Now that the traditional teaching of the Church about Creation and a literal reading of Genesis is being vindicated with the downfall of Darwinism, so also the traditional teaching about the structure of the universe is being admitted in various ways, and Catholics should know about it.

To begin with, there are presently at least five good sources for obtaining the truth on this important matter of geocentricity. The first of these is included in the extensive scientific work of the French Catholic scholar, Fernand Crombette (d.1970). His works have not yet been translated but some of them have been expounded in English, and all may be obtained from the Cercle Scientifique et Historique[CESHE].(1) "The Bible does not make mistakes" was the watchword of this gifted Catholic scientist.(2) Secondly, there is the first-rate paper by Solange Hertz (3) entitled Recanting Galileo. Mrs. Hertz's work always possesses a spiritual dimension not to be found anywhere else. It is her unique gift. Thirdly, there is the work of the Dutch Protestant scholar, Walter van der Kamp(d 1998), founder of the Tychonian Society (Canada) and its quarterly journal, The Biblical Astronomer, formerly known as The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society. Mr. Van der Kamp has published a book entitled De Labore Solis: Airy's Failure Reconsidered [1988](4). Every Catholic should read the "Letter to John Paul II" that is included in an Addendum in this book. The Letter was delivered in person and gives scientific and religious reasons why the "Holy Father" should not consider a formal rehabilitation of Galileo(5). Fourthly, a disciple of Mr. Van der Kamp, Dr. Gerardus Bouw, professional astronomer, computer scientist and current editor of The Biblical Astronomer, has authored a book entitled With Every Wind of Doctrine: Biblical, Historical, and Scientific Perspectives of Geocentricity(6). One must beware, however, of Dr. Bouw's very anti-Catholic prejudices which sometimes cause him to distort history. Lastly, there has recently appeared The Earth is Not Moving by Marshall Hall(7). His is a quintessentially popular treatment of this difficult subject, and he must be given much credit for bringing the arcana of modern mathematical physics down to the level of us scientifically illiterate mortals. Whatever may be the shortcomings of Hall's book, it is impossible not to enjoy his literary panache.

Needless to say, none of these works is known beyond a very limited circle of interested people because, contrary to the generally-held media-imposed assessment of things, there is very little real science these days. Instead, we labor beneath a scientific imperialism which, having usurped the place of theology and of metaphysics in the true hierarchy of sciences, puts upon unwitting school children and witless TV addicts, its own preferred heliocentric-evolutionary ideology into which it bends every empirical fact. This monstrous establishment of academic sophistry lords it over every aspect of intellectual life today and has succeeded in convincing almost everyone that this "science falsely so-called" is the sole possessor and distributor of all truth and rationality.

But the Truth is irrepressible and will break forth from under the dead weight of error willy-nilly, sometimes here, sometimes there, as in a footnote in Bernard Cohen's The Birth of a New Physics.(8) Artfully hidden among some details of Galileo's life, we find this gem of an admission: "There is no planetary observation by which we on earth can prove that the earth is moving in an orbit around the sun."

Sir Fred Hoyle is quoted by Walter van der Kamp in his book as admitting that the geocentric model of the universe is no worse and no better than the heliocentric one. The works listed above cite many other similar admissions of like nature by scientists of our time.

More and more because of Einstein's relativity theories, the universe is referred to as a-centric. Martin Gardner states the problem clearly:

Well, that might be the case for mathematical constructs, but for ontological truth, i.e., for conformity with reality, we cannot agree that the question is meaningless. Only one of the alternatives can be true in reality, and to base one's science on a fiction cannot be productive of wisdom. Error always has consequences. The real conclusion to be drawn from Gardner's explanation is that there simply is no human way of knowing the structure of the universe. But God has revealed it! This was the basis on which Galileo was condemned by the Holy office in 1633. It is, therefore, a fact of divine revelation, a truth of Faith.

The same holds true for the origin of all things and the earliest history of mankind. So-called "salvation history" (no more than any history) does not begin with Abraham nor with any imagined "prehistoric" event or process. All history begins with the beginning of time on the First Day of the First Week of the World -- Creation Week. It is all very simply and most plainly given to us by God in Holy Scripture, for God knows that we not only desire to know these things but that we need to know them. Mythology proves that if men do not take God's word for the origin and structure of the universe, they will surely take the Devil's.

