This papal allocution addresses two distinct topics:

          Since what this Pope is saying here and now on science in the first and final part of his speech, especially when this is brought into relation with what the Papacy has pronounced on this topic all along, is of paramount importance for the true understanding of what is being said in the middle part, we will begin this commentary with line 9, section I, subsection B.

          As has been taught in the past by the Papacy, and will be stressed again here: science, by the very nature of its being and function, is unable to allocate to itself its place and role in God’s creation, the ‘whole’ of things. The view and understanding of the ‘whole’ comes from outside science, and the greater the complexity discovered by science, the more it is in need of ‘that greater something outside itself’ to view and understand correctly the significance of each individual part. Science may indeed be capable of finding better ways for ‘abortion’, but it should first know from outside itself WHAT IT IS that is being aborted ...

          For further enlightenment one is referred to the following words spoken by one of Pope John Paul II’s predecessors, His Holiness Pope Pius XII:

“As for the most essential problems of scientific knowledge of those whose amplitude embraces its entire realm, those minds which perceive them are, it seems to Us, relatively few in number, and We rejoice at the thought that you are among them. Has not science arrived at the point of demanding that our vision should penetrate readily the most profound realities, and rise to a complete and harmonious view of these in their wholeness?”

[Address to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Science., Modern science needs Philosophy, April 24, 1955].

          Here we see Pope Pius XII use exactly the same word as is being used by Pope John Paul II in line 9, and in exactly the same context!.

          The Pope clearly announces here that it is illogical to expect science to be capable of explaining the deep link between its own immediate object: the data of the material (‘visible’) world, and their invisible reality: their wholeness. He further states that this illogical character can be appreciated by scientists because it derives from, and is inherent in, their very procedure, the ‘scientific method’, which demands that, for the explanation of non-scientific matters (i.e. non-observable data), the scientist must go outside science, and so have access to meta - (i.e. ‘beyond’) scientific concepts. Finally he strongly implies that it is illogical for the Church to surrender Her dogmas to unfinished science, let alone to pseudo-science. (See lines 38, 39 and 40).

          However, he refuses to go into the matter right here other than by declaring in line 12 that they belong properly to the domain of philosophy, after which he proceeds to teach by way of example from line 13 to line 16, concluding once again by highlighting the need for philosophy in line 17. This sustained reference to the need of Philosophy, we may add, is the constant theme of the address by Pope Pius XII of April 24, 1955, from which the earlier quoted words as well as the following ones have been taken:

“The triumphs of science are themselves at the origin of the two requirements to which We alluded above.

The first task is to penetrate the intimate structure of material beings and to consider the problems connected with the substantial foundation of their being and of their action. The question then arises:

‘Can experimental science solve these problems by itself? Do they belong to its domain, and do they come within the field where its research methods can be applied?’

One must answer in the negative.

It is the method of science to take as its starting-point sensations which are external by their very nature, and through them, by means of the process of intelligence, it descends ever more deeply into the hidden recesses of things; but it must halt at a certain point, when questions arise which cannot be settled by means of sense observation.

When the scientist is interpreting experimental data and applying himself to explain phenomena that belong to material nature as such, he needs a light which proceeds in the inverse direction, from the absolute to the relative, from the necessary to the contingent, and which is capable of revealing to him this truth which science is unable to attain by its own methods since it entirely escapes the senses. This light is philosophy, that is, the science of general laws which apply to all beings and therefore hold too for the domain of natural sciences, above and beyond the laws discerned empirically.

The second requirement springs from the very nature of the human soul, which desires to have a coherent and unified view of truth. If one is satisfied with a juxtaposition of the various subjects of study and their ramifications, as in a kind of mosaic, one gets an anatomical composition of knowledge from which life seems to have departed. Man demands that a breath of living unity enliven the knowledge acquired. It is in this way that science becomes fruitful and culture begets an organic doctrine.

This raises a second question:

‘Can science, with the sole means characteristic of it, effect this universal synthesis of thought? And in any case, since knowledge is split up into innumerable sectors, which one, out of so many sciences, is the one capable of realising this synthesis?’

Here again we believe that the nature of science will not allow it to accomplish so universal a synthesis. This synthesis requires a solid and very deep foundation from which it derives its unity and which serves as a basis for the most general truths. The various parts of the edifice thus unified must find in that foundation the elements that make up their essence. A superior force is required for this: unifying by its universality, clear in its depth, solid by its character of absoluteness, efficacious by its necessity. Once again that force is philosophy.” [End of quote].

          We may be allowed to point out here, in support of both Popes, that, what belongs to the invisible (i.e. non-observable) substance, or nature, or essence, of things constitutes their innermost reality, and is ‘more real’ than their physical attributes, although it lies totally beyond sense perceptions. And so this innermost reality: this substance, nature or essence of all created things is impervious to science (is ‘meta- scientific’) but not beyond human knowledge and understanding. And thus it is the proper object of another discipline: philosophy.

          And both Holy Fathers, Pius XII in the above-quoted words and John Paul II in lines 18-21 link the awareness and the appreciation of the true nature of things, that which is ‘beyond science’, directly to the essential ingredient of culture. For culture to be true, it must be under the direct influence of the Ten Commandments, the Natural Law, true nature of intelligent creation. And once the sharers of that culture are under that benign and beneficial control, they must lift their culture even further by striving constantly for the higher truths. Science and technology cannot bring true culture because they are blind for the true natures of things and so altogether incapable of understanding the true nature of human beings, the “living being”, “man”, of line 15.

          As said before, for the evaluation of what comes next, it is essential that the reader keeps this constant papal teaching on the impotence of science uppermost in mind in an age which has saturated us with the blasphemous idea of the ‘omnipotence’ of ‘god-science’.

          After this introduction in his historic address to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II launches into the main part: Poupard’s report of the ‘Galileo case’, beginning with line 22.

