that the
Catholic Church did drop the ban on Copernicus' book as the anonymous
references stated and that the heresy was downgraded as the anonymous
reference claimed. It cited the church conclaves and documents that did
that.

>
>>
>>>
>>>> Why isn't it clear from the papal apology?
>
> You keep saying the papal apology is clear or ambiguous but you
> haven't explained or suggested what you think it should have said.
>
>>>
>>> It seems clear to everybody else except you and you seem totally
>>> impervious to rational argument on the matter.
>>
>> Isn't clear to the conservative Catholics.
>
>
>> Nor the guys that put up
>> their interpretation of the 1992 apology years later.
>
> I'm not too bothered about people with really oddball views especially
> unqualified Catholics writing anonymously who think they know better
> than the Pope's theologians

You just have to have some basis to counter their claims. What type of
clarification has happened on the papal apology? It doesn't seem to be
in your favor. Why could people argue that the Catholic church was was
backtracking on the apology?

>
>>
>>>
>>>> It
>>>> may no longer be a heresy,
>>>
>>> You have been told time and time again that it was never a heresy.
>>
>> The references linked to above would indicate that you are just plain
>> wrong. One of them even claims that it wasn't a big deal for the
>> Catholic Church until after Bruno.
>
> If by "it" you mean heliocentricism, it wasn't a big deal for science
> until Galileo came along.

So what? We are talking about whether it was a Catholic heresy, and it
obviously was at one time. That issue has to be settled, and then your
claims of the papal apology etc don't mean much more than what has
already been put up about dropping the issue as a major heresy and
lifting the ban on Copernicus' book in the 19th century.

>
>>
>>>
>>>> but the moving earth isn't part of the
>>>> Catholic theology.
>>>
>>> Why should it be part of theology, what has it to do with faith or
>>> morals?
>>
>> Why are there still geocentric Catholics and YEC Christian creationists?
>
> Because there are some stupid people around. Sadly, you aren't stupid
> person but you see nothing wrong with using the same type of arguments
> as they do. What you are trying to do here in regard to the Catholic
> Church and heliocentrism isn't really much different from the ID'ers
> trying to create the idea that there is real controversy about
> evolution; they are both based on taking the opinions of unqualified
> people and trying to make them seem significant.

Was the moving earth cosmology a Catholic heresy by the time Galileo had
to deal with the inquisition?

The only thing that the Conservative Catholics are used for is to point
out that they haven't given up on the theology, a theology that you want
to deny that the Catholic church ever had.

>
>>
>> The reasons do not seem to be what you think they should be, but what
>> does that matter?
>>
>>>
>>>> Why was there backtracking on the Pope's Galileo
>>>> apology around 2014.
>>>
>>> What backtracking? You keep talking about this backtracking but never
>>> explain what it is.
>>
>> What did the Pope apologize about, and what were his claims about the
>> motion of the earth in that letter. Why can some Catholics still claim
>> that the Pope was not claiming that the earth moves, and that, that
>> position is still up for debate?
>
> I haven't a clue what letter or backtracking your talking about can
> you please tell me what letter you are referring to. The only
> reference to heliocentricism by the Pope that I'm aware of is what
> John Paul II said in his 1992 statement to the Pontifical Academy:

The anonymous reference doesn't think that it was clear what the 1992
statement meant in terms of changing theology.

Apparently there were other interpretations that came out.

>
> "Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on
> different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the
> experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the
> center of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a
> planetary system."
>
> Nothing ambiguous about that?

What the document, apparently, lacks is a clear statement that the
interpretation of scripture was in error. I do not know what such a
statement would look like.

Biological evolution is still just "more than an hypothesis". So
something is expected in terms of a definitive answer.

>
>
>>>
>>>> You probably participated in that TO discussion,
>>>> but I pretty much ignored it back then.
>>>
>>> I haven't a clue what to discussion you're talking about, can you give
>>> me a pointer to it?
>>
>> I didn't pay much attention to it either.
>
> Actually, I found the discussion you seem to be talking about. It
> starts here:
>
> Message-ID: <p07db7$hbp$1...@dont-email.me>
>
> It was actually *you*who introduced the wiki reverence you're now
> bitching about in support of your original claim that Bruno was burned
> for heresy. I initially took the article at face value then Burkhard
> provided details of exactly what did happen; I then re-read the
> article and realise that what it said about heresy was entirely
> speculative. At that stage, you stopped referring to the article; it
> beats me how you figure out that I'm the one at fault in regard to
> that article.

This is not anything from 2014, and I can't use you message ID to
retrieve anything. The issue of backtracking on the apology came up
years ago.

