Anthony here again. It’s not easy to be Catholic today, especially a Catholic of the "traditional" persuasion. As possibly the world’s most despised minority, we often find ourselves standing in opposition to what is accepted in areas ranging from religion to ethics to history. With all that we stand against, it is sometimes difficult to know where to draw the line, to stop categorically refusing to hear anything that comes from the modern world and to begin to understand that certain things held by modern experts in their fields are actually true. It is possible to reject and question too much. Doing so can be harmful to the Faith, as it gives rise to odd beliefs which turn traditional Catholicism into something that resembles a cult rather than the eternal Church.
Geocentrism, the belief that the earth is at the exact center of the universe and the sun revolves around it, is one such odd and dangerous belief. And it just keeps popping up, usually among sedevecantists but also among people who should be smarter than that. Recently a group of geocentrists created a movie, The Principle, which has been making waves because they apparently duped the famous atheist Lawrence Krauss into being interviewed for it. As funny as I find it that Krauss would unwittingly lend his likeness and voice to something so opposed to what he stands for, I am frustrated at the press this stunt is generating, for instance in this Popular Science article. Because every time these guys get on their soapbox they link geocentrism to Catholicism, particularly traditional Catholicism. And it makes us look crazy.
Probably the most famous proponent of geocentrism is Robert Sungenis, who advertises himself as a “noted Catholic apologist." He wrote a two-volume book called Galileo was Wrong: The Church was Right in which he claims that geocentrism is Catholic teaching and is scientifically supportable.
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| Robert Sungenis |
In fact, geocentrism is neither good science, nor is it supported by scriptural exegesis or patristics, nor is it Catholic doctrine. Rather, it is a dated scientific theory which no longer fits the appearances and which has no direct bearing upon Catholicism. I obtained a copy of Sungenis’ book. And I’m going to debunk it in this post.
Galileo
Geocentrism is linked so closely to Catholicism because of a single historical event: the Galileo Affair. In 1632 Galileo published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which set forth a Copernican, or heliocentric, model of the cosmos, prompting a dispute with the Inquisition that resulted in Galileo being placed under house arrest and the condemnation of the Copernican system as “formally heretical.” This gives strong support indeed to the belief that geocentrism is a matter of Catholic doctrine, all the more so since the Galileo Affair has become a propaganda tool for anyone who wishes to attack religious faith and claim that it is in opposition to science. It is understandable that Robert Sungenis and his followers wish to exonerate the Church by claiming that the Inquisition was right all along and geocentrism is true. Unfortunately, this approach backfires.
The thesis of the modernist focus on Galileo is that the Church is an enemy of science. We should keep in mind that when modernists scoff at the Church's association with geocentrism they are really scoffing at the Church's worldview, its entire outlook, upholding the Inquisition's adherence to geocentrism as an example of the Church's incompatibility with science while ignoring the contributions to science (indeed, the very establishment of science) played by Catholic Scholastics in medieval times. In a lecture on medieval science, Dr. Michael Tkacz stated that the modernists’ “ultimate target . . . [is] not simply the geocentric planetary system of the medieval Ptolemaists . . . but the unified metaphysical system, with its religious foundations, that underlay pre-modern science."1 The Inquisition’s mistake gave the modernists an ideal opening through which to accuse the Church of impeding science, an opening that is now the first line of attack whenever faith and science appear to conflict. It has become what Dr. William Carroll calls the “Galileo Legend,” the idea that Galileo faced the risk of torture and death by the anti-scientific Church for championing science over superstition.
The Galileo Legend is precisely that: a legend, with very little historical accuracy. One example will serve to illustrate the ubiquity and disregard for history of the Legend: Senator Arlen Specter, criticizing those who condemned stem cell research on human embryos for religious reasons, stated, “Ideology has no place when it comes to medical science . . . Galileo was imprisoned because he followed Copernicus who said that the world was not flat [emphasis added].”2 Senator Spector is showing his ignorance of history by associating Galileo with a mythical debate about the shape of the earth, but even so he is following the accepted tactic, using the Galileo Affair as an ideological tool in debate.
The Galileo Legend is precisely that: a legend, with very little historical accuracy. One example will serve to illustrate the ubiquity and disregard for history of the Legend: Senator Arlen Specter, criticizing those who condemned stem cell research on human embryos for religious reasons, stated, “Ideology has no place when it comes to medical science . . . Galileo was imprisoned because he followed Copernicus who said that the world was not flat [emphasis added].”2 Senator Spector is showing his ignorance of history by associating Galileo with a mythical debate about the shape of the earth, but even so he is following the accepted tactic, using the Galileo Affair as an ideological tool in debate.
If one looks at the Affair in its historical context, one sees that the Inquisition’s attack on Galileo was not an attack on science. That the Inquisition was not trying to trump science with unyielding scriptural interpretation is evidenced by the fact that Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, head of the Inquisition, told Galileo that the scriptural interpretation that supported geocentrism would have to change if proof of heliocentrism were found. This also tells us that the matter is not one of faith. Dr. William Carroll points out: “If Cardinal Bellarmino had thought that the immobility of the Earth were a matter of faith, he could not admit, as he did, the possibility of a demonstration to the contrary.”3 Unfortunately, Galileo had no proof. He thought he could find proof of the earth’s motion in the tides, but we now know that the tides are caused by the moon’s gravitational pull and not by the spinning of the earth.
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| And yet he had no proof that it moves. |
Galileo’s insistence on heliocentrism, despite his lack of proof, seemed to the Inquisition to be an attack upon scriptures (which had traditionally been interpreted in a geocentric fashion) at a time, not long after the Protestant revolt, when the question of scriptural interpretation, and who had the authority for scriptural interpretation, was very important. It is therefore understandable, though regrettable, that the Inquisition acted as it did. The answer to the Galileo Legend is not to defend the mistaken system which the Inquisition, for lack of proper data, defended, but to place the Galileo Affair in its historical context and dispel the oversimplifications and mythical additions to the tale.