          This calls for the following remark:

          This remains equally true in the case of the Commission having deliberately chosen to ignore facts and evidence, as well as in cases that its findings and conclusions are slanted, biased, superficial, even fraudulent or in any other way defective or deficient by wilful omissions or faulty interpretations.

          That we have reason to suspect a posteriori that some of the above-mentioned defects have actually taken place in the composition of the commission’s final report, in particular the withholding of known historical facts, and even their wilful suppression, will come out as our commentary goes along.

          As for an a priori foundation of our suspicions, the reader is referred back to what was discussed in Part One of this dossier.

          For a good understanding of what comes next, I will print lines 32 and 33 in full.

          It must now become obvious why in the previous pages so much was made of sustained papal teaching on science. There the Holy Father was not dealing with Paul Poupard’s report. But here, in dealing with the Galileo case, we have entered its mine- field. Is the ‘report’ dealing with ‘science’ in an identical way? ...

          And we must bear in mind that a Pope can never be deceived in matters of Faith nor can he ever be a deceiver.

          It is to be noted first of all that in line 32 the juxtaposition is not made between science and philosophy, or even between science and theology, but between science and the message of faith, the direct domain of papal authority. Consequently, in line 33, according to what is being stated here, (‘their’ referring to line 32) science is capable not only of imposing limits on philosophy or theology, ‘but on the message of Faith’. That is, science can force Catholic Faith to search for its own limitations. Of this St. Paul has declared:

“For Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the Good News (the Message of Faith) and not to preach that in the terms of philosophy in which the Crucifixion of Christ cannot be expressed.” [1 Cor. 1:17]

          If thus it is revealed truth that the message of Faith cannot be expressed in terms even of philosophy, then it certainly cannot be expressed in terms of ‘science’ which is subject to philosophy to even understand itself. Philosophy imposes limits on science! From this it follows immediately that science can never be in a position to dictate conditions to, let alone impose any limits on, Catholic Faith.

          Furthermore we know what has been declared by the Magisterium, the highest teaching authority in the Church:

          “Of defined doctrine of the Church”, (i.e. of the ‘message of Catholic Faith’):

          To this must be added what Pope John Paul II himself has stated at the beginning of his address in line 10 when he was not yet dealing with the Poupard report, that, even for the rigorous description and formalisation of the data of experience, the logic of the scientist’s procedure demands that he has access to meta-scientific concepts. From which we then drew the conclusion that it must be illogical to expect science to be capable of explaining even its own place in the nature of things. And from which the same logic now compels us to conclude with even greater force that this would render science altogether incapable of imposing limits on supernatural things. “Let no one presume to change it ... under the pretext of a new science!”

          Taking all these observations together, heaving especially in mind the sustained papal teaching on the limitations of science, and even on its impotence, it is obvious, therefore, that the Holy Father is reading here from a prepared text written by a Teilhardian with the future rehabilitation of Teilhard de Chardin uppermost in mind. And in lines 5, 25, 72 and 75, the Holy Spirit made His chosen instrument Pope John Paul II unmask the author of this text by making him point the finger directly to the man he had put in charge of the final coordination of this study commission, Cardinal Paul Poupard, Archbishop of Paris. But this appointment, whenever it may have taken place, could never be divorced from the historical events of 1981, the very year when the trust of the Holy Father had been betrayed on the day of the shooting, May 13. For it was on that day that Cardinal Paul Poupard became the recipient of a laudatory telegram sent by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli, congratulating him with the forthcoming centenary celebrations of the birth of the late Teilhard de Chardin, which had been strictly forbidden by Pope John Paul II barely two months earlier ...

          If, from the subsequent corrective action he took, the Holy Father showed the whole Church that he was fully aware of the duplicity that had taken place, why then did he see fit to appoint Cardinal Paul Poupard at the head of this sensitive commission for the final coordination of, and the subsequent reporting on, its findings?

          Let us thank the Holy Spirit that the Pope had the wisdom and the foresight to do so by considering the following.

          If a man above reproach had been appointed, and another betrayal of trust would subsequently have taken place, it would maybe not have been all that hard to uncover, but would have been exceedingly hard to pinpoint and to bring home to a particular individual.

          If however an untrustworthy teilhardian is placed in this particular position of trust, there are, in theory and in reality, two possible outcomes.

          By reading the speech substantially as it had been prepared for him by the head of the Commission in line with its findings, the Holy Father has truly solved the problem for us by letting the whole Church know that a third betrayal of trust has indeed taken place. And the whole Church is now placed in the best possible position to ascertain what we said in our remark after line 28: how well do the findings of the commission stand up against the inexorable Truth of Tradition and of any historical facts?

          Bearing in mind then what we have said before: that the exclusive use of the Papacy is the dissemination of truth as seen in the 1ight of the Holy Spirit, let us now go and find out how the Holy Spirit fouled up Cardinal Poupard’s commission, by examining how well, what this commission presented to the Holy Father, as reflected in his speech, squares off with the known historical facts of “the Galileo Case”. This we do on the force by which Pope Pius XII wrote in Humani Generis (1950):

“He (the Christian) will weigh it (the latest fantasy) carefully ... making sure that he does not lose hold of the truth already in his possession or contaminate it in any way ...”

          What occupies us here are the answers to the following two questions:

Answer to (i).

          NO. Not according to the present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. Here the reader is once again referred to what the Holy Father said in lines 38, 39 and 40 of his address to the PAS.

          And again, NO. Not according to the historical truths that lie irrefutably exposed in the pages of history.

          For a good understanding of this it is necessary to review in some detail

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM

          Books have been written about it. Of the welter of information contained therein, Poupard has refused to submit to the Holy Father the most salient historical facts which alone, in their accuracy, are capable of shedding the most brilliant light on “the Galileo case” as it was seen and appreciated by the Holy See and seen through the far-seeing eyes of God’s chosen instrument at that time, St. Robert Bellarmine.

