Geocentrism: why doesn't it just die and be done with?

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I suppose for the same reasons anyone uses ellipses – for the sake of brevity and because I didn’t find that section to be directly relevant to my specific points, Granny.
You were correct to include the link. Thank you.

On the other hand, the way Sungenis carefully worded his statement leaves the door open for book readers to conclude that geocentrism is to be believed by Catholics.
It is the sales promotion of the book, not the book itself, that Sungenis is referring to.

When it comes to * “the great amount of patristic, scriptural, ecclesiastical and scientific evidence we bring forth for its case.” *
Sungenis is very careful to omit some essential facets of Catholic Church protocol. Plus he adroitly merges the material scientific realm with the theological spiritual realm. Sungenis is an extremely clever writer.

Blessings,
granny

Bible means – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

P.S. The fat lady is singing.😉
 
Bible means – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth
Hmm … what about “in order to leave earth”?
I mean the damned go down into it.

And geocentrism says that anywhere outside earth is above it, since a centre of a global universe serving as destinations of heavy materials and sinladen souls must be down and the reverse, the periphery of a global universe serving as throne of God, destination for light materials and for pure souls must be up.

Heliocentrism - sorry to bring in physics to you granny - in Isaac Newton version says that earth orbits sun “because it is always tending to fall into the sun and always missing it due to previous fall”.

CSL had to argue against people saying that Ascension could have been believed only by people believing “in a flat earth in the centre of a universe wity a clear up and down”. Now, they overdid it a bit about flat earth, since Church Fathers clearly believing Ascension also clearly stated Earth was a globe (not all of them though), but they have a clear point: if in cosmic directions upwards from earth means downwards to sun, if done in midday, how is that glorious and how is that not even blasphemous in a way not foreseeable by these geocentrics?

CSL being a heliocentric did come up with one direct answer: Jesus being resumed into “another dimension” and disappearing from this one, must have looked like something, and Ascension is what it God made it look like for obvious symbolic reasons. My quarrel with heliocentrism is that it limits such symbolism to human psyche but leaves cosmos untouched by it. Also, that it brings in this Einstein-cum-Esoteric-cranks “dimensions” stuff. I ceased to be Palmarian the day I read a quote from their Catechism (which I had never seen in print and have not seen in full online version): “Antichrist sees the world from the fourth dimension, Mary from the eighth dimension” … QUÉ!? More than three dimensions, when these are a cosmic sign of Holy Trinity? No way Palmar de Troya could be the real remnant of Catholicism.

You mentioned Catholic protocol, and you mentioned Council of Trent. One of its tenets is to “never interpret Scripture except with the unanimous sentence of the Church Fathers”.

Church Fathers before Trent were neither unanimously flat earth (one at least was) nor unanimously round earth (Sts Augustine and Basil were). But all who did touch on creation (creation of earth before sun) and the miracle of Joshua give, if ever so briefly, an interpretation that is geostatic (obviously a flat earth believer would consider earth closer to nether floors of universe than to real centre, so geocentric applies only to those believing a round earth).

The Council of Trent does not exactly mention any exception for personal exegesis in favour of scientific or non sacred historic things. Not in face of all Church Fathers.

If Catholic protocol is the same, and John Paul II is not a Church Father (he was as we know heliocentric, as is clear from 1992), we must accept geocentrism. If Catholic protocol has changed … when and why so?
 
An innocent question:

When are we done with this freak show?
I wonder how many provincials said so when coming to Rome.

Luther was scandalised by Cardinals not having same habits as the Augustinians of Wittenberg.

One reason is that Rome - as is now also the case with Catholic forums - attracts people with less sane and pious life. An other is that it attracted people with an intellect that to some wellmeaning and probably good but not over clever or over read farm boys looks like folly or “freak show”.

So an innocent question for you: are you the righteous Augustinian or the not so clever or not so well read farm boy? Am I the not so pure or the intellectual?
 