>
>>
>>>
>>>> What is the current situation
>>>> so that this hard liner still has a beef,
>>>
>>> You'd really need to ask him what his beef is; I don't know whether it
>>> is significant or not but apparently he has taken the stuff down from
>>> his own website.
>>
>> He put up his reasoning, and it seems to be backed up by a lot of church
>> history, and what do you have?
>>
>>>
>>>> and there could be
>>>> backtracking on the papal apology?
>>>
>>> I've already asked you to explain what that backtracking is.
>>
>> What do you think that it is in terms of the moving earth and
>> geocentrism? What did the apology really mean in terms of geocentrism
>> and the Catholic church? How do you know that it means that?
> I'm still waiting for you to explain what apology and what
> backtracking you're talking about.

The 1992 document. What other papal apology on the issue has there ever
been?

>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> It is sort of stupid that this can still be an issue
>>>
>>> That's the truest thing you have said so you really stop trying to
>>> make it an issue when it isn't.
>>
>> You are making it as stupid as it currently is. Do your own Google
>> searches and try to find counter claims.
>
>
>> Wouldn't it be nice to have
>> some simple and understandable document on the issue after centuries of
>> it being an issue?
>
> We have the Pope's 1992 statement referred to above; I repeat it:
>
> "Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on
> different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the
> experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the
> center of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a
> planetary system."

That isn't the entire document, and it says nothing about scriptural
theology. Why do you think that the conservative Catholics can still
claim to be geocentrists and cite the papal apology?

>
> That seems pretty simple and understandable to me.

But that statement needs to be taken in context, and as far as I am
concerned it looks like the Catholic theology did change, and there was
an apology for the actions of the church on the matter. So why is this
not evidence for a theological change?

You and the conservative Catholics are in denial of what the apology
means, but from different directions. You want to claim that it never
mattered, and they want to claim that nothing has changed.

Look how you had to quote mine the references above? What did they
actually say about the Copernican heresy? It was a heresy, and it did
carry the death penalty by the time Galileo faced the inquisition.
Those were only the first two references that came up in the search.

Your quotes totally missed how the references supported the claims of
the anonymoous reference and what I had claimed about what I had found
in previous searches.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Give it up. The references that you finally dealt with by not dealing
with them demonstrate what I claim. You still want to deny that, but
what is the point. It was a Catholic heresy. It carried the death
penalty by Galileo. You shouldn't lie about not getting the references
because they are still in part of the post above.

>
> You have been asked to explain what letter of 2014 that you are
> referring to; you haven't.

It was backtracking on the 1992 papal apology. It was discussed on TO,
but as I said I didn't pay much attention to it.

>
> You have been asked to explain what sort of statement or document from
> the Catholic Church would satisfy you; you haven't.

I would accept the papal apology, but there seems to be some controversy
about that. You on the other hand do not accept the evidence that it
was once a heresy with the death penalty, and that things changed.
Lifting the ban on Copernicus' book and down grading the heresy in the
19th century doesn't seem to be enough evidence for you that it had been
a capital heresy, so you and the conservative Catholics need to put up a
definitive document.

After the papal apology I just assumed that the issue had been put to
rest, but even you seem to have some odd notion about what the apology
was about.

Either theology changed or it did not. The conservative Catholics claim
that the papal apology did not mean that the theology had changed (the
Catholic church is still geocentric), and you seem to have a similar
view about such a theology change because you seem to believe that the
theology never had to change. So how does the apology differentiate
between your two options. Your denial or the conservative Catholic denial.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 19:04:02 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>On 15/08/2020 18:34, jillery wrote:

>>>You'll find people referring to fundie atheists - people who lack belief
>>>in God, often agressively, but who insist that fundamentalist literalist
>>>Christianity is the correct form of Christianity. Commonly they have the
>>>excuse that they're reacting against their upbringing. You don't have
>>>that excuse for taking the position the fundie Catholics are
>>>spokespeople for Catholicism in general.
>>

Your comment I quoted appears to describe "fundie atheists" as "people
who lack belief in God, often aggressively, but who insist that

fundamentalist literalist Christianity is the correct form of

Christianity." That describes Aron Ra, as he aggressively expresses
his lack of belief in God. However, my understanding is he does not
insist that fundamentalist literalist Christianity is its correct
form.

Did your description not apply to "fundie atheists", but instead to
the people who refer to them?

[Ernest Major]

You misunderstand me - you truncated the definition prematurely - the
usage I was reporting included the insistence on fundamentalist
literalist Christianity as the correct form of Christianity.

>
> Did your description not apply to "fundie atheists", but instead to
> the people who refer to them?
>


--

alias Ernest Major

[jillery]

On Sun, 16 Aug 2020 20:47:38 +0100, Ernest Major

I twice included the part you say I truncated prematurely. I even
restored your text you deleted where you wrote that part, so there was
no confusion about what you actually wrote.

In that text, you refer above to two different groups: 1) people who
lack belief in God, and 2) people who refer to fundie atheists. It
isn't clear from what you wrote which of these two groups you are
saying "insist that fundamentalist literalist Christianity is the
correct form of Christianity". It's that confusion which inspired me
to suppose Aron Ra is an example of who you mean by fundie atheist.