1.       The one whose name has been given to it, Nicholas Koppernigk, a Canon of the chapter of Frauenburg cathedral on the Baltic coast, and author of The book of the Revolutions refused all his life to publish it knowing it to be unsound. It was finally published by his friends, and the first copy was presented to him the day he died of cerebral haemorrhage. Laid on his death bed, all he could do was stroke it ...

          This was the year 1543, 21 years before the birth of Galileo Galilei, who was 7 years old when Kepler was born.

2.       The Copernican System is a purely abstract mathematical model composed of highly imaginary epicycles for the paths of some of the planets and, needless to say, totally devoid of any semblance of reality.

          Some 30 years earlier the Canon had allowed an abridged version of his book to appear, but only handwritten and sent to a highly selective group of scientists. Its impact was dismal, but it became the cause of rumour and hearsay, the stuff that the enemies of the Church forge their weapons from.

          This abridged version contains Copernicus’ 7 Revolutionary Axioms, with 7 short descriptions without proof or mathematical demonstrations. The few selective readers who had access to it, were referred “to his forthcoming book” for the latter. They had to wait for 30 years. The last paragraph of the treatise proudly announces:

“Thus Mercury runs on 7 circles in all; Venus on 5; the Earth on 3, and around it the Moon on 4; and finally Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on 5 each. Altogether, therefore, 34 circles suffice to explain the entire structure of the Universe and the entire ballet of the planets.”

          It is absolutely essential for the understanding of the future controversy that good notice is taken of this tally of ‘altogether 34 circles suffice’. For the ‘abridged version’ appears to have merely been an optimistic preliminary announcement. When the good Canon gets down to detail in his Revolutions, he was forced to add more and more wheels to his machinery and the number of epicycles grew to 48! And nowhere in his book does Copernicus either give an explanation for the discrepancy or a retraction of the original miscalculations. Even men of science show unwittingly that they never read The Book of Revolutions if they only adhere to ‘34 circles’ ...

          Needless to emphasise already here right at the beginning, when there was absolutely no animosity around, that no self-respecting Church could ever contemplate to allow Dogma and Exegesis to give way before the claims of such a scientific non-starter.

3.       The Copernican system has no physical centre ...

          How maddeningly frustrating the Book of Revolutions is, comes clearly to light from the following:

          Copernicus’ book begins with a broad outline of the theory. This synopsis occupies less than 20 pages, or about 5% of the whole. And the remaining 95% consists of the application of the theory. And when that is completed there is hardly anything left of the original doctrine: it has, so to speak, destroyed itself in the process ... At the beginning of the book Copernicus had stated:

“... in the midst of all dwells the sun, the centre of the universe. Sitting on the royal throne he rules the family of planets which turn around him .... We find in this arrangement an admirable harmony of the world.”

          But in Book III, when it comes to reconciling the doctrine with actual observation, the earth no longer turns around the sun, but round a point in space removed from the sun by a distance of about 3 times the sun’s diameter. Nor do the planets revolve around the sun - as every schoolboy believes that Copernicus taught. The planets move on epicycles of epicycles, centred not on the sun, but on the centre of the EARTH’s orbit. Thus there are two ‘royal thrones’: the sun, and that imaginary point in space around which the earth moves. The year, that is the duration of the earth’s complete revolution round the Sun, has a decisive influence on the motions of all other planets. In short, the earth appears equal in importance in governing the solar system to the sun itself.

          No wonder the poor Canon ended up pleasing no one: neither Aristotelian cosmology, nor the Ptolemaic System, nor the reconciliation of these two, nor, as is infinitely more important, KEPLER.

4.       No ecclesiastical animosity.

          Now, after 450 years of controversy surrounding the Galileo case, it is almost as impossible to visualise the total absence of any ecclesiastical animosity against the man who held and discreetly diffused his researches, as it is to accept that there was actual ecclesiastical encouragement, even insistence, to publish them! For the Churchmen knew as well as Copernicus himself, that the scholarly Canon was neither the first man on earth to hold such ideas nor the only one who was engaged in their research at that time. If ‘the Copernican system’ spread by osmosis, this was not the wish of the Church. For the Church has nothing to fear from genuine scientific research ...

5.       Galileo never read Copernicus’ book ...

          At least not before his two ‘trials’. All his life this mathematician from Padua shared the same fear as the timid Canon: the fear of ridicule, “of being hissed off the stage” as he puts it himself. Neither did Galileo ever bother to read Kepler’s works containing the latter’s discoveries of the three laws of planetary motion.

6.       Galileo was no astronomer.

          This is revealed by the first recorded contact between Galileo and Kepler, a - for the ‘Galileo case’ - most important letter Galileo wrote to thank Kepler for his book, Cosmic Mystery. The letter, dated August 4, 1597, is highly revealing for several reasons. But, when compared with a 1606 manuscript of a treatise written by Galileo for private circulation amongst pupils and friends, the letter is no longer only ‘highly revealing’, but becomes positively shattering ... (The reader is referred to Appendix A for part of this letter). The letter is important for several reasons.

          Firstly, by showing the fact that Galileo accepted Kepler’s first book, an astronomical hoax, at face value, the letter strengthens the conviction of many moderns, that Galileo was not a real astronomer at all but simply one who, amongst other things, trained his ‘spy-glass’ on the sky and discovered various curios. He never left us a ‘system’, never did any calculations, held firmly to Copernicus’ impossible system in private, taught its opposite in public, and even his sparse star maps are grossly inaccurate. His undoubted talents lay altogether elsewhere.

7.       Galileo was highly contradictory.

          “For many years” he was a self-professed convert to the Copernican system in strict privacy, but a public refuter of the system in his university lectures.