A Statement by the Leading Advocate for and Supposed Expert on Geocentrism, Robert Sungenis:

I’ve posted this rather measured and reasonable statement and it’s interesting to me that the geocentrists here at the CAF have had nothing to say about what their own leading advocate and supposed expert said. Was Sungenis right? Or did he sin gravely by publicly telling all Catholics that they could:

a) feel free to consider the holy, infallible teaching of Mother Church to be a mere “quirk” in the mind of Robert Sungenis and

b) feel free to remain in what Sungenis is absolutely convinced is a damnable heresy and that would be just “fine” with him?

Let’s remember, according to the geocentrists, the abandonment of the infallible doctrine of geocentrism was the key that undermined the authority of the Catholic Church for the past several hundred years. That’s extremely serious stuff.

Can anyone ever imagine St. Athanasius saying to the ubiquitous Arian heretics, “If you can’t accept the divinity of Christ, then, if I can impose on you, just consider it to be my personal quirk and that will be fine with me. I know this issue is much too shocking and controversial at present for me to expect many people to consider what I have to say”?

So, did Sungenis err and sin grievously by making a scandalous public statement like this about the holy and infallible teaching of Mother Church, or was this statement a moment of greater reasonability, humility and proportion on his part?

I think the latter. Catholics are free to believe or disbelieve in geocentrism and it’s completely reasonable for a Catholic to consider it to be a bit silly.
More important than what Sungenis thinks is what the church thinks on the subject. Nobody has answered my post which points out the litany of condemnations levelled against heliocentrism by the church in the 1600’s.

I notice you all ignore that post forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=7957471&postcount=413 and then start picking holes in Sungenis.

Personally, my opinion is that Geocentrism is binding on every Catholic who has read the papal condemnation of Galileo which I have summarised here forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=7957471&postcount=413 . If however you disagree with my opinion or have doubts, then please refer your question to your local bishop. Give him a copy of “Galileo was Wrong, the Church was right”, or better still, sit down with him and watch Sungenis’ DVD.

For those who so vehemently argue, why not write your own book to present to the Bishop “The Church was wrong, Galileo was right”.
 
You mentioned Catholic protocol, and you mentioned Council of Trent. One of its tenets is to “never interpret Scripture except with the unanimous sentence of the Church Fathers”.
Catholic protocol – the methods or “how” something is accomplished-- regarding dogmas of faith and morals has been and still is basically the same as the" first council" recorded in* Acts*. Sorry, but I don’t have the citation handy, but it is the meeting of the apostles to discuss gentiles and faith.

One of the unfair tactics to promote geocentrism is to omit the real information regarding how the Catholic Church operates under the guidance of the Holy Spirit when it comes to defining Catholic dogmas. Consequently, the unsuspecting innocent is left with the impression that decrees, papal commissions, and judgments in local trials can declare dogmas in any old way at any old time. It is unfair to omit 16 centuries of Catholic history under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as if only sola scriptura rules.

It is also extremely unfair to twist Trent’s statements regarding Scripture by removing segments from their context and applying them to scientific matters in order to promote geocentrism. Pardon me, but I consider that as slamming the purpose of the Holy Spirit which is to bring us to eternal life with God. We need to remember that it is the Holy Spirit Who leads and not present day interpreters of science.

In other words, geocentricism should be discussed on its own scientific merits.

Blessings,
granny

Isaiah 55: 6-9
 
More important than what Sungenis thinks is what the church thinks on the subject. Nobody has answered my post which points out the litany of condemnations levelled against heliocentrism by the church in the 1600’s.
A number of people have answered the 'litany of condemnatios" in numerous posts here and on other threads.
For those who so vehemently argue, why not write your own book to present to the Bishop “The Church was wrong, Galileo was right”.
The book has already been written. It is called the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition.
 
geocentricism should be discussed on its own scientific merits.

Blessings,
granny

Isaiah 55: 6-9
We do that too you know.