There is no space in this article to go into the Galileo Affair in depth, but interested readers can find a wealth of information by reading the works of Dr. William Carroll, a professor of theology at Blackfriars College, Oxford and an expert in the Galileo Affair, or by reading Jason Winschel’s article “Galileo: Victim or Villan?” in the October 2003 issue of The Angelus, or by checking out Michael Flynn's epic The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown. The conclusion to such examinations of the Affair is that the Inquisition made a well-intentioned but unfortunate mistake (which they could have avoided by better studying their Aquinas, but we’ll get into that in a bit).
Ironically, Robert Sungenis and his followers accept almost the same interpretation of the Galileo Affair that the modernists do, but they approach it from the other side, saying the Inquisition was right to condemn Galileo. The very title of Sungenis’ two volume work on geocentrism demonstrates his approach to the subject. Indeed, Sungenis claims that examining the Galileo Affair with the prior belief that the Inquisition was right about geocentrism gave him a whole new approach to the subject, and he was able to find truths that had eluded those who had studied the Affair from the viewpoint that the Inquisition had erred. (Interestingly, Sungenis criticizes the 1981 commission set up by John Paul II to study the Galileo Affair for starting their studies with a prior belief in heliocentrism 4 — apparently Mr. Sungenis thinks bias is acceptable as long as it is his own.) In his book, Sungenis tries first to show that geocentrism is scientifically sound, and then to show that it is official Church teaching and tantamount to Catholic doctrine. We will examine both claims and show them to be false.
The “Science” of Geocentrism
Because of its nature as springing from scriptural misinterpretation rather than scientific data, geocentric “science” exhibits the convoluted, overly-complex nature of a pseudo-science, in which data is made to fit the system instead of the opposite. Phenomena that heliocentrism explains simply and easily require dozens of pages in Sungenis’ work, and are still not explained to any satisfaction. Essentially, heliocentrism explains the movement in the heavens with the simple law that a larger object exerts a gravitational force upon a smaller object (hence the earth and other planets being held in gravitational orbit around the sun). Geocentrism requires the earth to be held in place at the center of the universe by the rotation of the entire universe, which is transmitted through a super-dense, ultra-granular, yet somehow also frictionless and invisible fluid called the “ether.” Furthermore, while the universe is centered on the earth, the stars are centered on the sun (in order to explain stellar parallax), while the sun itself moves up and down in its orbit around the earth (in order to explain the seasons), and so on. At some point we must invoke Occam’s razor: all else being equal, the simplest explanation is probably correct.
Sungenis calls the invocation of Occam’s razor on the side of heliocentrism “pretentious” and says that geocentrism is no more complex than heliocentism, and he attempts to support this assertion with a quote by Imre Lakatos comparing the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems 5 — both of which are no longer used. Copernicus’ heliocentric system was been refined by Kepler, and Ptolemy’s geocentric system was completely tossed out in favor of a modified version of Tycho Brahe’s geocentrism. Sungenis then claims that both heliocentrism and geocentrism are complex, and “no cosmological system should base its appeal on the simplicity of the system, for in the case of celestial motion, modern science has found that if the solution is too simple it is probably wrong, for it means that it isn’t taking everything into account.”6 Thus Sungenis first claims that heliocentrism is more complex than geocentrism, and then adroitly flips the tables and tries to claim complexity as a virtue! Nevertheless, the fact remains the heliocentrism easily and naturally explains phenomena that geocentrism struggles to explain, as we will see in detail in a bit. But even beyond the complexity issue, geocentrism has inherent contradictions which rule it out as a viable cosmological system.
As we delve a little deeper into the science of geocentrism, we need first to understand where heliocentrism and geocentrism differ fundamentally. Heliocentrism states that the sun is the center of the solar system. It make no claims at all about a center to the universe, which, according to modern cosmology, is a meaningless proposition due to the nature of space time and the laws of general relativity. Geocentrism, however, makes the claim that the earth is not only the center of the solar system but also the absolute center of the universe, around which everything else revolves. This is usually thought of in Ptolemaic terms, with the sun and planets revolving in circular orbits around the earth. But Sungenis subscribes to a modified Tychonian system, in which the earth is in the center and the sun revolves around it, while the planets and the stars revolve around the sun. The earth itself is absolutely stationary, neither orbiting nor rotating.
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| Not allowed to move! |
It is not the stars themselves that rotate, according to Sungenis, since this would violate the law that nothing can travel faster than light (for the distant stars to travel around the earth in twenty four hours they must be going far, far, far faster than light), but the universe as a whole, much as modern cosmology posits a universe that expands faster than light though nothing in it moves faster than light. Sungenis believes that there exists a mysterious space-filling substance called “ether” which transmits the combined gravitational forces of the universe, keeping the universe in rotation around, effectively, itself. If the universe rotates it must have a center of mass, a focal point of rotation. In this spot Sungenis places the earth, claiming that it is held there, stationary, by the gyroscopic effect of the universe’s rotation as transmitted through the ether. This rotation is also responsible for the effects on the earth generally held to be a result of its motion: the Coriolis effect, the Foucault pendulum, the equatorial bulge, and so on. Sungenis states:
“[T]he rotation of the universe around the earth creates the additional forces we understand as centrifugal, Coriolis, and Euler forces. These gravitational forces are transmitted (i.e., 'action-at-a-distance') through the universal ether, and we see its differing effects in the various forces we experience (e.g., inertial, centrifugal, etc.). Since the ether is dense and supergranular, it can transmit the forces very rapidly.”7
A word about “ether.” Ether, or aether, is simply a word for a medium, usually used before the actual mechanism and/or medium had been discovered. For instance, there was once thought to be an ether in biology, transmitting sensation. The word is still around, used in a general way to denote a medium or filler. It has been applied, for example, to the cosmic microwave background radiation (which experiments have shown is not rotating, much less exerting a force upon the earth).8
The ether Sungenis believes in has its roots in the 19th century idea of a luminiferous ether. Luminiferous ether was supposed to be the propagation medium for light. But the concept of an ether became more and more complex and contradictory in an effort to keep up with new knowledge. For instance, in order to fill all of space it would seem to require the properties of a liquid, yet for light waves to pass cleanly through it would have to be more rigid than steel. The problems came to a peak when, in 1887, the Michelson-Morley experiment measured the motion of the earth in relation to a hypothetical ether by examining the speed of light shot in different directions to see if light traveled more slowly in one direction than another, as it should if it were shined from an earth moving through an ether. The experiment returned a null result. Sungenis often brings up this experiment to justify his belief that the earth does not move. But scientists recognized that the experiment actually meant that there is no ether against which to measure motion. And indeed, if Sungenis is correct a substantial motion should have been detected: the motion of the ether itself swirling around the earth.