And so, it is a great pity to find Catholics apologetic and embarrassed about the action of the Church in the Galileo case. Here is a brief resumé of the facts in the Galileo case.

Due to the spread of the Copernican theory and complaints of theologians, the Holy Office in 1616 condemned the following propositions and explained why they are false:

The first proposition was declared unanimously to be foolish and absurd in philosophy and formally heretical inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors.

With regard to the second proposition all were agreed that this proposition merits the same censure in philosophy, and that, from a theological standpoint, it is at least erroneous in the faith. Fr. Jerome Langford, from whose book these propositions are taken, goes on to explain the meaning of the censures in more detail:

Galileo himself, because he had published a book on sunspots in 1613 wherein he praised the Copernican theory, was personally admonished on the basis of these condemnations about the sun and the earth, by Cardinal (Saint Robert) Bellarmine. However, in 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue on the Great World Systems in which he openly and enthusiastically, not to say dogmatically, advocated the Copernican system and shamelessly ridiculed the traditional Aristotelian geocentric system. This brought about his trial in 1633 by the Roman Inquisition or Holy Office. Of Galileo's condemnation, noted Church historian Ludwig von Pastor says: "Now if he adhered internally to an opinion which competent authority assured him to be contrary to Holy Writ, a suspicion was bound to arise that he doubted the inerrancy of the Scriptures and since this was in itself a heresy, he became suspect of heresy."(11) (Emphases added)

The Church cannot be accused of interfering in what may be considered the proper domain of the physical sciences because Galileo's crime was only indirectly concerned with the Copernican theory. His heresy was specifically to doubt the inerrancy of Holy Scripture.

And Galileo knew this very well. It's why he goes to such lengths in his "Letter to the Grand Duchess-Christina" (1615) to prove that the Scriptures are not to be interpreted literally when they speak of physical things but only when they teach on matters of faith and morals. He takes his stand on a decree of the Council of Trent (Session IV, April 8, 1546) which I will quote here from the English edition of Dogmatic Canons and Decrees.(12)

"…pertaining to the edification [i.e., building up] of Christian doctrine" points to a harmony of Faith and science. But if we now turn to what Galileo says and what he quotes as the Council's own words, we find an attempt to dis-edify:

Galileo would have us believe that there is an absolute separation in Holy Scripture between matters of faith and morals and matters pertaining to the physical sciences. That such is not at all the case, Pope Benedict XV assures us in Spiritus Paraclitus (Sept. 15, 1920):

Plainly, the distinction that Galileo tries to uphold on the authority of the Council of Trent is, according to Benedict XV, one to be rejected -- and abhorred. Galileo has "wrested" the sense of Trent. Another translation, that from Denzinger, will make the real teaching of the Church clearer:

Now it is clear that the "matters of faith and morals" alluded to in this decree do not pertain solely and directly to Sacred Scripture but to those who rely on their own judgment in all matters of religion, i.e., faith and morals. Obviously, this is a reference to Protestants against whom Trent was specifically directed.

The second point to be noted is that it is for the Church alone to judge what is the true sense and interpretation of Scripture.

Thirdly, the reference to the unanimous consent of the Fathers refers back to those who dare to interpret the Scriptures contrary to that sense which is held by holy mother Church and/or who dare to interpret the Scriptures contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

Galileo well knew that the Fathers of the Church held to a geocentric view of the universe and taught the same in a unanimous way as any other view would have been immediately recognized by them as against Scripture and common sense or reason. But Galileo deliberately tries to separate the matter from Scripture and faith, and purely physical as against religious teaching. It is Galileo we have to thank for the separation of faith from science. And he did this in the only way possible -- by basing his science upon error -- the error of heliocentrism and a moving earth.