From time to time I do refer to six to seven billion pairs of eyes and as many pairs of inner ears which God gave us and placed on Earth.

Part of arguing for heliocentrism is saying “but you know, you would see that any other place were immobile and thus centre of a turning universe, if you observed from there” - and the answer is that God did not put all these observers there, but here on earth.

In other words: are we having a science as if God intended us to discover truth or a science in which “some god after creating might be deceiving by producing illusions or there might be no god at all to ensure we get the necessary info the right way”?

The first is often paid lip service by heliocentrics whenever their arguments about gravitation, masses, aberrations, parallaxes, polar flattening or equatorial bulge, et c are criticised as proving nothing to the point. But it is really they, not us, who are saying that the Creator was not concerned to place us where we could easily discover as basic a truth as that he exists.

The long version of St Thomas Aquinas’ Prima Via (in Summa Theologica he gives a short version among four other ways in the corpus of Part I Question 2 Article iii), as it appears in an unshortened Latin version of Summa Contra Gentiles (yes, he stated same thing twice, one shorter to make place for 4 similar arguments in S Th and one longer before that in S c G), argues that - I will take an example from more recent voyaging - Kon Tiki was moved by water in Humboldt Stream, which was moved by air, which was moved by higher spheres, which are moved by the highest visible, that of stars … and either you accept that sooner or later some first moved thing is moved by an unmoved or self moved mover, or you get total absurdity, like that Hindoo cosmology that places earth on top of four elephants on top of a turtle, swimming in an ocean … but has no indication where that ocean came from or what keeps it in place.
 
We do that too you know.
Yes. I know you write from the scienitfic position. I even read some of it.😉
While I am not in a position to evaluate science posts, I marvel at what they contain.
The creative powers of God are beyond anything we hope to imagine.

Praise God! All honor and glory belong to Him.
 
Please take some prayer time to study what you say here --“the papal condemnation of Galileo…”

Galileo is one person who lived at a specific time in history. You, I, and the rest of the living are not Galileo.
The church is eternal and ageless. She does not pronounce something as heresy in one century and then change her mind the next.

To this day the church has never abrogated the statements of heresy made by the medieval church. Nor has any statement been made by the church to say that the church was grossly in error in former times. In fact several councils since, including Vatican 1, have directly stated that ALL pronouncements and decrees of the church are to be upheld by Catholics.

All we have today is a rather weak tolerance of acentrism. JP2 of course was one of the most tolerant popes in living memory. He certainly tolerated heliocentrism, but nothing he said did anything more than betray his personal opinion on the subject. It certainly fell many grades short of abrogating the decrees of the church in the 1600’s.

Also to this day we have on record the head of the Vatican observatory in Arizona being asked flat out by the interviewer
“Bro Consolmagno, do you believe that the sun revolves around the earth?”

And he gave an AMBIGUOUS WAFFLY answer. catholicintl.com/catholicissues/notdenygeo.htm

Cardinal Poupard gives waffly indirect answers.
JP2 gives waffly indirect answers that concentrate on the churches treatment of Galileo which is really a side issue. He calls the issue a “tragic mutual miscomprehension” whatever that is. Certainly a few grades below “formal heresy” “pernicious error” etc. that the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office called it 400 hears ago.

Vatican 2 in typical conciliar style gives waffly ambigous if and maybe statements designed to find a middle ground between the church and the worldly sciences (which previous generations of church documents rightly called the profane sciences).

All of these various statements put up by grannymh and other acentrism defenders are piffling in comparison to the blunt, flat-out, direct and unambiguous statements of heresy levelled at heliocentrism by the medieval church.

I think we all know that. The reason therefore we reject the medieval church over the vacillating modern church is because the modern church permits our biases and desires. That extends to head coverings for women, communion in the hand, removal of altars and altar rails, removal of latin and gregorian chant, meat on fridays, holy days of obligation moved to Sunday, shall I go on?