Sungenis takes the attitude that modern science rejects the idea of ether because they wish to protect heliocentrism and relativity. He fails to see that he only believes in ether because he wishes to protect geocentrism. In this we see one of many examples of Sungenis doing what he accuses the modernists of doing: starting with a result which he wishes to hold and trying to find evidence to support it, rather than starting with the data and following it where it leads. And in fact, other experiments have since measured the motion of the earth against other reference planes, like distant stars and the cosmic microwave background radiation.9 Ether was both contradictory and unverified by experimentation. Soon it became unnecessary: the discovery of light’s nature as electromagnetic radiation rendered the need for a propagation medium obsolete.
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| No propagation medium needed. |
Sungenis’ not only holds to the idea of an ether, he also goes beyond the old ether theory and modifies it to try to make it fit his system. The result is the odd and contradictory idea of an ether made up of Planck particles that is at once a frictionless superfluid and yet ultra-dense and granular, through which matter passes as light passes through glass and yet which also exerts an influence on the earth when it is convenient for Sungenis’ system. Sungenis and the other geocentrists often term this ether the “firmament” to correspond with scriptural passages which use the term. Sungenis quotes another prominent geocentrist, Gerardus Bouw, who states, “Principle matter is totally unaware of the firmament’s existence. If it were not for Scripture, we would be equally unaware of it.”10 Yet he insists that the ether is able to exert a direct influence upon the earth — certainly classifiable as “principle matter” — to keep it stable.
According to Sungenis, the earth is situated in the center of mass in the universe. It is not the earth that holds the universe in rotation around it, but the universe that holds the earth in position. Since it is placed in the exact center of the rotating universe, Sungenis claims, the universe exerts a gyroscopic effect upon the earth, locking it in an absolutely stationary position in which it neither orbits, nor rotates, nor moves at all.
An obvious contradiction comes when Sungenis tries to explain the equatorial bulge using his new system. The equatorial bulge is the slight increase in thickness and mass of the earth around the equator, caused by the centrifugal force of the earth’s spin. According to Sungenis, the bulge is not caused by the spinning earth but by the spinning universe, which pulls the earth outward at the center, around the plane of the spin.11 The immediate question is how the forces of the universe spinning around the earth with enough force to drag the mass of the planet outwards around the plane of spin can fail to spin the planet as well. What holds the earth in place as the universe swirls torrentially around it?
Sungenis tries to explain this with a hypothetical experiment. He posits suspending a rotating ball or sphere in a fluid. The ball moves the fluid such that a rod placed in the fluid above the axis of the ball’s rotation will rotate in the same direction as the ball, whereas a rod placed in the fluid next to the ball’s equator will rotate in the opposite direction from the ball due to the force acting on the fluid at that point, much as interlocked gears rotate in opposite directions. Sungenis then hypothesizes that the particles of the ether from the rotating universe are acting in a similar fashion on the earth. Each particle of ether is not only transmitting the large-scale rotation of the universe to the earth, causing the equatorial bulge, the Coriolis effect, and the motion of the Foucault pendulum, but is also rotating itself. These rotating particles act in such a way that they hold the earth stable instead of spinning it, like billions of tiny gears pushing the earth in the opposite direction of the large scale rotation.12
Sungenis is here treating the ether as if it were a very heavy, dense liquid swirling around the earth, the individual particles of which exert powerful, gear-like torque that prevents the torrent of ether as a whole from spinning the earth along with it. And yet he has himself described the ether as “frictionless” and “invisible” to matter (so that the heavenly bodies can move through it without being affected or slowed down). Sungenis is trying to have his cake and eat it, too.
Sungenis is also making a fallacious jump from his hypothetical ball influencing his hypothetical fluid to the liquid influencing the ball. Sungenis often makes this kind of jump, assuming that he can reverse a system and have it work the same way. But spinning the ball will not give the same effect to the liquid as spinning the liquid will give to the ball. To use an easier example, spinning a top on a table is not the same as spinning a table under a top. The top spinning on the table will be held stable by its own rotation, but the table spinning under the top will not keep the top stable; it will throw it off. Now imagine what that means for the question of whether the earth or the universe is rotating. It’s not as simple a reversal as Sungenis seems to think.
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| If you spin the table and the top doesn't fall, it probably means you're still asleep. |
That the equatorial bulge is caused not by the pull of the universe as transmitted through ether but by the centrifugal force generated by the earth’s spin is evidenced by the fact that NASA launches rockets eastward, in the direction of the spin, to take advantage of the extra velocity in that direction, and they launch from as close to the equator as possible since that is where the force is greatest. In fact, the speed boost has been measured. NASA’s launch site in Florida achieves a 915 mile per hour boost, greatly reducing the amount of energy required to lift a rocket into orbit. That is greater than Russia’s 730 mile per hour boost at its launch site further north in Kazakhstan, but not as great a boost as the European Space Agency achieves from its launch site in French Borneo, very near the equator.13
There's also the fact that spacecraft launched to distant parts of the solar system are launched at a time (a "launch window") that allows them to travel in the same direction as the earth's orbit around the sun. This means that they start their journey with a boost from the earth's 66,000 mile-per-hour orbital velocity, as well as a boost from the earth's rotational velocity.
