Catholic Answers, Answered

“If Prof. Wilson was only dealing with kinematics and not dynamics, then it would be true to say that Ptolemy’s model can be shown to be inadequate, but Tycho Brahe’s model matches both the Copernican and the Keplerian models, orbit for orbit, equation for equation.”

“In 1665, Giovanni Riccioli, in his book, Astronomia Reformata, added elliptical orbits to Tycho’s model for this very reason, and afterward he remained a devoted geocentrist.”

“Keating leaves out the fact that Schoenberg was the only cardinal to give favor to Copernicus.”

“After this, both Rheticus’ and Copernicus’ books were put on the Index of Forbidden Books in the 1560s and not taken off until 1835 due to the malfeasance of Cardinal Olivieri.”

“Copernicus died the year his book was published (1543), so obviously he couldn’t be ‘brought up on charges before the Inquisition.’”

“We never used the phrase ‘tantamount to an infallible teaching.’”

“Whether geocentrism is an infallible teaching is for the Church to decide. We only bring the information to the Church from science, scripture and history, for that is the job we are called to do.”

“First, according to Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium 12 and 25, a decree from a pope doesn’t have to be ‘infallible’ in order to be authoritative and demand obedience from Catholic parishioners. Second, ‘theologians and historians’ do not officially decide what is or is not ‘infallible.’”

“Let’s ask a probing question: how could the Galileo condemnations be mere ‘disciplinary’ matters when, in fact, Galileo was convicted at a canonical trial of being ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’?”

“To be convicted of being suspect of heresy means that a heresy had to have been adjudicated and established before Galileo could have been convicted of it. Heresies are not determined by mere ‘disciplinary’ procedures.”

“Second, even if they were disciplinary, the fact remains that they have never been ‘modified or reversed.’”

“Gerard’s argumentation is subjective since the doctrine of papal infallibility would not be defined until 250 years after Paul V and Urban VIII made their judgment of heresy against Galileo, so any argument of whether the judgments were ‘ex cathedra’ or ‘infallible’ is unavoidably anachronistic.”

“As for ‘formal decree,’ evidently Pope Urban VIII and his Holy Office did have in hand such a formal decree since they would not have been able to judge Galileo as ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’ if they had no formal decree of heresy with which to convict him.”

“Olivieri told Pius VII that the real reason the 1616 and 1633 Church had condemned Galileo and heliocentrism was because: (1) Galileo had no answer to why the Earth’s atmosphere would not be sucked away if the Earth was moving around the Sun, and (2) that since Galileo didn’t include the elliptical orbits of Kepler, his heliocentric model didn’t work.”

“In fact, the 1616 Church had already put Kepler’s book, the Epitome, on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1619, and it remained on all subsequent Indexes up to 1835, and it was the very book that taught the elliptical orbits of the planets!”

“The injunction didn’t care what Galileo’s intentions were. It simply stated that he was to stay away from the subject altogether.”

“I never said that it was the ‘infallible Magisterium…that condemned Galileo,’ nor did I ever say that it ‘could not be rescinded.’ I have repeatedly said that it ‘has not been rescinded,’ not that it could not be rescinded.”

“I specifically stated that since the condemnation wasn’t issued in a formally infallible venue, it then depended on the Ordinary Magisterium.”

“Most of the Fathers had nothing to say on a variety of topics, including some of our most important doctrines. But the fact remains that many Fathers wrote on cosmology and all of them were the prominent and important Fathers that the Church has come to recognize and honor.”

“At other times they wrote from a more technical position, stating that the Earth is in the middle or center of the universe and the sun goes around it as if on a wheel.”

“One would assume that if polemical discussion amongst the Fathers was a critical requirement in order to qualify the consensus as legitimate, and, in turn, critical in requiring our obedience to the consensus, the Church would, indeed, address that issue, but it does not. To say otherwise is simply an argument from silence.”

“This shows us that the Fathers understood Scripture’s statements regarding a non-moving Earth to include both a non-rotation as well as a non-translation”

“Notice that Leo stresses the ‘unanimous agreement of the Fathers,’ and it was upon this basis that St. Robert Bellarmine told Fr. Foscarini and Galileo that they could not interpret the Bible to teach heliocentrism.”

“In regards to cosmology, Leo’s teaching would simply mean that we would have to have necessary proof that geocentrism was incorrect in order to depart from the ‘literal and obvious sense’ of Scripture.”

“According to Leo’s previous statements about the Fathers in Sections 14 and 15, we are only obligated to follow the Fathers when they are in consensus on a particular Christian doctrine. None of the above (four humours, spontaneous generation, etc.) were Christian doctrine, nor was there a consensus about them among the Fathers.”