Galileo shines forth as the first modernist, for he distorts the Sacred Scriptures to fit his own opinions, and his opinions are always those derived from his practices in the physical sciences. He made much of the distinction between the spiritual and the physical meanings in Scripture claiming that the spiritual could be true and the physical false or irrelevant without affecting the integral inerrancy of God's word. Because of this and the fact that he has so many followers today, it will be well to emphasize the definitive teaching of the Church in this matter. It is summed up by Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus (1893), paragraph numbers 124-127.(16)

Hence, the fact that it was men whom the Holy Spirit took up as His instruments for writing does not mean that it was these inspired instruments -- but not the primary author -- who might have made an error. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write -- He so assisted them when writing -- that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture. Such has always been the persuasion of the Fathers. "Therefore," says St. Augustine, "since they wrote the things which He showed and uttered to them, it cannot be pretended that He is not the writer; for His members executed, what their head dictated." And St. Gregory the Great thus pronounces: "Most superfluous it is to inquire who wrote these things -- we loyally believe the Holy Spirit to be the author of the book. He wrote it who dictated it for writing; He wrote it who inspired its execution."

It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration or make God the author of such error. And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that they labored earnestly, with no less skill than perseverance, to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which seem at variance -- the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the "higher criticism"; for they were unanimous in laying it down that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts, were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true. The words of St. Augustine to St. Jerome may sum up what they taught:

Such is the solid, strong and unbroken tradition of the Catholic Church concerning the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. The modernists cannot change this clear teaching even though some of them claim St. Augustine as their patron. When Saint Augustine has his "day in court" -- pity the modernists, of whom Galileo was the first.

The real point that Galileo did not want to face at his trial in 1632 and in all the controversies leading up to it was that the Church, represented by the theologians, had traditionally believed and taught the geocentric nature of the universe. And so, he was not prepared when, in 1616, the heliocentric views of Copernicus were condemned.

In 1613, one of Galileo's students, a young Benedictine monk and professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, Fr. Benedetto Castelli, had become involved at table in a discussion of the Copernican theory with the Duchess Christina of Lorraine, mother of the Grand Duke Cosimo II, Galileo's patron. The Duchess, instructed by professor of philosophy Boscaglia, argued with Fr. Castelli that the Copernican theory could not be true since it contradicted Holy Scripture. Fr. Castelli did his best to refute the professor but hastened afterwards to consult his master, Galileo, who thereupon composed a long letter addressed to his pupil and containing his opinions on the proper relations between the physical sciences and religion. This "Letter to Castelli" circulated widely and caused a great deal of bitter controversy. Galileo then greatly revised and toned down the original in a "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina," written in 1615 and circulated widely though not published in book form until 1636. It is in the earlier "Letter to Castelli" that Galileo makes a startling statement -- startling, especially at that time, because Holy Scripture and "Nature" are shifted around in the medieval hierarchy, "Nature" displacing Holy Scripture as primary in physical questions. Here is what he says:

Try as he might to equalize Holy Scripture and Nature, he has said that Holy Scripture must take the last place in physical disputes. This is an open rupture of that hierarchy of the sciences so firmly established in the good order of the medieval world. Theology was the rightful Queen of the sciences, philosophy was her first handmaiden, and all the other lower natural sciences were likewise intended to be the servants of the highest science, just as all creatures are bound to serve God, their Creator. Here are some passages from St. Thomas on this subject of the relationship of theology to the other sciences, passages which Galileo must certainly have known at least from common teaching:

From these passages we can see how theology may touch on every other science, that no human science is excluded from its searching light because God, as the origin and destiny of every creature, cannot be excluded from any aspect of finite activity, however lowly it may be. This does not mean that every science has not its own proper object. It does. And the object defines a science's limitations. At the same time, the light of the higher sciences of theology and metaphysics are to illumine all below because only in this way will the lower sciences be prevented from straying into error.

St. Thomas continues:

This latter point shows us one reason why a perfect harmony of truth is so desirable between theology and the natural sciences for the natural sciences are designed by God primarily as avenues to the higher knowledge of Him that comes by Faith and theology. St. Thomas goes on with these key passages for our study of Galileo:

As Dr. Jerome Lejeune so aptly said, "Technology is cumulative; wisdom is not."(18) Galileo might be called the first technological man as he is most surely one of the fathers of an experimental empiricism aimed solely at producing useful work and gadgetry. Empirical, technical knowledge is cumulative. But wisdom is an intellectual virtue and a Gift of the Holy Ghost. Since modern empirical science has excluded God on principle -- the principle of its method -- it has by that same principle, which is an evil one from Satan, cut itself off from God, the only source of true wisdom.

