W. Sungenis/Palm on Anfossi-Settele and Bruno, part I of V

Proemium : With Sungenis on Settele-Anfossi Affair · W. Sungenis/Palm on Anfossi-Settele and Bruno : part I of V · part II of V · part III of V · part IV of V · part V of V

I

Sungenis to me

10/04/15 à 17h59

Re: Reading but not bed time

Yes, in bad health, and Olivieri knew it. He was also understood as a weak pope who did not have the verve to fight, in addition to the fact that the Settele affair was only six years after Pius VII had been returned to the Vatican after being in exile in Florence under orders of Napoleon. Add to this the fact that Napoleon had taken all the Galileo files back to Paris and they were not returned until 1845, and add to that Olivieri's two whopping lies about why the 1616 and 1633 Church condemned Galileo, along with Pius VII's total lack of scientific knowledge, and you have a recipe for disaster.

All this information, by the way, comes from the top Galileo historians: Mayaud, Finochiarro and Fantoli.

Blessed Easter to you as well

Robert

II

Me to Sungenis, cc David Palm

10/04/15 à 18h49

Re: Reading but not bed time

Our dear David Palm - hello by the way, not leaving you out - found you had miscited Mayaud as all court feeling Olivieri was dishonest etc while DP reads Mayaud as saying all court felt Anfossi was dishonest etc.

If Pius VII was weak, having all of the court against himself, except Anfossi, would have been even more daunting than having just Olivieri, right?

In that case, one may fairly well say he might have done under circumstances a heroic effort not to disrupt the act of 1633 as a judgement (the rescinding of which according to Anfossi's stated reason would have been necessary for moving earth to be licit), if using one's weakness to stay at the matter at hand only (index/imprimatur for Settele) can count as heroic.

As to the difference between hundred years earlier and Pius VII's day, see my essay "Aquinas vs Paley":

New blog on the kid : Aquinas vs Paley
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/04/aquinas-vs-paley.html

I was reading up on DP on Pastor Aeternus, the § 8 and 9 do not guarantee Church is ALWAYS using its right according to Her duty.

Hans Georg Lundahl

III

Sungenis to me

10/04/15 à 19h57

Re: Reading but not bed time

In a message dated 4/10/2015 12:49:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, hgl@voila.fr writes:

[Rest as dialogue:]

[HGL:]

Our dear David Palm - hello by the way, not leaving you out - found you had miscited Mayaud as all court feeling Olivieri was dishonest etc while DP reads Mayaud as saying all court felt Anfossi was dishonest etc.

RS:

That was must a mistranslation of one word in French that can be taken either way depending on the context. My French translator, Hildegard Pohl, sided with "deception" instead of "disillusionment," but I fixed it in the next edition, so Mr. Palm needn't lose sleep over it. In fact, I thank him for finding it.

[HGL:]

If Pius VII was weak, having all of the court against himself, except Anfossi, would have been even more daunting than having just Olivieri, right?

RS:

Indeed, but Olivieri was the ring leader.

[HGL:]

In that case, one may fairly well say he might have done under circumstances a heroic effort not to disrupt the act of 1633 as a judgement (the rescinding of which according to Anfossi's stated reason would have been necessary for moving earth to be licit), if using one's weakness to stay at the matter at hand only (index/imprimatur for Settele) can count as heroic.

RS:

Perhaps.

[HGL:]

As to the difference between hundred years earlier and Pius VII's day, see my essay "Aquinas vs Paley":

New blog on the kid : Aquinas vs Paley
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/04/aquinas-vs-paley.html

I was reading up on D[avid] P[alm] on Pastor Aeternus, the § 8 and 9 do not guarantee Church is ALWAYS using its right according to Her duty.

Hans Georg Lundahl

RS:

Indeed.

IV

Me to Sungenis, cc David Palm

11/04/15 à 10h55

Re: Reading but not bed time

@Robert : Agreed on all points except one.

It was not this time "déception"="disappontment", already fixed as said, but whom the papal court was angry at and thought Pope had been too lenient against : ringleader Olivieri (or overt ringleader, since behind such, in my experience, there may be covert ones), as you think or Anfossi as David Palm and I think.

If Papal court considered Olivieri dishonest and thought Pope had been too lenient, that would mean Pius VII would have had people to lean on if he had wanted to back Anfossi.

If the Papal court rather considered (or pretended to do so) Anfossi as a dishonest person whom the Pope had shown too much favour, that means if the Pope had openly sided with Anfossi to the full, he would have been alone with Anfossi, or at least he would have had a reasonable apprehension of such a result.

This on top of him being ill would go a long way to in my book at least excuse him for not backing Anfossi to the full.