I agree I misunderstand what you meant. I am hoping you will help to
relieve my misunderstanding.

>> Did your description not apply to "fundie atheists", but instead to
>> the people who refer to them?
>>

--

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:39:08 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 8/15/2020 8:51 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

[ mercy snip ]

>The anonymous reference doesn't think that it was clear what the 1992
>statement meant in terms of changing theology.
>
>Apparently there were other interpretations that came out.
>
>>
>> "Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on
>> different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the
>> experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the
>> center of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a
>> planetary system."
>>
>> Nothing ambiguous about that?
>
>What the document, apparently, lacks is a clear statement that the
>interpretation of scripture was in error.

From the same 1992 statement by the Pope:

"Thus the new science, with its methods and the freedom of research
which they implied, obliged theologians to examine their own criteria
of scriptural interpretation. Most of them did not know how to do so.

Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more
perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him."

So, you claimed that the statement said nothing about movement of the
earth but it explicitly referred to the planetary system centred
around the sun.

You claimed that it said nothing about the theologians being wrong but
it explicitly did.

Clearly, you haven't even bothered to read the document that you are
so vehemently criticising.


[...]

[Martin Harran]

Please give an example of any issue that I have "run from" - as far as
I am aware, I have addressed every single issue you have raised.
Perhaps you are so full of your own importance that you consider
disgreeing with you as *running away*.

>
>Ron Okimoto
>>
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>

[RonO]

This is an easy one because you just did it again in the post that you
responded to minutes before this one.

For whatever reason you have you can't accept Burhards claims that the
moving earth cosmology became a capital heresy after Bruno. You
disregarded the conservative Catholic reference even though it just had
the references and conclaves that did the deeds like made it a capital
heresy and banned Copernicus' book. You ran from the issue when I put
up some of the other web references that I told you that you could find
with a simple search. You just ran from the issue again in your last post.

This is what you were responding to and you did not address the
references that you can't deal with in terms of what those references
mean in terms of the moving earth cosmological heresy.

REPOST:

>
>> I told you what I had,
>

> All you produced was an anonymous website; it beats me how you, as a
> scientist, can regard that as conclusive evidence.

Not true, I also reported what I had also found in my searches. I only
put up that reference because it had nearly everything in it. As you
found out below it was easy enough for you to check out my claims, but
you did not do that.

>
>> and you run.
>
> No, I didn't run - I answered every point you brought up. You being
> unable to deal with the arguments put forward is not me running.

You did run.

>
>>
>> I just googled "Copernican heresy and Catholic Church" and this is the
>> first reference that came up.
>>
>>
http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism#:~:text=In%20February%2DMarch%201616%2C%20the,theory%20of%20the%20earth's%20motion.&text=Since%20antiquity%2C%20this%20idea%20had,the%20center%20of%20the%20universe.
>

> That article says:
>
> "On February 24, 1616, the consultants unanimously reported the
> assessment that heliocentrism was philosophically (i.e.,
> scientifically) false and theologically heretical or at least
> erroneous.
>
> The following day, the Inquisition, presided by Pope Paul V,
> considered the case. Although it did not endorse the heresy
> recommendation, it accepted the judgments of scientific falsity and
> theological error, and decided to prohibit the theory."
>
> In other words, consultants studied the matter and come up with a
> conclusion that heliocentricism *might* be heresy but the Pope and the
> Inquisition rejected that conclusion. Beats me how you think that
> supports your claim that heliocentrism was a heresy unless you think
> you know Catholic teaching better than the Pope and the Inquisition.
>
> At the end of the article, it describes the various things the Church
> is done to unwind its original mistakes with Galileo from the
> unbanning of books in the 18th century through to the Pope's apology
> the 20th century; how you think that supports your claim that the
> Church is *still* geocentric.

All the reference has to do is demonstrate that a moving earth was a
heresy by Galileo's time.

>
>>

>> The second reference that came up.
>>
>>
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-and-the-Church-What-the-history-books-don-t-say
>

END partial repost that you did not deal with in your response to this post:

Why can't you deal with the simple fact that a moving earth cosmology
was eventually made into a capital heresy, and that Galileo faced the
death penalty. Copernicus' book was banned before Galileo had to face
the inquisition, and as the conservative reference cited these things
were reversed in the 19th century.

This was my post:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/m0ort1DTb0M/m/F3nghsr0BwAJ

This is your response to my post:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/m0ort1DTb0M/m/uZPAiRGRAwAJ

Your mercy SNIP was just running and praying for mercy.

Ron Okimoto

>
>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ron Okimoto
>>>
>

[Martin Harran]

You mean the one where I showed that you claerly hadn't read the
Pope's staement bcause the two things you siad weren't in it were in
fact explicitly stated in it? Beats me how that is "running away".