(ST, I, Q 1, a 6, ad 1)

From all this we can see that the theologians of Galileo's time were so far from being in the wrong that on the contrary, they were but doing their bounden duty, and some were even greatly remiss in this, e.g., the Carmelite contemporary of Galileo, to whom Cardinal Bellarmine addressed his great Letter defending the traditional view.

The real centerpiece of the Galileo affair is the Letter that Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine wrote to the Carmelite friar, Paolo Antonio Foscarini, after reading Galileo's Letter to Castelli and Foscarini's sixty-four page book defending the compatibility of the new Copernican system with Holy Scripture. Foscarini died June 10, 1616, just two months after his book had been condemned by the Congregation of the Index. Fr. Jerome Langford does not tell us if there is any record of the Carmelite friar's reaction to the condemnation, to Cardinal Bellarmine's Letter, or whether he submitted to the Church's judgment before he died.(19)

As one would expect of a saint, Cardinal Bellarmine's letter is a model of supernatural wisdom and prudence. It is fair to scientific opinion but unrelentingly firm in the defense of Catholic doctrine. I give the Letter in full, and I have divided it into numbered paragraphs for convenient reference. I take the text from Langford's book. (See note 19)

Cardinal Bellarmine assures us that the consent of the Fathers and their commentators is unanimous in holding a geocentric and geostatic view of the universe based on Holy Scripture (#6). Just how far the contemporary Church has departed from Catholic tradition is emphasized by this as well as by the other points of Cardinal Bellarmine's Letter, for he refuses to recognize the distinction, rejected also in our times by Benedict XV and Leo XIII, between references to physical things and supernatural facts (#7) as dividing truth from possible error in Holy Scripture. Fr. Jerome Langford is of the modernist mentality and reads the Decree of Trent according to Galileo: "... the Fathers had to affirm, explicitly or implicitly, that the text under consideration pertained to a matter of faith or morals."(20) But as we have already shown, this is not what Trent said nor could have so said because both Benedict XV and Leo XIII have emphatically reaffirmed the integrity of Holy Scripture in all its parts and all its meanings, both physical and spiritual, both natural and supernatural.

Galileo and the heliocentrists or Copernicans attacked a truth of faith, namely, that Holy Scripture is inspired and inerrant in all its parts and that we may not depart from the common agreement of the Fathers in our interpretations.

Besides these distinctions, there is the authority of the Church as the one guardian and only true interpreter of Holy Scripture. Vatican I, Canons and Decrees, Chapter III: Of Faith, says:

It may be objected that based on the Decree of Infallibility from Vatican I -- which declares papal infallibility only when "he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church" [D18391 -- the Church could not or did not pronounce definitively or infallibly upon a teaching of Holy Scripture that concerned matters of physical science. However, it seems to me that this is precisely what we are to learn from the Galileo case -- that the Church, by reason of Her appointment as supreme guardian and interpreter of Holy Scripture and the entire deposit of faith, can and must tell us the true meaning of Scripture, and this infallibly, whether the Scripture speaks in that instance of natural or of supernatural things. This is exactly what the Church did in the Galileo case, and many say, with good reason, that the Church's decisions and pronouncements in the Galileo case were indeed infallible. And so it would seem from the words of Vatican I especially regarding the Church's "right and duty of proscribing false science." The Fathers of Vatican I may have had in mind the evolution gaining such strength as "science" during those latter years of the 19th century, but they may also have had in mind the Galileo case, as will appear in the third paper of this series on the subject.

Contrary to what most modern commentators on the Galileo case maintain, Cardinal Bellarmine did not make any mistake except to believe (#2) what the Lutheran theologian Osiander said in his Preface to the book of Copernicus -- that Copernicus himself did not believe his theory to be fact but took it only as a convenient hypothesis. After four centuries of experiments and mathematical demonstrations, there is still nothing remotely resembling an irrefutable, demonstratively necessary proof of the heliocentric theory.