Geocentrists try to explain this in terms of the centrifugal force of the universe’ spin acting on the rocket — that force is greatest at the equator, because it is there that the earth is being pulled outward by the universe’ spin, according to Sungenis. But there is one glaring problem with attributing the rocket’s boost to the spin of the universe: if the universe spins, it spin west. Because the earth is spinning west to east, we see the sun appear to travel from east to west in the sky. If the geocentrists are right and the sun (and the universe) travels around the earth, it is moving from east to west. Therefore, any satellite NASA launched eastward would not experience any boost, but would instead be forcing itself against the universe’s spin, and should actually be slowed down. 
This is a classic example of the way Sungenis operates: by deluging his readers or listeners with dubious and nebulous information, relying on quantity to offset its lack of quality and clarity. When he examines an issue he puts forward only those things which he can make appear to support his system, and ignores the rest. For instance, he claims that geosynchronous satellites like the GPS satellites employ a fixed-earth coordinate system 14 (which is true, and why they do should be obvious to everyone), but he completely neglects to mention the fact that NASA puts such satellites in orbit in the first place using calculations based upon the effect of a rotating earth. The geocentric explanation for how geosynchronous satellites stay in orbit is also fundamentally flawed. Heliocentrists point out that a satellite that appears to be stationary from our perspective is in fact moving in order to maintain an orbit. A truly stationary satellite would fall to earth. The satellite only appears stationary because it is traveling at the same rate as the rotation of the earth. Geocentrists claim that the satellite is actually stationary. They reason that the satellite is held between the attracting force of the earth’s gravity and the repelling centrifugal force of the spinning universe. But the satellite must itself be moving with the spin to experience outward centrifugal force. So for the centrifugal force of the universe to really act on the satellite, the satellite would have to be following the spin of the universe around the earth, and we would see motion. Furthermore, whatever cosmic rotational, or gravitational, forces that are acting on the satellite would be far too small to overcome the pull of the earth’s gravity at such close proximity. We know from experience that a satellite which fails to maintain its proper speed in relation to the earth suffers a decay of orbit that ultimately results in the satellite’s destruction as it falls into the earth’s atmosphere. Without motion, a satellite falls to earth. A truly stationary satellite is impossible.
Sungenis follows his assertions with dubious ad hominems, attributing ulterior motives and conspiracies to anyone who disagrees with him. For instance, he says this about NASA: “Those who control our space programs have a vested interest in keeping the public under the illusion of Copernicanism, since all their funding and projects are based on Copernicus’ premises, including the quest to find life in other worlds.”15 To Sungenis, NASA is not using the simplest cosmology and the one with the most scientific support, they are using a cosmology they know is wrong and are actively engaged in withholding information from the public in order to protect funding for the search for alien life! This is not many steps removed from crackpot conspiracy theories like the the Apollo hoax theory. More importantly, it is an example of the convoluted nature of Sungenis’ thinking. He confuses a scientific model with a pseudo-scientific and largely metaphysical belief when he equates Copernicanism with the belief in extraterrestrial life.
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| Galileo, 1990 |
NASA certainly does operate with a heliocentric system in mind, for good reason. In fact, NASA has taken time-lapse videos of the spinning earth with two of its spacecraft, the aptly-named Galileo spacecraft on its way to Jupiter in 199016 , and the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2005 as it swung past the earth on a gravity-assisted slingshot to Mercury.17
These videos show the earth appear to make one complete revolution in twenty four hours. Heliocentrism’s explanation is simple: the spacecraft are moving away from the earth in a relatively straight trajectory, and the time-lapse videos show the earth rotating. I can only postulate what the geocentrists would say to this, since I have never seen a discussion of it from a geocentrist point of view. I imagine they would say that it is not the earth that is rotating in those videos but the spacecraft, which despite being launched against the universe’s rotation were immediately grabbed by the universe and their course reversed, and they now spin along with the universe, spiraling outwards from the earth rather than traveling straight.
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| MESSENGER, 2005 |
We aren’t done with geocentrist contradictions. Possibly the biggest contradiction involves the way the earth is held in place by the rotating universe. Sungenis claims that the earth is held in the center of the universe by the gyroscopic effect of the rotation of the universe as transmitted through the ether. However, Sungenis contradicts himself by placing the stars in orbit not around the earth, but around the sun! He must do this in order to solve the problem of observable stellar parallax.
Stellar parallax is the apparent movement of distant stars in relationship to one another over time. It is caused by the movement of the earth in its orbit around the sun, two astronomical units every six months. To see how this affects our view of the stars, hold up the first finger of each hand in a line in front of your face. Now, close first one eye, then the other. The fingers appear to shift position in relation to each other depending on whether you are looking at them from one eye or from the eye a few inches away.
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| Stellar Parallax. Credit: R. Pogge, OSU |
Sungenis “solves” this problem by unhinging the stars from the rest of the universe. He writes:
“Scripture does not say that the Earth is centered for the stars; it says only that the Earth is immobile. Granted, one can certainly advance an argument that the Earth should assume the center position based on nothing more than the definition of immobility within a sphere. Geometrically speaking, the only point that would not move, relative to the rest of the rotating sphere, is the exact center. Yet this fact merely begs the question: what constitutes the sphere of which the earth is the immobile center. Do the stars themselves define the universal sphere, or is the universe defined by itself? By force of logic, we are compelled to say that the stars are merely contained within the universal sphere, but are not necessarily the composite body by which the sphere is defined. This is especially true when we understand that, besides the stars and other celestial bodies comprising the universe, the universal sphere has its own substance (ether), and thus has a mass and velocity independent of the stars. It is the universe’s own mass that is rotating around the immobile Earth, and as it does so, it carries the stars with it. As such, there is nothing to prohibit the stars from being slightly shifted to one side of the universal sphere and thus have their center on the sun, whereas the universal sphere itself is centered on the Earth.”19
Let’s consider this for a moment. According to Sungenis, the effects of the universe's mass are transmitted through an ether. This frictionless and invisible yet super-dense medium “carries the stars with it” as it swirls around the earth. And yet the stars are not following the trajectory of the ether, but are offset (in Sungenis’ own word, “wobbling”20 ), spinning around the sun instead. First, we ask the question: how? How can the same stars that are carried by the ether be moving in a different circle than the ether is? Next, we have to ask: why? Why are the stars rotating around the sun? What causes it? What is the mechanism? Why the sun and not, say, a point of space between Mars and Venus? And why does their rotation follow the sun as it rotates around the earth? Keep in mind that according to Sungenis’ the center of the rotation of the stars is rotating around the earth. Again, why?