.
>
>For whatever reason you have you can't accept Burhards claims that the
>moving earth cosmology became a capital heresy after Bruno.

Burkhard claimed no such thing. I told you before that he hadn't
claimed that and he himself said

<quote>
Well, what I said can in all fairness be read like this. As the point
was about Bruno, I didn't feel the need to be overly technical when
describing what happened afterwards.

For the Bruno trial the case is clear, whether or not one argues that
heliocenrism became a formal heresy later often boils down to an issue
of semantics and extremely technical canon law distinctions.

What is clear of course is that Galileo was convicted of "something".

</quote>

Beats me how you can see that as a claim that "moving earth cosmology

became a capital heresy after Bruno".

Burkhard went on to lay out the different arguments about whether or
not heliocentrism was ever a hersesy but he took no sides on it.

[Burkhard]

Well, I did - my overall answer is yes, it was a heresy (though not one
for which the death penalty was ever issues, as far as I know) But I
agree that the sources are inconsistent enough to permit other
interpretations.

[Martin Harran]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:56:40 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 8/15/2020 9:32 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

[匽

>>> It only is partly what the Catholic church has not done. Harran will
>>> repeat his non answers that do not resolve the situation, and then leave
>>> only to return with the same non answers.
>>
>> Actually it is you who is the one not answering stuff.
>>
>> You been asked to produce something from the Catholic Church that
>> supports your claims; you haven't.
>
>Give it up. The references that you finally dealt with by not dealing
>with them demonstrate what I claim. You still want to deny that, but
>what is the point. It was a Catholic heresy. It carried the death
>penalty by Galileo. You shouldn't lie about not getting the references
>because they are still in part of the post above.
>
>>
>> You have been asked to explain what letter of 2014 that you are
>> referring to; you haven't.
>
>It was backtracking on the 1992 papal apology. It was discussed on TO,
>but as I said I didn't pay much attention to it.

Let's get this right - your claims about backtracking are based on
some vague discussion on TO that you didn't even pay much attention
to!

I see elsewhere that you are muttering about 'just "more than an
hypothesis"'. That was nothing to do with Galileo, it was a completely
different statement about evolution. That exemplifies your confused,
rambling arguments in this thread.

>
>>
>> You have been asked to explain what sort of statement or document from
>> the Catholic Church would satisfy you; you haven't.
>
>I would accept the papal apology, but there seems to be some controversy
>about that.

What controversy? You have made two claims about it, that it didn't
refer to heliocentrism and it didn't say the theologians were wrong. I
have given you quotes from it where it explicitly addresses both those
issues so what backtracking was there?

>You on the other hand do not accept the evidence that it
>was once a heresy with the death penalty, and that things changed.

You have produced no *evidence*. Your original claim was based on an
anonymous website with a screwball posting bullshit. You tried to back
it up with two other sites but I showed where those sites actually
contradicted what you are claiming.

.
>Lifting the ban on Copernicus' book and down grading the heresy in the
>19th century doesn't seem to be enough evidence for you that it had been
>a capital heresy, so you and the conservative Catholics need to put up a
>definitive document.
>
>After the papal apology I just assumed that the issue had been put to
>rest, but even you seem to have some odd notion about what the apology
>was about.

It is clear in this discussion that you are the one who has odd
notions. Of course, there is always the possibility that you and
screwballs like John Salza are right and the rest of the world is
wrong. <rollseyes />

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 11:00:13 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Sounds like a definite "maybe" :)

(P.S. I don't know where he got the death penalty from; nearest thing
I can find is a suggestion that if Galileo broke the oath he swore to
his inquistors, he could have faced capital punishment for that,but
that would have been for the breaking of his oath, not the
heliocentrism as such.)

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:55:55 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

[匽

>In the next step, there is the the official decree of the Index from 5th
>of March 1616) which bans a whole range of books that endorse the
>Copernican system
>
>This is more guarded than the assessment It declared that the
>Copernican theses were "false and altogether contrary to Holy Scripture"
>but made no mention of heresy explicitly, so it is ambiguous what that
>means, in canon law. Copernicus's book was to be "suspended until
>corrected", and again, that leaves ample room for interpretation
>depending what you think the corrections were supposed to do.

It seems that we do know what the corrections were supposed to do.
Here is a repost of something I originally posted a couple of years
ago:

====== Repost ============

In the discussions concerning the Catholic Church and heliocentrism
that occur here from time to time, the *banning* of Copernicus's work
'De Revolutionibus' regularly gets cited in support of the claims
about the Church opposition to heliocentrism.

This article tells a different story:
https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/3338

De Revolutionibus is one of the very few texts for which we have a
detailed account of the Inquisition's decision and it turns out that
the work was not *banned* permanently, the Inquisition placed it on
the Index *until correction* and the required corrections were mostly
to do with presentation, nothing to do with the core proposition of
heliocentrism.