One of the most touted of the so-called proofs of the heliocentric theory is the Foucault Pendulum. Here is what a very competent engineer and long-time student of heliocentrism says about this famous gadget:

Equally impressive are the words of Jewish columnist A. Goldberg:

No, Cardinal Bellarmine did not make a mistake.

In the latter part of his "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina" Galileo undertakes to explain the miracle of Joshua's Long Day (Joshua 10) according to the Copernican theory which, he says, is the only system that allows the day to be lengthened and thus uphold the literal Scripture. On the face of it, one is surely entitled to wonder how it can be that the sun is commanded to stand still in a cosmos wherein the sun is fixed at the center of the universe. But Galileo has proven, to his satisfaction, by his discoveries of the sun spots with his telescope, that the sun revolves on its own axis. So let's grant him that much in this attempt of his to twist the Scriptures into the new cosmology.

Now let us consider the extent to which it is true that the famous passage in Joshua may be accepted without altering the literal meaning of its words, and under what conditions the day might be greatly lengthened by obedience of the sun to Joshua's command that it stand still.

If the celestial motions are taken according to the Ptolemaic system, this could never happen at all.(23)

In his earlier Letter to Castelli Galileo had emphasized the doubled motion of the sun, saying

He then goes on to force his opponents to admit that only the annual motion is the sun's "proper motion" while the diurnal motion is not the sun's at all but that of the Primum Mobile which moves the sun and planets and all the stars "almost contrary to their natural and proper motions eastward."

From this he proceeds to assert that since day and night are the effects of the Primum Mobile in the Ptolemaic system, then if God had stopped the sun, as Holy Scripture says, the day would have been shortened instead of lengthened.

Whether this is a fair assessment of the Ptolemaic system or not, I leave to the experts to determine. What we can assert here is that in reality (a geocentric and geostatic system) there are not two contrary motions of the sun. Rather, there is but one composite motion that "ascends" toward the north in summer and "descends" toward the south in winter as it revolves around the earth from east to west. This movement is observable by all of us and can be diagrammed thus:

The sun's path is thus a spiral one. As the sun first moves up and then down while going around the earth in the same direction.

Now it may be, as Galileo says, referring to Dionysius the Ateopagite, "that in this miracle it was the primum mobile that stood still, and that when this halted, all the celestial spheres stopped as a consequence -- an opinion held by St. Augustine himself, and confirmed by the Bishop of Avila. And indeed Joshua did intend the whole system of celestial spheres to stand still, as may be deduced from his simultaneous command to the moon, ..."(24) All this can be granted. But where Galileo distorts both Scripture and common sense is in his contention that "if we were to accept the Ptolemaic system it would be necessary to interpret the words [of Scripture] in some sense different from their strict meaning." (25)

For one thing, Galileo has bamboozled us all along into forgetting that in the Copernican system, the sun is not moving at all. Therefore, Joshua's command makes no sense. But he has assured us that the sun does revolve on its own axis. How would that cause day and night? How does Galileo get around these objections? He seizes upon the phrase: "in the midst of the heavens". So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go down the space of one day. (Joshua 10:13)

To appreciate Galileo's skill at throwing verbal dust around, you must read the entire passage, but I will give only the concluding part:

What a trickster! Not only does the sun never really move in order to stand still in this explanation, but Galileo will amend the Scriptures to fit Copernican/Galilean cosmology. Where, then, is the miracle? It has been explained away, or, the sun simply continued to do what it was doing -- nothing.

Let an expert have the final word. Arthur Koestler was as well aware as anyone of Galileo's rhetorical skills. Here is how he assesses the explanation of Joshua's Long Day according to Copernicus/Galileo:

The literature on Galileo is growing as the forces of this world move to consolidate their power structure. However, the Decree of the Holy Office against Galileo could not be more clear and definite with regard to the teaching of the Church. Here is the context of events and the decree of sentence as given by Fr. Jerome Langford:

Galileo's sentence was commuted; his daughter, a Carmelite nun, was allowed to recite the penitential psalms in his stead, and Galileo passed the remaining years of his life on his own country estate at Arcetri, near Florence, working on his final and probably favorite work, Discourses on Two New Sciences -- the work which has earned him the title of the Father of Modern Physics.