          Secondly, the letter to Kepler provides us with conclusive evidence that Galileo had become a convinced Copernican in his early years without ever having read the Canon’s book ... He was 33 when he wrote the letter to Kepler, 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, 16 years after his letter to Kepler, when Galileo was 49 years of age. Through all these years he not only taught, in his public 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, he adduced all the traditional arguments against the earth’s motion, arguments which, if the 1597 letter to Kepler 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, then calmly announces his intention and his practice of suppressing Truth.

          Why, in contrast to Kepler, but in line with Canon Koppernigk, was he so afraid of publishing his opinions? He had, at that time, no more reason to fear religious persecution than Copernicus had. In Copernicus’ own day, Catholics were favourably inclined towards him, going by the fact that Cardinal Schoenberg and Bishop Giese had urged him to publish his book. Twenty years after its publication, the Council of Trent redefined Church doctrine, but it had nothing to say against the heliocentric system of the universe. Galileo himself 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.

          This Galileo refused to do ...

8.       The Copernican model is not a heliocentric system.

          Apart from the impossibility of “epicycles on epicycles” as physical quantities with regard to planetary motion: contrary to the most persistent popular (and as it turns out, also academic) belief, both now as in the time of the Renaissance, the Copernican system is not a truly heliocentric system as Canon Koppernigk distinctly teaches that the sun (‘helios’ in Greek) is not the centre of the planets’ orbits. Neither is this true for their elliptical paths in the calculations of Kepler.

9.       Galileo’s downfall.

          Although he had access to Kepler’s rigorous mathematical calculations since the year of their publication, 1609, Galileo ignored them and began to insist in earnest around 1616, and persisted until after 1633, that the Holy Church should modify Her theology and exegesis precisely, and exclusively on the strength of this impossible mathematical and scientific non-starter, the Copernican system, without any need for proof. Luckily for him, Galileo not only had the greatest Catholic mind of the day as opponent to these preposterous extortions but also one of the greatest Saints of the Renaissance as friend to guide him back to sanity and to the road to Heaven!

Answer to (ii) above.

          None of these historically verifiable data come out in the address of the Holy Father on October 31, 1992. So we must assume that they have been deliberately suppressed from the ‘ten year findings’ of the papal commission and were consequently omitted from the ‘report’ handed to the Holy Father, from which the papal speech was subsequently prepared ...

          Only Teilhardians need the corrupted version of the ‘Galileo case’ for the ‘restoration’ of their fallen idol, Teilhard de Chardin. But since it is public knowledge that

(1)     the Holy Father, two months before the May 13 shooting in St. Peter’s Square, expressly forbade the sending of any laudatory telegram from the Vatican to Card. Poupard on the occasion of his preparations for the centenary celebrations of Teilhard de Chardin’s birth, and

(2)     the Holy Father personally ordered the public correction in the Osservatore Romano of the laudatory telegram that was sent in his name on the day of the shooting by his secretary of State, Card. Casaroli, to the Archbishop of Paris, Card. Paul Poupard, by the forced inclusion of Pope John XXIII’s 1962 Monita against Teilhard de Chardin,

we have enough information to know for certain that the Holy Father is not a Teilhardian, and that he is not in favour of Paul Poupard’s strategy of having a slanted report serve the rehabilitation of one Teilhard de Chardin ...

We continue to search out what Card. Poupard’s commission submitted to the Holy Father as revealed by the latter’s speech.

          But it is also here that we pick up the deadly weapon given to us by Thomism and the Papacy: theory is open to reinterpretation in the light of evidence and known facts. Knowing the full force and weight of this, Paul Poupard’s commission has been at pains to distort and suppress known historical facts and evidence in relation to the Galileo case just as, during that same time span, the 1980s, his Institut Catholique on his orders had suppressed the mounting evidence of Fr. Carmignac’s research.

          This ‘message’ must be weighed against overwhelming facts to the contrary.

          The Church of all times has no problem whatsoever either with true science or with pseudo-science. If She listens attentively to true science, She makes short shrift with scientism.

          Her greatest champion in Galileo’s days, St. Robert Bellarmine, had no problem with Galileo’s pseudo-science, the Copernican system. He simply refused to accept this unproven attempt as an issue fit for demanding a change in Catholic teaching. Why? Let us go to a few admissions in Pope John Paul’s address.

          Galileo stands before the Bar of History with a ‘system’ that is not only in reality, but even mathematically untenable, physically absurd and astronomically impossible.

          He stands before the Bar of History as a living contradiction: a man who claims that privately he was a convinced Copernican for years while teaching its opposite in public.

          He stands before the Bar of History as being no astronomer ...

          He stands before the Bar of History as unwilling to make the necessary and correct distinctions, as refusing to present an impossible system merely as a working hypothesis against the urgent requirements of the experimental method he is supposed to have ‘invented’.

          Against all this welter of scientific and historical evidence, Paul Poupard’s commission dares to assert as its ‘findings’: “that it was the theologians who had the problem”.

          Let us be grateful to Almighty God that, on the claims and insistence of the historical figure who gave his name to this case, ‘the Galileo case’, that central to that case on his own insistence, is a mathematical chimera, a physical absurdity and an astronomical impossibility: the Copernican system ...

          After all the obstacles have been removed in the ten years it took to fabricate the report, the final slip-in now is to baptise the pseudo-science of ‘the Copernican system’ and to call it loosely by its new name: “the new science ...” This is necessary to make out that, after 450 years, and after the suppression of historical facts that could be held up against this, “the new science” has acquired enough status in the intervening period of time to claim what St. Robert Bellarmine would not allow it to claim: the right to impose limits on the message of Faith ...

          St. Bellarmine was correct when he reassured theologians not to feel obliged to take a non-science as a serious threat to Catholic theology, exegesis and Faith.