The relevant corrections are detailed in the article linked to above
but there is a neat summary and discussion on Stack Exchange:

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7941/what-corrections-did-the-catholic-church-make-to-the-copernicus-work-de-revolut
or https://bit.ly/2NUw6LO

As one commentator sums it up: "It seems the essence of the theory
was not actually removed. The first removed paragraph is political,
the second correction states an evident fact, the third correction
simply makes the language more scientific rather than religious, only
the last change underlines it is just a hypothesis."

If I'm reading that summary correctly, it seems that being placed on
the Index "until correction" did not amount to any ban on the book
being printed, circulated or read - it was simply up to owners of
individual copies to strike out/amend the offending sentences.

=========== end repost =======

I would be interested in hearing your take on that.

[Burkhard]

Bit more than that. The strongest interpretation of all the data that I
could find,for the reasons I elaborated on in the post. That several
interpretations are possible doesn't mean that we can't judge their
respective merits

>
> (P.S. I don't know where he got the death penalty from; nearest thing
> I can find is a suggestion that if Galileo broke the oath he swore to
> his inquistors, he could have faced capital punishment for that,but
> that would have been for the breaking of his oath, not the
> heliocentrism as such.)

But that doesn't matter, does it? There were no differential sentences
for the various heresies, any one of them could, but did not have to,
lead to a death sentence (administered, no doubt, by the secular
authorities, but the sentence was passed by the church. Now, as Galileo
was charged with "suspicion of heresy" that was not a possible outcome
of his trial, but that would not negate the possibility of capital
punishment for heliocentrism, if my interpretation that it was from then
on the latest a heresy holds.

Interestingly for the issue at hand, St. Robert Bellarmine, one of the
main protagonists of the Galileo saga, was fully in favour not just of
the death penalty in general, but the burning of heretics in particular.

On the death penalty in general, he claimed that not only does catholic
doctrine permit it, but that being against the death penalty on
theological grounds was itself heretical:

"Among the chief heretical beliefs of the Anabaptists and
Antitrinitarians of our time there is one that says that it is not
lawful for Christians to hold magistracy and that among Christians there
must not be power of capital punishment, etc., in any government,
tribunal, or court."

And on the burning of heretics in particular, he repudiated luther's
claim that the "true" Church had never burned heretics as "unbelievably
ignorant or flat out lying" and supported the right to burn heretics -
Chapter XXI of his Refutation of Luther's thesis, "Posse hereticos ab
ecclesia damnatos temporalibus paenis etiam morte muctari" - including
the argument that excommunication (which of course is still the
consequnce of a heresy today), is a greater punishment than mere pysical
death, and hence "natural reason" proves, in addition to Scripture,
tradition and canon law, that this is the right response.

[RonO]

I mean the one posted below where you side stepped the issue, and then
ran in the next post without addressing it.

> .
>>
>> For whatever reason you have you can't accept Burhards claims that the
>> moving earth cosmology became a capital heresy after Bruno.
>
> Burkhard claimed no such thing. I told you before that he hadn't
> claimed that and he himself said

My guess is that you are just misremembering how you came into this
current bout. Burkhard had come up with a reference that he claimed
indicated that the moving earth was not a capital heresy until after
Bruno was executed. I could not verify that reference so I started
looking up what I could find, and I found what you have already been
given, and the conservative reference with all the relevant Catholic
references in it.

You have denied what the conservative reference had, and you have denied
what the other references have been telling you. The moving earth
became a capital heresy after Bruno, and Copernicus' book had been
banned before Galileo faced the inquisition. These things were not
reversed until the 19th century just like the conservative reference had
stated. The conservative Catholic reference even gave the conclaves and
cited the relevant documents.

>
> <quote>
> Well, what I said can in all fairness be read like this. As the point
> was about Bruno, I didn't feel the need to be overly technical when
> describing what happened afterwards.
>
> For the Bruno trial the case is clear, whether or not one argues that
> heliocenrism became a formal heresy later often boils down to an issue
> of semantics and extremely technical canon law distinctions.
>
> What is clear of course is that Galileo was convicted of "something".
>
> </quote>
>
> Beats me how you can see that as a claim that "moving earth cosmology
> became a capital heresy after Bruno".
>
> Burkhard went on to lay out the different arguments about whether or
> not heliocentrism was ever a hersesy but he took no sides on it.

Galileo faced the death penalty. That is what you have to get out of
those references. Copernicus' book was banned after Bruno and the
moving earth became a capital heresy after Bruno. There is no doubt
that geocentrism was a major part of Catholic beliefs. Important enough
to kill people over the issue. That changed, but it took quite a while,
but the conservative reference claims that it never really changed.
That is what you are side stepping from the referneces that I gave you.
You run again by not addressing that part of the post again (Look below
in this post. This is the second time you have run from it).