Actually, the “why” is obvious. Sungenis states, “By force of logic, we are compelled to say that the stars are merely contained within the universal sphere, but are not necessarily the composite body by which the sphere is defined.” He should not say, “by force of logic,” but “by force of necessity.” There is no logic behind this assertion. There is no mechanism, no scientific explanation. But Sungenis’ system must have the stars rotating the sun or he could not explain parallax, yet also must have the universe rotate around the earth or it will, he thinks, contradict scripture. Therefore, he separates the stars from the “substance” of the universe (the ether) and lets the stars arbitrarily orbit the sun while the ether rotates around the earth.
It is ironic that even after all these acrobatics the geocentrists have not solved the problem of stellar parallax. If the stars rotate around the sun, which rotates around the earth once every twenty four hours, then stellar parallax must occur every twelve hours, not every six months as has been observed, and as fits the heliocentric system in which the earth orbits the sun once per year.
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| Sungenis' own animation. On the left is a yearly cycle. But if geocentrism is true, then on the right is a daily cycle. |
But more importantly, what causes the sun to behave this way; what is the mechanism for this sliding? Now the geocentrists need to explain not only how the sun can orbit the earth, but how it can slide up and down around it. It can’t be gravity, because not only is the sun far too large to be held in orbit around the comparatively tiny earth, but also because at the top and bottom of its orbital slide the sun is so far above or below the earth that there is no mass but only empty space in the center of the sun’s orbit. It can’t be because the sun is orbiting the center of mass of the universe, because that would mean that the center of mass would have to be moving from above to below the earth every six months, and Sungenis requires the center of mass of the universe to be where the earth is in order to have his mythical “gyroscopic lock.” There is simply no mechanism for the sun’s behavior. The geocentrists only hold that the sun behaves in such a way because they need to explain the seasons. But having done so, they need an explanation for their explanation.
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| Geocentric seasons. This is getting to be a very wobbly universe. |
These are only a few of the contradictions inherent in Sungenis’ convoluted geocentrism. Others come in his attempts to explain away common heliocentrist arguments, such as the Foucault pendulum and the Coriolis effect. Sungenis counters such arguments by deluging his audience with so much misinformation that they he must hope they think that anyone who can talk so much about something must know what he is talking about. But if one looks closely at his system the contradictions and over-complications are not difficult to spot. Take the Foucault pendulum, for instance: a properly-suspended pendulum’s swing changes direction gradually over the course of a day; the change is greater closer to the poles than to the equator. At the pole the plane of the pendulum will rotate 360° in one day. Heliocentrism explains this phenomenon very simply: the earth is rotating underneath the plane of the pendulum’s swing. Geocentrism’s explanation is anything but simple: an ultra-dense, super-granular, yet frictionless and invisible ether is transmitting the rotational forces of the universe to the pendulum, dragging it around in the direction of its rotation.21 This swirling ether affects the pendulum despite the pendulum being situated in a building (which, when he wants to explain how an ether-measuring experiment failed to measure what it should, Sungenis claims has an insulating effect from the forces of the ether22 ), despite the supposed counter-rotational force of the ether particles which keeps the earth itself from spinning, and despite the supposed frictionless nature of the ether. Furthermore, a pendulum being influenced by a swirling ether would act like a weathervane. Picture a weathervane sticking out of the earth at any point on its surface, and a torrential, swirling ether rushing around the earth, pushing at the weathervane. The only point on the earth’s surface where the weathervane would experience any rotation is the poles. At any other point on the surface of the earth the weathervane would experience the motion of the ether in only one direction, and it would point in that direction. There would be no spin. And yet Foucault pendulums around the world measurably rotate with respect to their buildings everywhere except the equator, exactly as predicted by a rotating earth. So the Foucault pendulum does, in fact, prove that the earth spins. Sungenis’ insistence that it does not is another example of his reversing a system and thinking it still works when in fact a reversed system is a different system altogether.
Sungenis has similar explanation for the Coriolis effect, geostationary satellites, and so on. There is not enough space here to go into all of Sungenis’ pseudo-scientific claims — that would take a book the size of Sungenis’ — but we should by now have seen enough to make a safe judgement of the kind of “science” he is pursuing.
The point is that even when geocentrism claims to have an explanation, that explanation is far more complex than heliocentrism’s. In heliocentrism, the data naturally supports the system without undue effort, whereas geocentrism must force the data to fit its system. Ironically, Sungenis accuses heliocentrists of starting with a premise and forcing the data to fit:
"Blinded by the unproven premise of heliocentrism, scientists would resort to all kinds of twisted and ad hoc explanations of the factual data and make up extravagant new theories as they went along, concocting bizarre concepts that brought common sense, and even personal sanity, to the brink of destruction."23
That statement is more accurately applied Sungenis himself.
The evident conclusion to take away from the data is that the earth is in motion around the sun. The only possible reason to hold the far more complex and often contradictory idea that the earth is stationary and the universe is in motion around it is because one believes that such a theory is Catholic doctrine. Sungenis admits that heliocentrism does fit the appearances. He claims that since in his view both models fit the available data, one must have recourse to revelation and to the teachings of the Church to decide which is correct.24 To support geocentrism, Sungenis invokes three things: scriptures, the unanimous belief of the Church Fathers, and the condemnation of Copernicanism in 1633. As we will see, none of these sources give conclusive evidence that geocentrism is Catholic dogma.