          That is why the first ‘trial’ of Galileo was of such great importance: St. Bellamine made the Church’s principle crystal clear that no theologian needed to feel ashamed or guilty if he was unable to answer the preposterous demands and claims made by Galileo, since they came from a totally unproven ‘science’. If the Church was prepared to wait until proof was forthcoming, why should ordinary theologians be blamed if they followed that wise lead and refused to be drawn into futile arguments which centred mainly around the hypothetical postulates of a pseudo-science? Exactly as is now the case with ‘evolution’. But just as in the early 17th century Galileo Galilei would leave no stone unturned to have the Copernican system accepted by the Church as a genuine fact of science without the cumbersome necessity of providing proof, so now will the Teilhardians and Modernists resort to anything, even to the falsification of reports to the Holy Father, to see evolution accepted as “the new science” in line with line 43.

          And so we could go on. The central message of this ‘report’, as reflected in the papal speech, appears to be that Galileo was right and the theologians were wrong, that Galileo “showed himself more perceptive in this regard than the theologians” (line 45). Nowhere are the theologians given the right, not even with the exclusion of St. Robert Bellarmine, to distance themselves from the debate because of its futility inherent in its false premises. This becomes especially clear in line

          And now comes the rub. According to Poupard and what his ‘commission’ uncovered from a totally biased and slanted Galileo case, such a new-comer acquires automatically an inherent right to demand that the Church clarifies Her position towards it, or leaves the whole field by default to “this new movement”, exactly as Galileo had put this to St. Bellarmine, for which the Saint gently but ever so sternly rebuked him.

          Meanwhile, the language of the commission’s report to the Holy See, as reflected in the papal speech, becomes more demanding:

          Something St. Robert Bellarmine refused point blanc to hold the Holy Catholic Church bounded to.

          Neither ‘the Copernican revolution’ nor ‘evolution’ can, not even with the wildest stretch of the imagination, be called a datum, a proven scientific fact. And so pastoral prudence requires that their inherent contradiction of the truths of faith be sternly dismissed as not coming from true science.

+

          After I had reprinted the speech line by line, it may strike the thoughtful reader as it struck me that, first of all, ‘the Galileo case’ was presented extremely slanted and biased. That put me immediately on guard: here was a deliberate effort being made to tie the Holy Father to a particular viewpoint, and a false one at that. This led very quickly to two conclusions:

          But there is more to the commission’s document than bias, suppression and slanted reporting. According to what the Holy Father read out, it contains contradictions. In lines 38, 39 and 40, the Pope clearly announces, in line with St. Robert Bellarmine, that Galileo had not produced ‘a new science’. What he brought up lacked all the criteria of a rigorous, irrefutable and proven reality, and could at most only be classed as a theory, which, again according to the Pope, Galileo refused to do. Yet all through the report it is referred to as ‘the new science’, not only demanding that the Church made Her attitude to this new science known, but also demanding that She accommodates to it the teaching of the message of Faith (lines 32 and 33).

          Studying the ‘report’ from this angle soon revealed the ‘ulterior motives’ of the commission: there was a hell of a lot more in it than just Galileo. It was crammed with all the things a Teilhardian like Poupard would love to hear the Pope proclaim. These I have enumerated. To Poupard’s commission, the ‘Galileo case’ is nothing but a lever to achieve another ‘rehabilitation’.

          Thus I was slowly led to the full glory of our Catholic Faith in the Papacy as expressed above, and what it is exactly that the Holy Spirit reveals by such a speech and by such attempts at subversion. And how tables are being turned on teilhardian conspirators through the line-by-line fine tuning of the exact steps by which apostasy and transition into the One-World ‘church’ are being envisaged by them. All we have to do is study those areas carefully, now that we have been officially warned by the Holy Spirit and His infallible instrument.

          Thus the important things the Teilhardians wanted to be read out by a Pope were indeed read out, but for a totally different purpose than they had originally intended. They were not taught: they were exposed with the infallible authority of the Holy See by the Only One Who has exclusive use over that See and its genuine occupant. We are now in the possession of a blueprint of subversion, drawn up by Teilhardians, but, at their own behest yet to their everlasting downfall, they were held up to the Church by none other than the Holy Father.

          Only a Pope could read this out to us. No one below him would have the authority. And then it would no longer matter if he told each one of us individually in name of the Holy Catholic Church, or else if he told the whole Church in name of the Holy Spirit. Either the Holy Church had known all along and now has made it known to us through Her visible head, or else the Holy Spirit alone knew, and has now made it known to the whole Church through the Pope.

          In such a scenario the whole question of true science and true exegesis is saved, that is, they are being preserved from becoming vehicles for this transition into apostasy.

          To highlight to the reader how tremendously important to Teilhardians the Galileo case is in their all-out drive to see any ‘science’ accepted as the number one power to limit the message of faith, I conclude this dossier with two quotes from Archbishop R. Weakland.

          The first one of these appeared in the New Yorker of July 15, 1992:

“The major issue facing the Church is Sexuality: that is ‘the big one’. We still have not come to terms with it all. Our scientific understanding is still rudimentary. Normal sex drives, homosexuality, paedophilia, contraception - the fact that science can control or modify human reproduction. It is a great and frightening frontier, the Galileo case of our day. And the Church is reluctant to accept the results of the human sciences: instead it harks back to the days when you could say, ‘This is black, this is white; this right, this wrong’.”

That is the American voice of betrayal ...

          But here we have it echoed, undiluted and in a nutshell, what Card. Poupard made the Holy Father read out for the advancement of ... what? If this must be called ‘betrayal’ here, then Poupard’s effort must also be branded as the European voice for the advancement of betrayal. However, by the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit, this became instead the exact opposite: the Holy Church making her visible head read it all out, word for word, for the exposure of betrayal ...

          If that was the American voice of betrayal before the Holy Father gave his Galileo speech in 1992, then how does that voice now sound?