Sure, we are all free to do all kind of things. But as Pope Benedict XVI himself says “The Index Librorum Prohibitorum retains its moral force” in that it has never been abrogated and has merely fallen into disuse.

If the Index Librorum Prohibitorum retains its moral force then the moral force to desist from reading documents, pamphlets or glosses treating heliocentrism, or acentrism also remains in force, because of the very many works on that subject which were never removed from the list. Galileo’s work was removed in the last years of the Index, but only after some very significant amendments to it were made.

Now what does the Pope mean when he says that it retains its moral force. What he means is that each of us is under a moral obligation to follow its strictures, even if the church will not apply any punitive or legal action against us.

So the fact that the church permits it, is not necessarily enough. The church permits us to eat meat on Fridays. Does that mean it is good for us to eat meat on Fridays. No, but the church is expecting us to be responsible adults and voluntarily refrain from eating meats on Friday even though there is no force of church law which obligates us to. (depending on the region).

In the same way we are all permitted to believe in acentrism, but that does not necessarily mean that it is good for us to do so. The eternal church, the body of Christ want to see us maturing in the faith, being obedient voluntarily. In fact it is harmful to us to believe in acentrism. The eternal church specifically stated that it is a pernicious error, injurious to the faith, and prejudiced against the faith of the Holy Catholic church, and altogether contrary to the scriptures.

Therefore we believe the scientists and believe contrary to the scriptures at our own peril. It is no light matter. Do we think that it makes any difference to God if the whole world believes acentrism. That somehow by popular opinion God himself changes his mind. All of humanity is but a drop in the bucket to God. The fact that the whole world rebels and runs contrary to the scripture is no excuse to any single one of us. We all must stand before God as individuals. The behaviour of the masses will not be any excuse.

Now of course I am not bringing condemnation against those who are invincibly ignorant of these arguments. But I certainly am anxious for those who have read the Papal condemnation of Galileo and yet shove those words to the back of their mind, argue them away, and ignore them. As far as I am concerned to do so and not act is rebellion and disobedience at a very deep and moral level. Sure the church permits it. But then Moses permitted divorce, so what does that prove? Anyway, I will not be the one judging, God will judge, and so we all tremble; working out our salvation with fear and trembling.
 
A number of people have answered the 'litany of condemnatios" in numerous posts here and on other threads.
No they haven’t. All they have done is waved their hand and dismissed it all as a “local trial” or a “theological commission”. Not good enough
The book has already been written. It is called the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition.
Please show where the Catechism states that Galileo was right and the church was wrong.
 
Catholic protocol – the methods or “how” something is accomplished-- regarding dogmas of faith and morals has been and still is basically the same as the" first council" recorded in* Acts*. Sorry, but I don’t have the citation handy, but it is the meeting of the apostles to discuss gentiles and faith.

One of the unfair tactics to promote geocentrism is to omit the real information regarding how the Catholic Church operates under the guidance of the Holy Spirit when it comes to defining Catholic dogmas. Consequently, the unsuspecting innocent is left with the impression that decrees, papal commissions, and judgments in local trials can declare dogmas in any old way at any old time. It is unfair to omit 16 centuries of Catholic history under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as if only sola scriptura rules.

It is also extremely unfair to twist Trent’s statements regarding Scripture by removing segments from their context and applying them to scientific matters in order to promote geocentrism. Pardon me, but I consider that as slamming the purpose of the Holy Spirit which is to bring us to eternal life with God. We need to remember that it is the Holy Spirit Who leads and not present day interpreters of science.

In other words, geocentricism should be discussed on its own scientific merits.

Blessings,
granny

Isaiah 55: 6-9
Nothing in Trent states or any other church document qualifies the authority of scripture by limiting it to any particular subject. The scripture is the Word of God and whatever it says on any matter of history, nature, philosophy, science, theology, morals is absolutely true. I challenge you to find any document of the church which says otherwise.