After giving the text of Galileo's abjuration, Fr. Langford says: "The condemnation of Galileo was now complete. The scientist had tried to batter down the old view of the universe and the traditional exegesis of Scripture by beating his head against a wall of conservatism and mocking those who felt that it should not be torn down ... "(29) Thus have the truths of faith, i.e., that the Scriptures are inerrant and that the Church can rule upon their meaning -- for all time -- these truths have been cast by Fr. Langford and most of his contemporaries, into the ephemerally temporal political category of a stiff-necked conservatism.

But the Decree of the Holy Office against Galileo has never been abrogated -- nor can it be. The wording is quite absolute. It is otherwise with the Index of Forbidden Books, as we shall see presently.

Living in the midst of triumphant modernism as we do today (in the 1990's), it is easy to recognize in the Decree against Galileo what is perhaps the first specific condemnation of a primary modernist tenet: "that any opinion may be held and defended as probable [even] after it has been declared and defined as contrary to Holy Scripture." The modernists of today do this all the time. Witness Fr. Anthony Zimmerman's defense of polygenism, condemned by Humani Generis in 1950; the questioning of the truths of faith concerning the Divinity of Our Lord, His knowledge of His Messiaship and His physical Resurrection by the likes of Fr. Raymond Brown, and the wide-spread defiance of all the Church's most sacred and authoritative moral teachings by a host of so-called moral theologians.

Truly, Galileo was the first modernist of note, and the current attempts to exonerate him only prove that "birds of a feather flock together."

What is not to be found in the standard defenses of Galileo is the list of subsequent condemnations issued in the course of the 17^th century and the many defenses of the geocentric system set forth by learned men of science in the Church as far as into the late 19^th century. I am told by a friend that St. Anthony Mary Claret (1807-1870) was a firm geocentrist. And would it not be surprising to find a single saint of the Church who was not? Evidences for the infallibility of the Church's decision in the Galileo case will form the matter of the last paper in this series.

The Church was slow to give way to heliocentrism but less so in the case of evolution, though Humani Generis (1950) still holds. That the modern papacy, albeit unofficially, has recognized both errors as compatible with Holy Scripture, can only be a sign of that apostasia -- that gradual slipping and falling away from the total Deposit of Faith spoken of by St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:3. We may not believe "that in these latter times there has been spread a general obscuring of the more important truths pertaining to religion, which are the basis of faith and of the moral teachings of Jesus Christ." (D 1501) This was an error of the Synod of Pistoia and was condemned by Pope Pius VI in 1794. The truths of Faith are never obscured -they are attacked and ignored and disbelieved. "The Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." (John 1:5) It is the disbelief that constitutes the falling away from the Faith, and disbelief spreads when it is not vigorously combated.

Here is a brief summary of the gradual elimination of the Copernican heresy from the Index:

Insofar as our faith is based on the authority of God revealing, and insofar as Holy Scripture is the written word of God infallibly interpreted for us by the Church, a decline in Faith is brought about by a Scientism that claims an authority higher than that of Divine Revelation. As Scientism pushes out the intellectual content of divine faith in people's minds, Divine Revelation is stripped of any relation to vast areas of knowledge. It is from Holy Scripture that we learn the true story of our origins and early history, not from an evolutionary scientism. It is from Holy Scripture that we learn the true structure of the universe, not from pagan and atheistic cosmologists.

But if heliocentrism, a-centrism, and evolutionism are accepted as true, there is introduced into the mind a real separation of science defined as reason and the truths of Faith. This separation was more or less complete in Galileo when he stated that in the natural sciences, Holy Scripture held the last place. (Letter to Castelli)

What must be emphasized is that Galileo's science was and remains what is basically a false science, a scientism. That such is the case is proved by the fact that the two great errors which define its ideology - heliocentrism and evolution -- stand in direct and defiant opposition to Holy Scripture as the Church has traditionally interpreted it.

Holy Scripture no longer holds any place at all amongst the sciences but is said to have nothing whatsoever to tell us about the universe of nature -- for the Creator of all things, while He is allowed by arrogant men to have revealed some vague spiritual truths, is deemed unable to communicate physical truths at all.