          Here it is, taken from the editorial in The New York Times of December 6, 1992, which may truly be called his ‘manifesto of apostasy’. This reprint is from The Wanderer, December 17, 1992.

“... Weakland also referred to the Holy See’s recent pronouncements on the Galileo case as ‘a symbol of such a new peace treaty’ with the modern world, and asserted that women’s ordination could be its ‘new Galileo’, a situation that could be avoided if the Church accepts ‘the new insights of anthropology, psychology, and sociology’ embraces ‘the startling discoveries of science’ and takes a ‘growing leadership role - equally through its female and male believers in the new global culture’. Such a project must be ecumenical and interfaith.”

          So there it is. The final ‘dénouement’ of the whole teilhardian revolt: the Church being ‘reminded’ of this new teaching, and the Holy Father being, quoted as having recently taught this new teaching, that everything: Faith, the Sacraments, teaching, Church and culture are ultimately all controlled by ‘science’. Just as Poupard ‘discovered’, according to his final ‘report’, that it was only after the Church had accepted this ‘fact-of-life’, that finally the dust had been allowed to settle on the first Galileo case ...
          “You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust every day of your life” [Gen. 3:14].

          If the Holy Father is bound to follow in his Master’s footsteps all along the Via Dolorosa of Our Lord’s Passion, then he will look weak. but he will again be stronger than any other man on earth. Anyone who will allow himself to be deceived by this appearance of ‘weakness’ will desert him. Anyone who will allow himself to be led into thinking, that this ‘weakness’ must now be taken as a reversal of his former strength, will be scandalised by the Holy Father and because of that will part company with him in his incomprehension.

          If now the Holy Father is following in Christ’s footsteps, then this can only be because it is the Church’s wish to suffer that same fate, crown of thorns and all. He is the visible and accurate barometer of the Church’s mystical passion. But we should not only watch this barometer: we should be part of its graduations. Our Lord’s Passion was surrounded by incomprehension and by pure mischief-making. So will the Church’s, the Holy Father’s, and ours ...

+

Part of Galileo’s letter to KEPLER, August 4, 1597.

“... and indeed I congratulate myself on having an associate in the study of Truth who is a friend of the Truth ... but to congratulate you on the ingenious arguments you found in proof of the Truth ... I promise to read your book in tranquillity, certain to find the most admirable things in it, and this I shall do the more gladly, as I adopted the teaching of Copernicus many years ago, and this point of view enables me to explain many phenomena in nature ... I have written many arguments in support of him and in refuting the opposite view, which however I have not dared to bring into the public light, frightened by the fate of our teacher, Copernicus himself, who, though he acquired immortal fame with some, is yet to an infinite multitude of others an object of ridicule and derision.”

          The reader is reminded that Kepler’s book referred to here is not his master-piece, A New Astronomy, which was published 12 years later in 1609 and contained the first two of his laws of planetary motion. (The third law was published in 1619). The book referred to here was an example of Kepler’s lifelong ‘dream world’, Cosmic Mystery, in which, at the age of 26, he tried to prove that there can only be 6 planets because there are only 5 Pythagorean solids and, placed in a circle, 5 intervals between them, into each one Kepler puts, with the greatest of labours, a different solid, his scientific hoax.

Excerpts from the Letter of Card. Bellarmine to Fr. Paul Anthony Foscarini, O. Carm. of April 12, 1615.

My Very Rev. Father,

          “... As you ask for my opinion, I will give it ...

          First. It seems to me that your Reverence and Signor Galileo would act prudently were you to content yourselves by speaking hypothetically and not absolutely, as I have always believed that Copernicus spoke. To say that on the supposition of the earth’s movement and the sun’s immobility all the celestial appearances are better explained than by the theory of eccentrics and epicycles, is to speak with excellent good sense and to run no risk whatever. Such a manner of speaking is enough for a mathematician ...

          Second, As you are aware, the Council of Trent forbids the interpretation of the Scriptures in a way contrary to the common opinion of the holy Fathers ...

          Third. If there were a real proof that the sun is in the centre of the universe, that the earth is in the third sphere and that the sun does not go round the earth, but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me. Nor is a proof that, if the sun be supposed at the centre of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, the celestial appearances are thereby explained, equivalent to a proof that the sun actually is in the centre and the earth in the third sphere. The first kind of proof might, I believe, be found, but as for the second kind, I have the very gravest doubts, and in the case of doubt we ought not to abandon the interpretation of the sacred text as given by the holy Fathers ...”

[From Robert Bellarmine, Saint and Scholar, 1961, by James Broderick, S.J.].

          From the quotes which appear in this paper
          it has become manifest that the sentiments expressed in this letter
          are those of the papacy in general
          and of Pope Pius XII in particular.

          In 1991 I wrote a little booklet called The Hedge of the Vine. The inspiration to write it came from a text found in Aeterni Patris an encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 for the timely restoration of the serious study of the ‘Everlasting Philosophy’ of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is in this encyclical that this far-sighted Holy Father graces the power and clear-thinking of this pinnacle of human thinking with this glorious name: “the Hedge of the Vine”.

          The Vine is pure and childlike Faith in God, planted by God on earth in Paradise, when He infused this supernatural, precious Gift in our Proto-Parents from the moment of their first and spotless existence. After the First Lapse this hardy yet delicate Vine was preserved in ‘the strain of God’; was carried by Noah over the waters of the Flood and beyond, until it received its deepest roots yet in the Faith of Abraham. From then on it blossomed out in the Jewish salvation history until it peaked at its all-time high: the Faith of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the New Eve producing in Her virginal womb the New Adam of the Redemption, the Son of God Himself. From then on it bore fruit in abundance all over the world in the never-ending riches of the Faith of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, created in the image and likeness of the Holy Mother of God.