I do not know why you are doing it, but you are obviously doing it.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

On 8/21/2020 4:57 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:56:40 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 8/15/2020 9:32 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>

> […]

>
>>>> It only is partly what the Catholic church has not done. Harran will
>>>> repeat his non answers that do not resolve the situation, and then leave
>>>> only to return with the same non answers.
>>>
>>> Actually it is you who is the one not answering stuff.
>>>
>>> You been asked to produce something from the Catholic Church that
>>> supports your claims; you haven't.
>>
>> Give it up. The references that you finally dealt with by not dealing
>> with them demonstrate what I claim. You still want to deny that, but
>> what is the point. It was a Catholic heresy. It carried the death
>> penalty by Galileo. You shouldn't lie about not getting the references
>> because they are still in part of the post above.
>>
>>>
>>> You have been asked to explain what letter of 2014 that you are
>>> referring to; you haven't.
>>
>> It was backtracking on the 1992 papal apology. It was discussed on TO,
>> but as I said I didn't pay much attention to it.
>
> Let's get this right - your claims about backtracking are based on
> some vague discussion on TO that you didn't even pay much attention
> to!
>
> I see elsewhere that you are muttering about 'just "more than an
> hypothesis"'. That was nothing to do with Galileo, it was a completely
> different statement about evolution. That exemplifies your confused,
> rambling arguments in this thread.

Beats me what you are trying to do with "more than an hypothesis" it is
what it is, and it was referring to biological evolution and not
geocentrism. It was just to denote how ambiguous the situation with
biological evolution and geocentrism still are. Why are there still
geocentric Catholics?

You just ran again by snipping out the part of the post that I was
talking about. Beats me why you think that you can do that and it
somehow matters. Just look what you did in this post. Where are the
references that we are talking about. What should you understand from
those references instead of side stepping that issue? Why run from it
if you don't have to run from it?

Ron Okimoto

[Robert Carnegie]

What do you want done about them? Expelled from the church?
Imprisoned? Executed? Presumably by the church since that's
who you are holding responsible for the situation.

But is such punishment right or are people's opinions on a question
of science not a matter of church justice but of intellectual liberty?

If there are liberties then there will be people who take liberties.

[Ernest Major]

On 21/08/2020 12:57, RonO wrote:
>
> Beats me what you are trying to do with "more than an hypothesis"  it is
> what it is, and it was referring to biological evolution and not
> geocentrism.  It was just to denote how ambiguous the situation with
> biological evolution and geocentrism still are.  Why are there still
> geocentric Catholics?

Why are there still creationist Methodists? Or rather why doesn't their
existence condemn Methodism in the same way you think the existence of
geocentric Catholics condemns Catholicism?

--
alias Ernest Major

[RonO]

This has nothing to do with what Harran is running from. He will not
acknowledge that evidence exists that the moving earth was made into a
capital heresy after Bruno was executed, and that Galileo faced that
death penalty. He can't acknowledge that Copericus' book was banned,
and that the heresy was down graded and the ban on Copericus' book was
droped in the 19th century.

For whatever reason Harran doesn't want to believe that geocentrism was
an important part of Catholic theology, and still is for some Catholics.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Harran was just misdirecting the argument from what you snipped out
about what he is running from. Make of that whatever you want, but you
seem to have no idea about what is being discussed.

Ron Okimoto

[Glenn]

Well, your overall answer above seemed to be "something", not "yes". Apparently you are being less than honest by now saying "I did".

Heliocentrism as a hypothesis was never a heresy, and Copernicus’ book was allowed. In addition, Galileo was not charged with or convicted of heresy, but of "suspicion of heresy", although he plead guilty only to holding the hypothesis but not to the belief.

So "it" was not a heresy, and it doesn't appear that the hypothesis was ever deemed to be a formal heresy.

"De revolutionibus was not formally banned but merely withdrawn from circulation, pending "corrections" that would clarify the theory's status as hypothesis. Nine sentences that represented the heliocentric system as certain were to be omitted or changed. After these corrections were prepared and formally approved in 1620 the reading of the book was permitted"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 06:57:22 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 8/21/2020 4:57 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>> On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:56:40 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 8/15/2020 9:32 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>

>> [匽

You presented it as something to do with Pope's 1992 statement which
it had nothing whatsoever to do with - as I said, it exemplifies your
confused, rambling arguments.

There is also nothing ambiguous about it but I will deal with that
elsewhere rather than giving you the excuse to dissemble even further
here.

>
>You just ran again by snipping out the part of the post that I was
>talking about.

I snipped it because I want to focus on the question I have repeatedly
asked and you haven't answered - what backtracking are you referring
to? A vague reference to some unidentified letter in some unspecified
discussion doesn't cut it.