But that Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church is the basis not only of our divine faith but also the guide and guarantee of attaining truth in the natural sciences is again brought home to us in the case of Georges Comte de Buffon (1707-1788). John C. Greene in his excellent survey of the rise of evolutionism in the natural sciences says of Buffon:

The same has been said of Galileo by Dorothy Stimson and others, that "he plainly perjured himself" at his trial.

With scientists like Buffon and Galileo, not to mention many others of more recent vintage, Satan carries on his plans for disorder in the world to bring down the Church and destroy souls. A false science, condemned by Vatican I Council, continues to deceive many Catholics who strive to reconcile this false science with the truths of Faith. Unfortunately, they are aided and abetted by apostate theologians. But such an unnatural yoking of truth with error cannot hold for long, and Our Lady has promised that at the last, Her Immaculate Heart will triumph. The truth of God, Her Spouse the Holy Spirit, and Her unparalleled Purity are really the same.

(1) CESHE, Rue de l'Eglise, 08310 Annelles, France [attn: Dominique Tassot].

(2) Also in Beyond Politics. Solange Hertz. Veritas Press, California. 1995. [refer to section titled "What's Up?"].

(3) Available from P. Ellwanger, 1834 E Peters Colony #903, Carrollton TX 75007, USA.

(4) Available from P. Ellwanger; refer to Note 3

(5) John-Paul II has made statements about the Galileo case before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on two occasions during his pontificate: the first in 1979 on the occasion of Einstein's birthday and the second on October 31, 1992. No information available to me in 1992 about the nature of these statements [i.e., their legal and/or authoritative status].

(6) Available from the author at 4527 Wetzel Ave, Cleveland OH 44109, USA. Same address for The Biblical Astronomer.

(7) Available from M. Hall at Fair Education Foundation, Inc., 211 Morningside Dr, Cornelia GA 30531, USA.

(8) Doubleday, 1960, p.88 note.

(9) Martin Gardner. Relativity for the Millions. Publisher and date not available at this time. Reference was sent to me by a friend who lost publisher, date and page.

(10) Jerome J. Langford, Galileo, Science and the Church. Foreword by Stillman Drake. New York: Desclee Co, 1966, pp.89-90.

(11) History of the Popes, Vol. 29, p.54.

(12) Dogmatic Canons and Decrees. New York: Devin-Adair, 1912, p.11.

(13) Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. Transl. and edited by Stillman Drake. New York: Doubleday, Anchor, 1957, p.203.

(14) The Sources of Catholic Dogma, Transl. by Roy Deferrari. B. Herder, 1957.

(15) Idem

(16) Idem

(17) Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. University of Chicago Press, 1978, p.225.

(18) Jerome Lejeune. The Concentration Can. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990, p.132.

(19) Jerome Langford, Galileo, Science and the Church. New York: Desclee, 1966, p. 59 about Fr. Foscarini and pp. 60-63 for Cardinal Bellarmine's Letter.

(20) Idem., pp.62-63

(21) R.G. Elmendorf, Glenshaw PA 15116. Letter of 15 April 1992. See also Marshall Hall's book (note 7). Hall has observed some of the "hidden gadgets" and describes them.

(22) Amnon Goldberg, The Earth is Established -- It Cannot be Moved, The Jewish Tribune, London, 11 January 1990.

(23) R.G. Elmendorf. Letter 9 Sept 1992. Contact Mr. Elmendorf [208 S Magnolia Dr, Glenshaw PA 15116, USA] for more info on geocentrist theories of the cosmos.

(24) Drake. Discoveries and Opinions, p.211-212.

(25) Idem.

(26) Idem., pp.214-215.

(27) Arthur Koestler. The Sleepwalkers. New York: Macmillan 1959, pp. 438-439.

(28) Same as Note 19, pp.153-154.

(29) Idem.

(30) Dorothy Stimson. The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican theory of the Universe. Peter Smith, 1972. Originally published 1917. pp. 69-70.

(31) John C. Greene. The Death of Adam. Ames, Iowa State University Press, 1955, pp.58-59

This paper is the first in a trilogy of studies:

I. Galileo's Heresy

II. Galileo's Empiricism

III. Was It / Is It Infallible?