          In this way the ‘hedge’ becomes “the love of Truth” by which the human mind surrounds and shields the Vine, protecting it as by an impenetrable bulwark. Of this ‘love of Truth’ St. Paul has sounded the dire warning for those who are found without it in the time of Antichrist:

“... for they did not possess the ‘love of Truth’ which could have saved them.” [2 Thess. 2:10].

          By accepting the frightful lies and deceptions of Satan and of the world at that time as truth, they dismantled their hedge and exposed their Vine ... with the dire consequence that another warning of Sacred Scripture finds its fulfilment in their new existence:

“He that uproots a hedge, a snake will bite him.” [Eccl.10:18].

          And we all know what ‘serpent’ the Holy Bible is talking about here: the one that bit Eve, when she helped him to uproot the ‘hedge’ of her clear thinking around the Vine of Her Supernatural Faith in God ... !

          From this little book I may be allowed to quote the following few lines in defence of this present paper:

          As these pages have made clear, anything or anyone who wishes to have access to the ‘Vine’ i.e. the Faith of a Catholic, is first referred to the ‘Gate in the Hedge’. There, in the presence of Christ ‘Who is both the Gate and the Truth’, credentials are checked by the glorious human intellect against truths already ascertained. As Pope Pius XII puts it:

“... so as not to light on something which contradicts truths already ascertained. The Christian will weigh the latest fantasy carefully, making sure that he does not lose hold of truths already in his possession, or contaminate them in any way with great danger and perhaps great loss to the Faith itself.” [Humani Generis].

          And if anything is being proposed that does contradict any truth, whether ordinary or Revealed, already in a Catholic’s possession, it will be barred at the gate.

          Now comes the crunch!

          In order to get yet into that Catholic’s mind what has been rejected at the gate, violence will have to be done to the intellect which by nature is attuned only to the truth. And that is how the hedge gets pulled up by the owner with the help of his outside ‘friends’; how the Vine gets exposed and trampled underfoot, and how the owner’s mind and Faith get bitten by a snake ... or as Pope Pius XII put it: become contaminated.

          But there is one exception.

          There is one person on earth for whom, if he presents himself at the gate, even Our Lord steps back to let him in without the checking of credentials. There is one person on earth who has direct access to the Vine, because he will never do violence to it! And if this man by the name of “Peter the Rock” firmly declares “that the use of contraceptives is intrinsically evil” then he is allowed to come in and graft this information onto the Vine. And instead of him giving reasons to the intellect, the human mind will accept the new belief, will continue its role, and, as the hedge of the Vine, will find reasons to defend the new graft on the Vine. And if this same man presents himself again, and declares “that the Novus Ordo Missae is the new format of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for our times” then we know that he says that with the authority of the Man at the Gate, Who let him in because the information carried by ‘Peter the Rock’ is completely in tune with the Truth the Man at the gate happens to be in Person.
[End of quote from The Hedge of the Vine].

          And so, on the 31st of October, 1992, the Holy Father presented himself once again at the gate of my hedge with information he knew could not possibly be grafted onto the Vine of Faith in a Catholic’s mind, since, as Pope Pius XII had said, it contained things “contradicting truths already ascertained” So, at his own invitation, I sat with him there and then, going through his ‘Galileo speech’ line by line.

          Several difficulties against this procedure could be raised here. Some of the usual ones could be:

1.        If the Holy Father wanted the contents of his Galileo address carefully weighed “so as not to contaminate truths already in a Catholic’s possession”, why then did he not say openly and plainly what this paper assumes was the thrust of his Galileo address?

2.        How can anyone avoid the trap of sitting in private judgement over what the Holy Father says?

3.        Where is, with a paper like this one presented here, our safety shelter of final recourse: that we take what the Holy Father says without questioning? “You know what I mean! That saying about when the Holy Father declares ‘white’ what we may think is ‘black’ ...”.

          No. 1 I dismiss as un-thomistic. We can never fruitfully argue about a non-reality, about something that did not happen. We only have as fact the reality of his speech as it was given. Only that can fruitfully be the centre of discussion. We may speculate over this fact, ponder about e.g. why the Holy Father did say what he said. But we may not dismiss an ordinary analysis simply because it does not address itself to an alternative that did not take place.

          If then someone insists: “OK, I accept that, but then let me reframe the question from the negative to the positive: Why then did the Holy Father, according to your paper, say in a roundabout sort of a way what your paper claims he did say?”

          Before the obvious answer will be given, let it first be pointed out that going through a papal speech line-by-line is not an insult to the Holy Father: it is honouring him! It shows that what he has to say is considered important enough to deserve very careful attention and study.

          Had he publicly dismissed the findings of the Poupard commission on Galileo as they deserve to be dismissed, there would have followed - in the hostile climate and mistrust caused by rampant Modernism within the confines of the Holy Church today - at least ten years of endless arguments and bitter bickering over which aspects of the findings he did not like. Under the circumstances it would be far better to show the whole Church: “Listen to this! This is the package I received from my Galileo commission”. Those who understand him perfectly only need ‘half a word’. And all those Modernists and Teilhardians who are too stupid to see that they have been had, cannot blame him for what he did: he did exactly what they expected him to do, he read out what was given to him ...

          No. 3 is easy to deal with: I do not question what Pope John Paul II said in his Galileo speech. Much of what this address contains had already been held up as ‘black’, i.e. untrue, by well-known facts of history, or by the Church through Her previous Popes or Councils. My paper agrees with this, it brings that out. And so I remain adamant that no Pope is now, or ever was, or ever will be, declaring ‘white’ what other Popes have declared ‘black’. I did not query a single statement: I only attached to it the verdict of history; either well-known historical facts, or well-known historical teaching.

          That leaves No. 2: the question of ‘sitting in private judgement over what the Holy Father teaches’.