Geocentrism in Scripture
The passage most often used to claim scriptural support for geocentrism is Joshua 10:12. It tells the famous story of God stopping the sun for the duration of a battle: "Then Joshua spoke to the Lord, in the day that he delivered the Amorrhite in the sight of the children of Israel, and he said before them: Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon."25 The geocentrists claim that since God is stopping the sun, it must be moving. But this passage uses phenomenological language: it describes the way things appear. It is the language we use everyday when we say that the sun rises and sets. It is not making a definitive statement to the effect that the sun moves and the earth stands still.
 |
| Stop that sun, Joshua! |
We have to be careful not to make an issue out of things that are incidental to the actual point or thrust of the biblical texts. For instance, the account of Creation in Genesis says that God made the world in six days, that he separated the waters, that he hung the sun in the sky, and so on. The point of this account is not to give a literal, time-based description of Creation. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine both said that these passages can be interpreted outside of a strict, twenty-four-hour literalism. Aquinas writes:
“There are some things that are by their very nature the substance of faith, as to say of God that He is three and one. . . about which it is forbidden to think otherwise. . . . There are other things that relate to the faith only incidentally . . . and, with respect to these, Christian authors have different opinions, interpreting the Sacred Scripture in various ways. Thus with respect to the origin of the world, there is one point that is of the substance of faith, viz., to know that it began by creation. . . . But the manner and the order according to which creation took place concerns the faith only incidentally.”26
The Catholic Church’s Biblical Commission of 1909 set forth answers to common questions about the interpretation of Genesis:
Question 5: Whether all and each of the parts, namely the single words and phrases, in these chapters must always and of necessity be interpreted in a literal sense so that it is never lawful to deviate from it, even when expressions are manifestly used figuratively, that is metaphorically or anthropomorphically, and when reason forbids to hold, or necessity impels us to depart from, the literal sense.
Answer: In the negative.
Question 8: Whether the word ‘Yom’ (day), which is used in the first chapter of Genesis to describe and distinguish six days, may be taken in the strict sense of the natural day, or in a less strict sense as signifying a certain space of time; and whether free discussion is permitted to interpreters.
Answer: In the affirmative.27
This does not mean, of course, that Genesis is not a historical account! Indeed, the Commission affirmed that we cannot regard it simply as a legend, even an inspired legend. The events actually happened. But Genesis leaves a lot of room as to the how of creation. And in fact the very modern science which Sungenis condemns helps us fill in some of that “how” in a manner consistent with the order of Creation as given in Genesis. For instance, the baffling question of how there could be light before the sun is explained by the Big Bang theory.
The real point of Genesis is that God created everything, and that everything owes its existence to God. The Hebrews had a radical conception of divinity, an idea of Godhead that the pagan religions had never imagined: a God who is Being Himself, absolutely independent and the Being on whom everything else depends. When God told Moses, “I AM WHO AM,” this is what He meant (a better translation would be “I AM AM,” that is, “I AM BEING”). This ultimate Creator God is a revolutionary idea, and that is what Genesis is getting across.
Sungenis happily admits to taking Genesis so literally as to believe in six twenty-four hour periods of creation, like many fundamentalist protestants today.
Sungenis, however, thinks not only that Joshua 10:12 is inherently concerned with astronomy, but that it is purposely so. He believes that the moon was mentioned in the passage explicitly to prevent anyone from interpreting it according to heliocentrism, since the motion of the moon cannot be stopped by the cessation of the rotation of the earth, which is how the apparent motion of the sun would be stopped in a heliocentric cosmology.29 Leaving aside the obvious fact that the omnipotent God could stop both the rotation of the earth and the moon’s orbital motion if He chose, it is amusing to think of the divinely-inspired writer of Joshua making careful mention of the moon in order to prevent the passage from being misunderstood by heliocentrists over a millennium later!
When we think of miracles involving the sun, we would do well to think of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, in which the sun was seen to dance about the sky and even descend close enough to the crowd to dry them from the soaking they had received from the rainy weather. This miracle was observable only in a limited area, meaning that looking for a scientific explanation for the movement of the sun during the miracle is impossible. Should we then look for a scientific explanation for Joshua in terms of either heliocentrism or geocentrism? No. The passage has nothing to say about science.
 |
| Which cosmological system explains the sun "dancing?" |
Another famous geocentrist Bible passage is Psalm 103:5, which states that God "founded the earth upon its own bases: it shall not be moved for ever and ever." The geocentrists claim that this supports the stable earth theory that geocentrism depends upon. But that is an extraordinarily literal interpretation that forces the passage into a subject — astronomy — that it is not concerned with. The point of the passage is that the earth is solid and dependable, and that this is evidence of the power of God. There are many such passages in scriptures. 2 Kings 22:16: “And the overflowings of the sea appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid open at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of the spirit of his wrath.” 1 Kings 2:8: “For the poles of the earth are the Lord's, and upon them he hath set the world. ” 1 Paralipomenon 16:29-30: “Give to the Lord glory to his name . . . Let all the earth be moved at his presence: for he hath founded the world immoveable. ” Job 38.4: “Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth?”
All the passages above and the others like them speak of the stability of the earth as giving evidence of the power of God. But again, when they speak of an unmoving earth they are speaking phenomenologically: if one stamps one’s foot, one will find a solid and unyielding earth beneath it. The point is that the earth is stable, it has a “foundation,” or “pillars” set by God. This is a good time to bring up an interesting scientific fact: stability does not mean stasis. In fact, it is doubtful that any single thing in the universe can be truly stationary. Rather, we see again and again that moving systems give stability. In the case of the earth, it is held in orbit around the life-giving sun in accordance with mathematical laws of gravitational force. It is a stable orbit, that “shall not be moved for ever and ever,” since it is founded upon the laws, the “pillars,” that God has created.