Seems that if anyone is running away, it is you.

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 16:34:43 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 8/21/2020 9:32 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 13:00:09 UTC+1, Ron O wrote:
>>> On 8/21/2020 4:57 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:56:40 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 8/15/2020 9:32 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>

>>>> [匽

Burkhard has told you that the offence Galileo was charged with -
*suspicion* of heresy - was not a capital offence. You can't even get
your basic facts right.

[Martin Harran]

That non-answer to Ernest is a perfect example of someone running away
from a question!

>
>Ron Okimoto

[Martin Harran]

Not willing to admit, Ron, that you were completely wrong on these two
issues and withdraw your claims about the papal statement not going
far enough?

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 06:57:22 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

[...]

>Beats me what you are trying to do with "more than an hypothesis" it is
>what it is, and it was referring to biological evolution and not
>geocentrism. It was just to denote how ambiguous the situation with
>biological evolution and geocentrism still are.

From http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA660.html

<quote>
Claim CA660:

Pope John Paul II's statement that evolution is "more than a
hypothesis" is a mistranslation; it should be "more than one
hypothesis," implying a lack of unanimity among scientists.

Response:

The Pope's message was indeed mistranslated, but in a way opposite to
the claim. The phrase which, in the original French, means "more than
a hypothesis" was mistranslated into English as "more than one
hypothesis." Looking at the document as a whole, it is clear that the
Pope accepts evolution as a scientifically accepted fact. The
sentences following the one in question refer to a convergence of
acceptance by researchers. The message expands on Humani Generis,
which "had already stated that there was no opposition between
evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation,"
provided certain spiritual points were not disregarded. The science is
not in dispute.

</quote>

Seems that you are about the only person on the science side who finds
anything ambiguous about the Pope's statement; yet again you are
coming out with the same crap espoused by those Creationists whom you
castigate all the time.

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 12:14:19 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>

The problem I see with the conclusion that it was heresy is that the
Church is very meticulous about its formalities and there has never,
to the best of my knowledge, been any formal lifting of the status of
heresy from heliocentricism. That would mean that it remains as a
heresy to this very day, which is essentially John Salza's claim,
supported by RonO. That in turn would mean that the Pope was guilty of
heresy when he accepted heliocentricism in his 1992 statement; it
would also mean that every Catholic scientist who has accepted
heliocentricism and every Catholic teacher who has ever taught it to
their pupils is guilty of heresy. That really is taking us into cloud
cuckoo land.

[ ... snip interesting content for focus ...]

[Burkhard]

There's going to be a short, medium and possibly a really long answer
which I still have to do - so you've been warned, and also brought this
upon yourself.

>
> The problem I see with the conclusion that it was heresy is that the
> Church is very meticulous about its formalities and there has never,
> to the best of my knowledge, been any formal lifting of the status of
> heresy from heliocentricism.

Short answer: I'd say it did, in 1820 and 1822 respectively:

"His Holiness has decreed that no obstacles exist for those who sustain
Copernicus’ affirmation regarding the earth’s movement in the manner in
which it is affirmed today, even by Catholic authors" That's from 1820.
And in 1822 the even stronger:

"There must be no denial, by the present or by future Masters of the
Sacred Apostolic Palace, of permission to print and to publish works
which treat of the mobility of the earth and of the immobility of the
sun, according to the common opinion of modern astronomers…those who
would show themselves to be reluctant or would disobey, should be forced
under punishments at the choice of [this] Sacred Congregation, with
derogation of [their] claimed privileges, where necessary.

This revocation (as it is in my view) follows in its structure the same
process that the recognition/confirmation of the heresy took in the 17th
century:

First the appointment of a body of experts, then the Qualifiers, now the
Supreme Sacred Congregation and the General Cardinal Inquisitor. The
relevant authorized body of the executive accepts the recommendation by
acting on it (then putting the books on the Index, now by removing them)
In Galileo's case, this is then further affirmed by the trial, the
judicative power affirming the validity of the executive action. We
don't have that here, obviously, as the rule was abolished. But we have
the lack of any cases being brought afterwards. This, also in Canon law,
leads to "desuetude" the invalidity of a law through persistent and
systematic non-use, which has been part of canon law since Gratian.

So we have a more or less perfect symmetry: authoritative advisory group
recommend, executive agency acts, courts confirm - in both cases the
same executive agency, so we have no "ultra v" problem that a lower
ranking agency revokes a law instituted by a higher one. This is the
same structure we find today, especially in delegated lawmaking
(statutory instruments or agency regulation) And the Roman
Congregations (i.e. individual executive departments of the Church) only
lost their lawmaking power in 1917, the the rules of bodies like the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are formally speaking laws

The doctrine of Desuetude btw would in my view alone do the job

_______________________________

That leads to the somewhat longer answer, addressing your argument that
"the Church is very meticulous about its formalities".