“All geocentrists know that phrases such as ‘the sun sets’ have a metaphorical or phenomenological dimension to them for the mere fact that the sun doesn’t actually ‘set’ in either the geocentric or heliocentric systems.”

“Not once did Keating deal with the fact that the Moon moves independently of the Sun and stars and thus does not allow a phenomenological reading of Joshua’s text, nor does it allow one to claim that the Sun and Moon were stopped by a cessation of a rotating Earth, since the Moon would keep moving in such a scenario.”

“First, I’ve never claimed that Scripture says Earth is at the center of the universe, and for good reasons. One is that Scripture doesn’t say so; second is because there are two centers in the universe: the geometric center and the mass center, and the two are distinct.”

“But why would there be a need to ‘exclude’ an orbiting or turning Earth if no biblical passage has ever included it?”

“Logically, if his throne does not move then the world cannot move.”

“Hence, there is no contradiction between Psalm 112:6 and Psalm 93:1, and there is nothing in the former that would deny understanding the latter as teaching an unmovable Earth.”

“Of course God didn’t tell Israel they were centered geographically, since spherical surfaces don’t have centers. But God did say that the Earth doesn’t move and thus everything else in the universe must be revolving around it, and thus the Earth is at or near the geographic center, just as the Fathers of the Church said (as noted above).”

“This was confirmed by the Fathers, the medievals and the two popes who condemned Galileo, and that truth has never been rescinded by any future pope or council.”

“But what Mr. Keating failed to reveal was that Aristotle’s notion was rejected by the Church.”

“Consequently, the more vast the universe, the more special a center becomes since the center gives a definitive location and direction out of all the vastness.”

“In reality, the simplest explanation to the Michelson-Morley experiment is that the Earth isn’t moving in space.”

“Third, the reader knows why I truncated the quote, since I want to emphasize to him something that I know he has never heard in his lifetime, namely, that instead of Einstein’s Special Relativity theory, an equally plausible solution to the Michelson-Morley experiment is that the Earth is not moving in space, but that this solution was dismissed out of hand because it was ‘unthinkable’ for modern man.”

“First, all the Michelson-Morley type experiments showed a small positive result, but Einstein and his colleagues did their best to try to make it appear as if there were no positive results.”

“False. Both Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein allowed for the possibility of a geocentric universe in which the stars revolve around a fixed Earth, based on the fact of relative motion, but neither incorporated an aether for that purpose.”

“Why, you ask, would the experiments detect a rotation and not a revolution? Heliocentrists are stuck for an answer, since they need both a revolution and a rotation for their system to work. Geocentrists have the perfect answer, namely, the Earth isn’t revolving around the sun, but space is daily rotating around a fixed Earth.”

“However, just as passengers may get up from their seat and walk in the fuselage, so stars and planets can have independent movement in the plenum. This is why planets can revolve around their stars due to gravity and inertial forces between the star and planet.”

“But non-inertial frames are covered by the General theory (e.g., things that move in a circle instead of a straight line), and it is that theory that says, with respect to dynamics, an Earth rotating in a fixed universe is just as valid as a rotating universe around a fixed Earth.”

“So here we have Keating admitting one of the fundamental theses of geocentric cosmology in its battle against heliocentric cosmology, yet trying to use it against geocentrism instead of support of it.”

“Neo-Tychonic geocentrism holds that the sun is aligned with the stars, that is, they both move in the same direction at the same time, the sun acting as the geometric center to the stars. The sun, in turn, moves around the fixed Earth. As such, the same parallax seen in the heliocentric system is seen in the geocentric.”

“Stellar aberration has the same cause as stellar parallax in the geocentric system. That is, both aberration and parallax are created due to the fact that the sun is the center of the star field and is going around a fixed Earth.”

“The optical illusion of the separation of the stars can be caused either by the Earth moving past the stars or the stars moving past a fixed Earth. Both will produce the phenomenon of star-streaming.”

“Keating is apparently oblivious to the fact that the limit of the speed of light is only applicable to Special Relativity, where there are no gravitational or inertial forces.”

“Interestingly enough, in the geocentric universe there are tremendous inertial forces created by a rotating universe. The farther away from Earth, the greater the inertial forces are. The greater the inertial forces, the faster the speed of light can be.”

“Keating fails to realize that since the satellite is closer by at least 22,236 miles to the stars right above it than the stars on the other side of the Earth; and as such, there will be a greater gravitational pull on the satellite by the stars right above.”

“In both models the satellite is given an initial counter-clockwise thrust of 7000 mph, and in both models it stays at that speed due to inertia.”

“Since the ‘space’ in both models is precisely the same, then neither model presents any friction against the satellite, and thus inertia will move each satellite just as if it is moving a planet around the sun.”