Again, care must be taken not to interpret the scriptures to mean something they are not concerned with. This is the mistake the Inquisition made in the Galileo Affair. Dr. Carroll tells us, “The disciplinary decree of the Inquisition was . . . the result of the subordination of the interpretation of certain passages of the Bible to a geocentric cosmology, a cosmology which would eventually be rejected.”30 Also in Psalm 103, we read that God "makest the clouds thy chariot: who walkest upon the wings of the winds." Obviously this is not literal — God does not ride around in a chariot made of clouds, or walk across wings that belong to the wind. It is a picturesque way of making a point about God’s power. Why, then, should we interpret the sentences that immediately follow with such impossible literalism?
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| God's daily cloud chariot ride. |
We should note that not once in the scriptures is there mention of the centrality of the earth. There is much written about its stability, and there are passages that are interpreted to mean that the heavens are in motion, but none that say that the earth is in the center. The concept of centrality comes from the use of the geocentric system by the Church fathers to illustrate mankind’s centrality in God’s mind.
Geocentrism in the Church Fathers
Sungenis claims that geocentrism has the unanimous support of the Church Fathers. One has only to read the Fathers to see his point. They often speak of the sun and stars having a “course” or “circuit,” of the earth being stable and, indeed, centered. But just as with scripture, these passages are not concerned with teaching astronomy or cosmology but with using the established astronomy of the day to make a point about the power of God. Let’s examine a few passages quoted by Mr. Sungenis in his book:
Athanasius: “For who that sees the circle of heaven and the course of the sun and moon, and the positions and movements of the other stars, as they take place in opposite and different directions, while yet in their difference all with one accord observe a consistent order, can resist the conclusion that these are not ordered by themselves, but have a maker distinct from themselves who orders them?” (Against the Heathen, Book 1, Part III, 35).31
Athenagoras: “To him is for us to know who stretched out and vaulted the heavens, and fixed the earth in its place like a center” (Why Christians Do Not Offer Sacrifices, Ch. 13).32
Basil: “It will not lead me to give less importance to the creation of the universe, that the servant of God, Moses, is silent as to shapes; he has not said that the earth is a hundred and eighty thousand furlongs in circumference; he has not measured into what extent of air its shadow projects itself while the sun revolves around it, nor stated how this shadow, casting itself upon the moon, produces eclipses” (Homilies, IX).33
Eusebius: “. . . to whom he has permitted the contemplation of celestial objects, and revealed the course and changes of the sun and moon, and the periods of the planets and fixed stars” (Oration of Constantine, Ch. VI).34
Ephraim the Syrian: “The sun in his course teaches thee that thou rest from labor” (On Admonition and Repentance).35
One can immediately see that every one of these passages is making a point about God and about His relation to orderly creation or to humanity. Again, the Fathers are not teaching astronomy. Any astronomy they write of is incidental to the point they are trying to get across.
If one listens to Sungenis one gets the impression that the Church Fathers all got together in a big room and made a decision to support the geocentric model rather than the heliocentric.
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| "All right, we're agreed: geocentrism only!" |
The truth is less exciting. The Church Fathers were simply using the best scientific model available at the time. For centuries, Ptolemy’s geocentric model fit the available data best. It wasn’t until the advent of more advanced scientific techniques and instruments that data accumulated which knocked the Ptolemaic model off its pedestal and gave credence to a heliocentric cosmology. Ptolemaic astronomy simply doesn’t fit the data anymore. Yet it was the Ptolemaic system that was held by the Church Fathers. It is interesting that Sungenis neglects to tell his audience that the Fathers not only didn’t believe in heliocentrism, they also didn’t believe in Sungenis’ own modified Tycho Brahe model of the universe. Nor did they mean by “firmament” or “ether” what Sungenis means by them.
In fact, much of what the Fathers have to say about cosmology is no longer believed even by geocentrists. Take Gregory Nanzianzus, who is quoted by geocentrists for saying that the sun has a circuit. But he also said, “. . . it [the sun] has such power that it sheds its light from one end of heaven to the other, and the heat thereof is in no wise lessened by distance” (Funeral Orations for St. Basil, 66).36 I doubt even Sungenis wishes to reject modern science when it tells us that the sun is only a small part of the universe and that its heat does, indeed, diminish with distance.
When the fathers speak of astronomy it is to demonstrate the power of God by pointing to the orderliness of the heavens, and to illustrate the centrality of humanity by pointing to the centrality of the earth in the universe. Again, they are not teaching astronomy but using it to make their points. Today, we can make the same points using heliocentrism and modern cosmology. The universe is no less ordered because the earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. And despite not being centered in the universe — in a universe in which “center” probably has no absolute meaning — the earth and humankind are still central in God’s mind.
Centrality
It is worthwhile here to say a few words about centrality, since it is the primary tenet of geocentrism. The reasoning is that the physical centrality of the earth in the cosmos is evidence of God’s specific creation. This is what the Church Fathers spoke of, and how the scriptures were interpreted. It is why a cosmological system was confused with a matter of faith in the first place.