At the Papal condemnation of Galileo, the church stated that the doctrine of heliocentrism was expressly contrary to the scriptures and injurious to the faith. This proves that a matter of the natural world which touches on the very nature of the creation and the knowledge of the orbits of the planets can and is a matter of faith.

It is only in modern days that we have tried to argue that the scripture has no authority in matters of science and reason and that the scripture must be reduced to poetry and hyperbole when confronted by the oppositions of science and reason.

Of course many modern church documents state that there is no contradiction between faith and reason. But there is contradiction between faith and false reason. And all reason which contradicts the scriptures is therefore false science and false reason.

I repeat. The scripture is authoritatitive in all matters in which it chooses to speak.
 
I wonder how many provincials said so when coming to Rome.

Luther was scandalised by Cardinals not having same habits as the Augustinians of Wittenberg.

One reason is that Rome - as is now also the case with Catholic forums - attracts people with less sane and pious life. An other is that it attracted people with an intellect that to some wellmeaning and probably good but not over clever or over read farm boys looks like folly or “freak show”.

So an innocent question for you: are you the righteous Augustinian or the not so clever or not so well read farm boy? Am I the not so pure or the intellectual?
Thank you so very much. Your answer perfectly justifies my characterization of this whole thing on top of the previous page of this thread.
 
=grannymh;7957774]
During Trent, Holy Scripture was a concern in itself. This has been pointed out in CAF threads. Yet, Trent did not define an individual theological dogma about the physical movement or non-movement of one planet in the entire universe.

Obviously, various bishops at Trent would have discussed Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) among themselves. Yet, there was no formally declared dogma regarding various scientific speculations about the operating system of the universe. Remember that all kinds of speculations about physics have existed since the days of the early Church Fathers. Yet, through the centuries, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, assent to one particular scientific theory was never declared a theological dogma
Seems to me that Trent did address the motion of the sun, moon and stars and yet stated that the earth is “rooted in its own foundation.”
*Catechism of Trent *The Creed Article 1
The words heaven and earth include all things which the heaven’s and the earth contain; for besides the heavens, which the Prophet has called the works of his fingers, He also gave to the sun its brilliancy, and to the moon and stars their beauty; and that they might be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. He so ordered the celestial bodies in a certain and uniform course, **that nothing varies more than their **continual revolution, while nothing is more fixed than their variety….
Formation Of The Universe
The earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundation, and made the mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which he had founded for them. That the waters should not inundate the earth, He set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth. He next not only clothed and adorned it with trees and every variety of plant and flower, but filled it, as He had already filled the air and water, with innumerable kinds of living creatures.
The Lord’s Prayer
But though God is present in all places and in all things, without being bound by any limits, as has been already said, yet in Sacred Scripture it is frequently said that He has His dwelling in heaven. And the reason is because the heavens which we see above our heads are the noblest part of the world, remain ever Incorruptible, surpass all other bodies in power, grandeur and beauty, and are endowed with fixed and regular motion
 
No they haven’t. All they have done is waved their hand and dismissed it all as a “local trial” or a “theological commission”. Not good enough
In other words, 16 centuries of following the promised Holy Spirit is hand waving? Is the Gospel of John, Chapter 14 thrown away?
Please show where the Catechism states that Galileo was right and the church was wrong.
That is the wrong point. Please try again.
 
Nothing in Trent states or any other church document qualifies the authority of scripture by limiting it to any particular subject. The scripture is the Word of God and whatever it says on any matter of history, nature, philosophy, science, theology, morals is absolutely true. I challenge you to find any document of the church which says otherwise.
Divine Revelation
 
Seems to me that Trent did address the motion of the sun, moon and stars and yet stated that the earth is “rooted in its own foundation.”
Seems to me that this is in reference to the truth that the created is not equal to the Creator.
Do you realize that Holy Scripture was used as the basis for determining the status of God which had been argued about? Please read Genesis 1:1 for further information.
 
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