          Whenever the Holy Father teaches, he teaches the truth, addressing both the intellect as well as the Catholic Faith of his flock. These truths must he understood, accepted and believed. I will never hold that the Holy Father did not teach in his Galileo address. But if he did not teach the lies, deceptions and suppression of known historical facts and of known papal teaching as were contained in the Poupard report, he must have taught something else.

          This time, when Pope John Paul II presented himself at the gate of my hedge, the cargo he brought with him had a definite smell about it. But refusing to do what so many other Catholics may have done in this case: take a cursory look at his Galileo address and then show a hasty disinterest and a speedy forgetfulness in order to avoid an acute mental conflict, I not only let him in, but I did him the honour of sitting with him to go through his Galileo address line by line, in order to fully understand which Truth he was teaching, and exactly which truth he wanted me to accept and believe. In the full knowledge that he would never graft onto my Vine as true what had previously been taught as not being true, either by his own mouth or, what is the same, by the mouth of the Papacy and of the Councils of the Holy Church, I was assured that the exercise would be totally free from any acute mental trauma.

          Must it now be taken that it would have been better not to have looked too closely at the Holy Father’s Galileo address so as to avoid an acute mental conflict? The conflict of having to accept that the lies and the suppression of truth held up in this address have somehow acquired the status of being true, because, being read out by the Pope to the whole Church, they have taken on the appearance of being somehow taught by him? (Weakland). Is it necessary to feel unhappy or uneasy when his Galileo address is studied closely? Could it be that the decision not to look too closely is due to the fact that a private ‘tranquilliser’ has been found assuring the soul that, what formerly was held up to us as ‘lies’, has for some mysterious reason somehow ceased to be lies? If (from a cursory acquaintance with this Galileo address) a Catholic acquired a premonition of an impending conflict between the general principle “of always adhering to what the Holy Father teaches” and faith in the individual propositions contained in this address, then such a Catholic could take refuge in the decision of not wanting to know exactly what the Holy Father is saying, so as to avoid having to make an act of faith in what he is saying. This would prevent a Catholic from coming to the defence of either the person of the Holy Father or of his teaching. All that such an escape from reality would do would be to act as a kind of ‘cushioning’. However, it is certainly not thomistic to avoid precision-of-knowledge to obviate having to make painful decisions about individual sentences read out by the Pope, allowing a blanket principle, the one of blindly adhering to what the Holy Father proposes, to be wrongly invoked when closer study would have revealed that in this case the Holy Father had something different in mind. Faith in abstract principles is alright, but this breaks down if they are being invoked (preferred) as mere expediency, so the need of having to deal with a painful but concrete reality can be avoided.

          I am fiercely convinced that lies will never be grafted on my Vine either by the Holy Spirit or by the Holy Church or by the Pope. And so I could safely admit the Holy Father within the confines of my hedge, and sit with him, going through his Galileo speech line-by-line without any fear that any attempt would be made to graft onto my Vine what previously had been held up by the Holy Church as being not true. And so it simply became a very interesting and very precious mental exercise. And the Pope’s message was:

This is the package I received from Cardinal Paul Poupard and from my Galileo commission. If anyone else had given it to you, you would have rejected it for its obvious bias and lies. But now that I have gone through the humiliation of reading it out to you, now I can tell you ‘Watch out’! For, going by American and European voices, these are the things which Teilhardians find important, and these are the things by which innocent souls will be seduced to leave the Holy Catholic Church to find themselves transferred into the One-World ‘Church of Darkness’ of which my holy predecessor Pope St. Pius X spoke in 1910 ...

          And since this was the truth, I allowed him to graft this message onto my Vine ...

          Many examples can be quoted in John Paul II’s pontificate of this highly successful indirect way in which this Pope deals with explosive issues. It is certainly not out of character (and I could almost add: for this accomplished actor) to be quite deadly with what looks at first glance to be no blow at all. We may be allowed here to point to the action the Holy See took when RENEW was at its height. Had the Holy Father met the deadly poison head-on there would have been endless bickering between the Papacy and the National Episcopal Conferences over which aspects of RENEW the Holy See took exception to. Instead, at the height of the oil slick, the Vatican issued a little study called Report on Sects, Cults and New Religions Movements, which quite clearly contained the message:

          Catholics of the world. If you find operating in your neighbourhood a sect, cult or ‘new religious movement’ with the objectionable characteristics as set out and discussed in this Report, be on your guard and have nothing further to do with their aims and objectives nor with their recruiting methods.

          It killed RENEW without even once mentioning the program by name ...

          We may take it then, that even in his style of teaching, our present Holy Father is guided by the Holy Spirit.

          Finally, what must be our response?

          Here, as good Thomists, we must first make a distinction. It is very necessary to distinguish here between method and content. Even if the Holy Father’s style may at times be indirect, his message is anything but! We must not forget that actor Karol Wojtyla got his training in being direct by indirect means in identical hostile surroundings in which now Pope John Paul II finds himself. A training in method and style to pass on vital information, life-giving truths ...

          If someone can be as direct as this Holy Father can be by indirect methods, let him or her go right ahead, as long as it does not adversely affect the message of truth. In the Pope’s case we have that guarantee. Have we got that same guarantee in anybody else’s case?

          If Weakland quotes the Holy Father’s Galileo address to make an unholy breach for a patent untruth, it will obviously lead to his own downfall. For the Holy Father has been protected by the Holy Spirit against having taught what Weakland claims he taught. In anyone else’s case it would be very difficult to establish the same degree of protection by the Holy Spirit, if indirect methods of teaching were being applied. If the Holy Father holds up a lie, we have the guarantee, which nobody else enjoys that he is not teaching it, but is merely quoting it for some other very obvious reason which is bound to come to light after careful study, which will make it plain why a direct rebuttal would have done more harm than good.

          This careful study we owe to him as his dear and faithful children.

          With this I hope I have put the finishing touches to the very difficult question of the papal Galileo speech.

F. Albers, Ph.B.
May, 1993 / December 1999.