At 07:08 pm 27/06/2005 -0400, Jed wrote:
>By the way, that 1896 quote from Pope Pius was an attack against evolution.
>A few decades later, the next Pope endorsed evolution, and it is now the
>officially sanctioned view of the Church that Darwin was right, and
>evolution did occur. So, if Grimer prays that the Pope Pius would stick to
>his guns, that makes both of them heretics. Woops! The authorities back in
>1920 ordered Grimer to switch sides, but he didn't get the message.
>
>I am kidding. Grimer did not realize that the particular "revealed
>doctrine" Pius was pontificating about later turned out to be un-revealed,
>just like the opposition to the Copernican theory that the earth orbits the
>sun, and the Church's endorsement of slavery (which ended around 1870 as I
>recall). Heresy, like treachery, is a matter of dates. You have to believe
>whatever "revealed doctrine" they come up with, when they tell it to you,
>and then you have to turn on a dime and believe the exact opposite as soon
>as They Change Their Minds. It calls for a kind of mental agility that I
>could never master, despite my years of training in cultural relativism.
I'm sure as a committed liberal you will not begrudge me the right of reply
to those slanders against the One Holy Roman Catholic Church. 8-)
Dealing with them in historical order I would like to quote an eminent
liberal whom I'm whom I'm sure you would approve, to wit, Koestler, Fellow of
the Astronomical society and, amongst other honours, nominated for a Nobel
prize
on no less than three occasions. No Papist apologist he - just an truthful
liberal - so liberal he even committed suicide ;-)
In The Sleepwalkers (1959) he writes,
==========================================================
Page 362
The letter is important for several reasons. Firstly, it
provides conclusive evidence that Galileo had become a
convinced Copernican in his early years. He was thirty-
three when he wrote the letter; and the phrase 'many
years ago' indicates that his conversion took place in
his twenties. Yet his first explicit public pronouncement
in favour of the Copernican system was only made in 1613,
a full sixteen years after his letter to Kepler, when
Galileo was forty-nine years of age. Through all these
years he not only taught, in his lectures, the old
astronomy according to Ptolemy, but expressly repudiated
Copernicus. In a treatise which he wrote for circulation
among pupils and friends, of which a manuscript copy,
dated 1606, survives, [Kretschner, The Psychology of Men
of Genius, trans. R.B.Cattell (London, 1931)] he adduced
all the traditional arguments against the earth's motion:
that rotation would make it disintegrate, that clouds
would be left behind, etc., etc. - arguments which, if
the letter is to be believed, he himself had refuted many
years before.
But the letter is also interesting for other reasons.
In a single breath, Galileo four times evokes Truth:
friend of Truth, investigating Truth, pursuit of Truth,
proof of Truth; then apparently without awareness of the
paradox, he calmly announces his intention to suppress
Truth. This may partly be explained by the mores of late
Renaissance Italy ('that age without a super-ego' as a
psychiatrist described it); but taking that into account,
one still wonders at the motives of his secrecy.
Why, in contrast to Kepler, was he so afraid of publishing
his opinions? He had, at that time, no more reason to fear
religious persecution than Copernicus had. The Lutherans,
not the Catholics, had been the first to attack the
Copernican system - which prevented neither Rheticus nor
Kepler from defending it in public. The Catholics, on the
other hand, were uncommitted. In Copernicus' own day,
they were favourably inclined towards him - it will be
remembered how Cardinal Schoenberg and Bishop Giese had
urged him to publish his book. Twenty years after its
publication, the Council of Trent re-defined Church
doctrine and policy in all its aspects, but it had nothing
to say against the heliocentric system of the universe.
Galileo himself, as we shall see, enjoyed the active
support of a galaxy of Cardinals, including the future
Urban VIII, and of the leading astronomers among the Jesuits.
Up to the fateful year 1616, discussion of the Copernican
system was not only permitted, but encouraged by them - under
the one proviso, that it should be confined to the language
of science, and should not impinge on the theological matters.
The situation was summed up clearly in a letter from Cardinal
Dini to Galileo in 1615: 'One may write freely as long as one
keeps out of the sacristy.' This was precisely what the
disputants failed to do, and it was at this point that the
conflict began.
But nobody could have foreseen these developments twenty years
earlier, when Galileo wrote to Kepler.
Thus legend and hindsight combined to distort the picture, and
gave rise to the erroneous belief that to defend the Copernican
system as a working hypothesis entailed the risk of
ecclesiastical disfavour or persecution. During the first
fifty years of Galileo's lifetime, no such risk existed; and
the thought did not even occur to Galileo. What he feared is
clearly stated in his letter: to share the fate of Copernicus,
to be mocked and derided; ridendus et explodendum - 'laughed
at and hissed off the stage' are his exact words. Like
Copernicus, he was afraid of the ridicule both of the unlearned
and the learned asses, but particularly of the latter: his
fellow professors at Pisa and Padua, the stuffed shirts of the
peripatetic school, who still considered Aristotle and Ptolemy
as absolute authority. And this fear, as will be seen, was fully
justified.
================================================================
As far as evolution is concerned you must realise that Popes, like
us, are entitled to have their opinion on scientific and other matters
and whether Catholics choose to agree with those opinions is up to
them. There are very few things that are matters of faith which
Catholics have to believe. It is only when the Pope speaks "ex cathedra"
on matters of faith or morals that papal infallibility comes into play
and this rarely happens. The most recent case that comes to mind was
when the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was
proclaimed in, err....1950 if I recall correctly.
In the case of evolution all that catholics HAVE to believe without
falling into heresy, is that we are descended from two fist parents.
Let's call them Adam and Eve. As to whether God made them from monkeys
or the dust of the earth, one is free to choose, though personally I
prefer dust, myself. 8-)
A and E were given some kind of test of obedience which they failed.
They disobeyed God's explicit command, and a bit like a soldier on
the battlefield, the penalty was to be kicked out of the Garden of
Eden and shot (metaphorically).
This failure is called original sin which we all inherit. Think of it
as a defective spiritual gene.
Now, obviously, Catholics have to believe in original sin cos otherwise
the redemption by the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary is a lot of
bollocks. If there ain't no sin, then there ain't no need for
redemption, is there?
No pope can deny (or has denied) the central core of the above without
being heretical - in which case he would have incurred automatic self-
excommunication and ceased to be the pope leading to a situation of
sede vacantism.
Now, say a scientist produced very strong evidence that man descended
from many first parents {there's a word for it I believe but I can't
remember what it is). Then a Catholic would have to believe that the
scientific evidence was mistaken in some way. After all scientists talk
a lot of crap a lot of the time so that wouldn't be difficult would it?
The point is that no scientists [with the exception of Einsteinians
perhaps ;-) ] claim to be infallible so one is free to believe they
are mistaken without "resisting the known truth" - the unforgivable
sin against the Holy Ghost.
And if people want to believe that God made the world in 7 days, as we
understand days, and put all the geology, etc., there as a divine
practical joke, then good luck to them. After all God is God and to
him nothing is impossible or even difficult. He might have. I don't
think he did but then, "who has known the mind of God - who has
been his counselor."
That is about as clear as I can make it. 8-)
Cheers,
Frank Grimer