@David: I'll try not to harass you, but I thought I ought to let you know the weakness of your argument as argument especially if it is wellsupported as a fact. Most especially so.

Hans Georg Lundahl

V

David Palm to me

11/04/15 à 16h06

Re: Reading but not bed time

Dear Hans,

Just to you (I don't care to have a "trialogue" which, as we saw last time, turned into a free-for-all).

I'm afraid your (and Sungenis's) interpretation of the Acta entry, as reproduced by Mayaud, is impossible. In that entry it is unambiguously Fr. Anfossi, (the Reverendum Dominum Patrem Sacri Palatii Apostolici Magistrum, later just Patre Magistro = Master of the Sacred Palace) who is described as causing “great scandal and disgrace of the Holy See [magno scandalo Santaeque Sedis dedecore]”. He’s described as being a “stiff-necked and deceptive man [hic durae cervicis homo falsissimique]” and “very tenacious in his false judgment [sui judicii in omnibus tenacissimus]”. And he’s said constantly [non cessabat] to resort to “nonsense” [nugiis] in support of his opposition to the Roman Congregations and to “sensible men” [tam Congregationes quam sensatos viros] (see N. Mayaud, La condamnation des livres coperniciens et sa révocation à la lumière de documents inédits des Congrégations de l’Index et de l’Inquisition, p. 240).

Sungenis's contention that Fr. Olivieri was "strong arming" the Pope is yet another of his conspiracy theories, but remains an unsupported assertion, made up out of whole cloth and based on nothing more than his imagination and wishful thinking. He has never offered a shred of evidence in its support and what is gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied.

Sungenis constantly insists that it's important that the full records of the Holy Office were held by Napoleon. But he never says just what information the Holy Office would have found in those records that supposedly would have influenced the proceedings. Speaking of the opening of the full archives of the Galileo case, Prof. Francesco Beretta states, “This opening, officially celebrated in 1998, . . . failed to bring to light any sensational new knowledge” (“The Documents of Galileo’s Trial,” in Galileo and the Church, p. 193.) They certainly had the 1633 decree itself before them and according to the new geocentrists this by itself should have been sufficient. Thus Sungenis’s insinuation may be set aside as an empty diversion.

As for his contention that Fr. Olivieri lied to the Pope, let us remember two things. First, it was not only the Pope to whom Olivieri presented the matter but to all the cardinal-prefects of the Holy Office. And the Commissary General had this to say about those discussions with the cardinal-prefects: "the Most Rev. Father Master of the Sacred Palace [Fr. Anfossi] was not present at the two said meetings of the consultants (I do not know for what reasons). As a result, he was not aware of the proposal or of the discussion; and this was certainly unfortunate for him. For he would have heard the difficulties which some advanced at first, the solutions which others gave, and the ideas which everyone presented, until at the second meeting everyone shared an admirable consensus . . . No less uniform were the feelings of the Most Eminent Lord Cardinals; thus the decision had all the signs of having been dictated by the Holy Spirit" (Finnochiaro, Retrying Galileo, 204-5).

So there was no conspiracy, no subterfuge, no wrongdoing as Sungenis claims. Rather, all was done openly and in good order. The Holy Office had theological consultants prepare expert testimony. There was back and forth discussion, with ample opportunity for both sides to present their cases. The cardinal-prefects of the Holy Office officially sided with those who advocated the narrow interpretation of the 1633 decree and a broad allowance of views not covered by the 1633 decree to be held within the Catholic Church. And Pope Pius VII was willing at every step to approve. This ended with a general, positive permission bearing the Pope’s signature.

And second, the fact is that the Commissary General, Fr. Olivieri, acted fully in line with the Church’s perennial rules of canonical interpretation, which mandate that the 1633 decree against Galileo must be interpreted strictly, as narrowly as possible and as affecting as few people as possible. This may not be convincing to Sungenis, who has a private dogma to uphold, but it convinced the cardinal-prefects of the Holy Office and ultimately Pope Pius VII, which obviously matters a great deal more.

So you see, Hans, I do not argue that Pius VII's decree went against the 1633 decree. Rather, he ruled in line with the Church's perennial canonical tradition that a canonical penalty must be interpreted strictly. And the 1633 decree unambiguously references a strict heliocentrism, with an immobile sun at center of the universe and a mobile earth -- a view which nobody will ever hold again. So at most the 1633 decree is an ecclesiastical dead letter. But whether other cosmological views fell under that decree was an open question. And that question was answered authoritatively and definitively by Pius VII in the negative. It is a decision that his successors have clearly followed.

God bless,

David