That is only true for a given value of "meticulous". For a long time in
hour history, canon law as unquestionable more rigorous, formalist and
procedural meticulous than the secular legal system of that time -
largely because it kept Roman law alive. But only that - more meticulous
than its counterparts. And even that changes in the 19th century when
the codification movement in continental Europe begins and we have the
second Roman law reception. Remember that Canon law as only codified in
1917 - long after the French Code Civil e.g. An earlier attempt in the
16th century not to codify, but at least to collect all canon law in one
authoritative document after the Council of Trent failed - at least in
the sense that the resulting document never received the official seal
of approval as authoritative.

So we have to be very careful not to back-project modern understanding
of meticulous procedural adherence to the 17th or even 19th century.
There are things that would not have been possible - inventing a totally
new heresy, in court, out of whole cloth (which would have been the
Bruno case) or conviction without confession, however much coerced (an
issue in the Galileo case) But not "what type of document did the Pope
have to sign in which capacity" - that's exactly the type of ahistorical
and decontextualised nonsense Salza and Sungenis engage in, or in a
secular equivalent the "Sovereign citizen movement" and similar
idiocies. (I once had to deal with a person who claimed Germany had
ceased to exist in 1990 because a wrong official had signed the
Reunification Treaty, and therefore he could not be convicted of drunk
driving because there were no valid courts, police etc - it's just not
how reality works)

Secondly, even though on the formal-substantive spectrum, Canon law is
towards the formal side, there never was a purely formal legal system -
Max Weber's concept of a "formal rational legal system" is an ideal
type, not something that could exist in reality.

There is e.g. an extensive customary canon law. And there are extensive
formal meta-rules on how to exercise discretion, heal formal procedural
mistakes, post-approve practices etc etc just like in any working legal
system. If anything, by comparison to modern secular legal systems,
canon law has a lot of it. That should not be a surprise if you see it i
the context of Christian theology in general - after all, in its own
self-understanding it turned the "religion of law" into the "religion of
love", and thus through both the wording of the laws and through the
rules of interpretation, there can be quite a lot of flexibility. For
better or worse - the pedophile scandal was in good parts created by
misuse of these discretionary powers and the setting aside of procedure
by the various bishops. Every legal system has to balance form and
substance (cf e.g. the papers in "Prescriptive Formality and Normative
Rationality in Modern Legal Systems" by Werner Krawietz, Neil
MacCormick, (eds.) - 1994)

So again there is a danger to over-emphasize the formal character of
canon law, legal systems just can't work like this in the real world

[RonO]

On 8/22/2020 2:56 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 16:34:43 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 8/21/2020 9:32 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>> On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 13:00:09 UTC+1, Ron O wrote:
>>>> On 8/21/2020 4:57 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:56:40 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 8/15/2020 9:32 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>

>>>>> […]

That is what he was convicted of. The charge was downgraded so that he
would not face the death penalty for the moving earth heresy. What do
the references that you were given tell you about the Galileo affair?
He faced the death penalty, but he was not convicted of the capital
offense. They could have tried him for it, but they decided not to.
The conservative references deals with when the heresy was made into a
capital offense before Galileo faced the inquisition. Other references
that you can find on the web deal with the same thing.

The referencs that you have avoided and run from mutliple times.

Why can't you deal with that reality? Just look at how you have run
from those referneces in your recent posts.

This is just one example:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/m0ort1DTb0M/HrM3d43SAwAJ

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

Projection is usual for the anti evolution crowd. You should not employ
it. It means that you understand what you have been doing.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/m0ort1DTb0M/HrM3d43SAwAJ

How many more examples can I put up just from this thread?

Ron Okimoto
>
>>
>> Ron Okimoto
>

[RonO]

On 8/22/2020 2:54 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Aug 2020 06:57:22 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 8/21/2020 4:57 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> On Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:56:40 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 8/15/2020 9:32 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>

>>> […]

I used it as an example of ambiguity. What did the conservative
references say about the papal apology of 1992? It was just an example
what these papal statements amount to.

>
>>
>> You just ran again by snipping out the part of the post that I was
>> talking about.
>
> I snipped it because I want to focus on the question I have repeatedly
> asked and you haven't answered - what backtracking are you referring
> to? A vague reference to some unidentified letter in some unspecified
> discussion doesn't cut it.

Running is stupid. Why can't you deal with what those references are
telling you? How vague was the conservative reference that cited
conclaves and documents where those things had been done? The other web
references on the issue only back up what the conservative reference had
claimed.

>
> Seems that if anyone is running away, it is you.

You are still running from those references. Projection is stupid. You
have to understand what you are doing in order to project that behavior
onto someone else.

Here is another example that I have already given to you before today.
What are you doing in this current post?

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/m0ort1DTb0M/HrM3d43SAwAJ

Ron Okimoto