“No, the Moon moves with the star field, since the stars, the Moon, and the sun are all carried by the universe that is rotating daily around a fixed Earth.”

“The only independent movement that the Moon and sun have is that the sun lags behind the star field by about 1 degree per day, and the Moon lags behind the sun by a few degrees per day.”

“First, although Keating implies that I was ‘stumped’ by this question, the fact is that Keating admits on page 302 that the vote as to who won the debate (taken immediately afterward from the audience) was 24 to 18 in favor of me”

“The center of mass does not sustain any torque, that is, there is no force that will turn the center of mass. As such, if the Earth is the center of mass for a rotating universe, it will not sustain any torque from the universe and thus there will be no force to turn the Earth.”

“First, since Hartnett has claimed that geocentric equations exist, and Mr. Keating is quoting Hartnett to prove a point, this means that Keating’s previous claim on page 96 that geocentrists do not have equations for their geocentric system is false.”

“Sometimes a simple system is the best one; sometimes a simple system is not able to account for all the variables. It is presumptuous, then, to make a rule that the simplest system is the true system.”

“But Copernicus found out to his dismay that planetary orbits were not simple, and he ended up having to add 48 epicycles to even come close to the 40-epicycle system of Ptolemy.”

“If, as the statistics show, 99.99% of the galaxies are red-shifted from our observation point, Earth, it means the universe is geocentric.”

“Essentially, spatial curvature and homogeneity are modern cosmology’s manufactured but necessary ingredients to maintain the Copernican Principle, the presuppositional belief that the Earth is not special and inhabits no special place in the universe.”

“So we see that the men of Hubble and Hawking’s generation choose their cosmological model based not so much on science (since the science is ambiguous) but on a commitment to a universe that best fits their philosophy.”

“First, even if we were to accept these figures, the fact is it spells the death for MacAndrew’s and Palm’s Big Bang theory since there should be NO ALIGNMENTS in the Big Bang universe with the Earth, much less these rather acute alignments that are within the known limits of precision of the Planck probe.”

“‘Alignment’ does not mean that the CMB multipoles lie exactly on the ecliptic or equinox, respectively, but that they are very near the same planes as the Earth’s equinoxes and ecliptic.”

“Essentially, these three alignments provide the X, Y and Z coordinates to place Earth in the very center of the known universe.”

“Too boot, the amount of matter in the explosion must also be just right. Too much and the universe will not expand. Too little and no complex structures will be formed. As one scientist put it, it’s like trying to balance a pencil on its point.”

“According to the equations, about 73% of the universe must be composed of Dark Energy to make the Big Bang conform to 1a supernovae requirements.”

“First, we didn’t ‘promise’ anything.”

“The Principle certainly did cover the Ptolemaic, Tychonian, Copernican, and Keplerian systems, along with graphics of orbits and epicycles.”

“There you will find that Lawrence Krauss was not ‘duped into being interviewed’ and that Kate Mulgrew no more had to be a geocentrist to do The Principle than she had to believe in warp drive to do Star Trek: Voyager.”

“There were many wrong turns prior to the Big Bang and the CMB.”

“Unfortunately, the confinement to ‘relativity’ has led modern science to the very ‘dead end’ about which Mr. Keating complains. Consequently, modern science will not progress until Einstein is dethroned.”

“The same is true of secular society. Its knee jerk reaction to creationism and geocentrism is caused by the same fear of having to give up its modern customs and comforts for a more austere world in which God is directly overhead of a fixed and central Earth.”

“In fact, Mr. Keating had me on his radio program and endorsed one of my books, Not By Faith Alone, from which I also did an 18-part series on EWTN in 1998.”

“The problem is I didn't say geocentrism ‘is officially taught by the Church.’ I said it ‘WAS’ officially taught by the Church.”

“It is a fact of ecclesiastical history that Pope Paul V, Pope Urban VIII and Pope Alexander VII all condemned the notion that ‘the sun is the center about which the earth revolves’ and ‘the error and heresy of the movement of the earth.’”

“The scientific fact is that the geocentric system works quite well, as even Tycho Brahe, and the Jesuit astronomers Fr. Riccioli and Fr. Cassini showed in painstaking detail.”

“Despite the criticism, for 2,000 years the Catholic Church has never changed her belief about those passages. Why? Because that’s what was handed down to her by the unanimous consent of the Fathers of the Church.”

“If uniformitarianism is wrong, then Keating’s dependence on long periods of erosion as the cause for the Grand Canyon is wrong.”

“In conclusion, apparently unknown to Keating, there is abundant experimental evidence for the Grand Canyon being made in a matter of days or weeks, not over millions of years.”