The geocentrists alternate between attacking general relativity (painting it as a conspiracy to keep heliocentrism alive) and using it to justify their insistence that the earth is the center of the universe. Since general relativity states that all motion is relative, they claim to be free to choose any center other than the sun for their coordinate system; we can just as easily talk about the universe rotating around the earth as the earth moving around the sun. But then they violate general relativity by making the earth an absolute center, not a relative center, holding dogmatically that the earth is fixed and motionless and everything else goes around it. The concept of an absolute center is meaningless in modern cosmology, not only because of general relativity, but also because space-time probably curves back around on itself like the surface of a balloon (to use a very rough analogy), making the concept of a center completely arbitrary. To posit a single, fixed reference point for the entire universe that is more valid than any other is to throw out general relativity completely. As John Paul II explained in his 1992 speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
“In Galileo's time, to depict the world as lacking an absolute physical reference point was, so to speak, inconceivable. And since the cosmos, as it was then known, was contained within the solar system alone, this reference point could only be situated in the earth or in the sun. Today, after Einstein and within the perspective of contemporary cosmology neither of these two reference points has the importance they once had. This observation, it goes without saying, is not directed against the validity of Galileo's position in the debate; it is only meant to show that often, beyond two partial and contrasting perceptions, there exists a wider perception which includes them and goes beyond both of them.”37
The fixation on physical centrality that drives geocentrism is pointless in another way as well. It is silly to think of God putting so much emphasis on the physical centrality of humankind as a way to demonstrate that humans are the focal point of His attention. The only possible reason to think such a thing is because it appeals to us to think that God has ordered the entire universe to revolve around us — which is rather arrogant, because in actuality all the universe is dependent upon God. He is its center. And in fact heliocentrism provides a beautiful analogy for mankind's relationship to God. Just as God is a fixed and unchanging source of spiritual light and life for mankind, the sun is a fixed (in relation to the earth) source of physical light and life for mankind. Changeable mankind can only remain alive as long as we keep God at the center of our lives; if we strike off on our own course we are doomed. The moon, orbiting the earth, provides a similar illustration of Our Lady. Just as the moon shines light from the source of our solar system's light upon the earth, Our Lady distributes grace from the source of all graces upon mankind.
 |
| And then there's this. This argues pretty strongly that God is thinking about humans. |
This is not to say that God has not left us evidence that his attention is indeed fixed upon humankind. Modern cosmology provides demonstrations for mankind’s centrality in the mind of God that are far more powerful and sensible than the idea of a physically-centered earth. We will examine just one of these.
The Penrose Number: A Modern Demonstration of Humanity’s Centrality in the Mind of God
Atheist scientists are searching desperately for a way to get around the conclusions that follow from the discovery of the cosmological constants and their relationship to each other, which calls into question their cherished belief that the only force driving the universe is chance. Briefly, there are seventeen cosmological constants, conversion numbers that generally reflect a magnitude or some space-time coordinate which controls the actions and interactions of fundamental forces and energy in the universe. The speed of light constant, for instance, is a constant number that is everywhere the same in the universe. That number determines how mass goes into energy and energy goes into mass. If these constants do not remain the same, there is chaos. But these constants must not only be constant, they must also relate to each other in an exact fashion with no room for error. Slight variations produce universal conditions that are fundamentally non-anthropic — any such universe would be chaotic and unable to support life. Mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose calculated the odds of a universe in which only two of the constants, the Hubble and cosmological constants, were set in relationship to each other to support life. Those odds are ten to the ten to the thirtieth to one. If we were to write that number out, the universe could not contain it, even if each zero were a micrometer in size!38 There is something poetic about the fact that the universe cannot contain its own odds. Furthermore, it tells us that the entire vastness of the universe, which physically dwarfs humanity, was created for humanity! That is centrality: centrality in the mind of God. It is far more powerful than any demonstration from physical centrality.
Modern Cosmology is Not Hostile to Catholicism
It would be useful to realize that modern cosmology, unlike modern biology, is not unfriendly to Christianity. In fact, many cosmologists have converted to theism because they realize that the universe itself gives evidence for the existence of God. The Big Bang theory, which originated with Catholic priest Fr. Georges Lemaitre’s theory that the universe expanded from a “singularity,”39 has proven particularly worrisome for atheists, to the point that it was decades before the theory became widely accepted. We are used to hearing the Big Bang mentioned in the same breath as biological macro-evolution, so we tend to equate them. But the Big Bang theory simply states that there is a moment in which the universe as we know it did not exist . . . which implies something outside of the universe to bring it into existence. Prior to this theory the universe was thought to be eternal and therefore uncaused. The atheists are now trying to find a way to interpret the Big Bang as not needing a cause. Alexander Vilenkin’s famous postulation about “quantum tunneling from nothing” is one such attempt to get around the laws of cause and effect, and so is Lawrence Krauss’ more recent assertion that the universe could arise spontaneously from nothing. Neither writer understands what “nothing” actually is. It isn’t a vacuum, or an emptiness, and it is certainly not governed by laws like gravity. It is a true lack of existence. Space is not nothing. Krauss' quantum fields plus gravity is not nothing. Nothing is nothing. It is a total absence of existence. Only God can bring something into existence from non-existence.40
There are many more demonstrations from modern science that the universe is not the product of blind chance but of an intelligent God. Interested readers should see physicist Dr. Stephen Barr’s book, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. (Interestingly, Sungenis has tangled with Barr, one of the most visible defenders of theism operating in the scientific community today, due to Barr’s insistence that Sungenis’ cosmology is unscientific.)
Geocentrism as Catholic Dogma
The final argument for geocentrism being official Catholic teaching is the strongest: the condemnation of heliocentrism by the Inquisition in 1633. Sungenis acts as if this condemnation is still binding, and heliocentrism is “formally heretical.” If this is true, the Church is in big trouble: for hundreds of years Catholic churchmen and even popes have held heliocentrism to be true. Were they heretics? In 1820 the works of Galileo and Copernicus were removed from the Index. Sungenis has a dubious conspiracy theory about this.41 But plot or not, it cannot be denied, as much as Sungenis tries, that heliocentrism has been accepted as true by educated Catholics for centuries. The 1914 Catholic Encyclopedia lauds Galileo and makes it clear that no definition of doctrine was involved in his condemnation:
“It is the great merit of Galileo that, happily combining experiment with calculation, he opposed the prevailing system according to which, instead of going directly to nature for investigation of her laws and processes, it was held that these were best learned by authority, especially by that of Aristotle, who was supposed to have spoken the last word upon all such matters, and upon whom many erroneous conclusions had been fathered in the course of time. . . . [I]t is undeniable that the ecclesiastical authorities committed a grave and deplorable error [in condemning Copernicanism], and sanctioned an altogether false principle as to the proper use of Scripture. . . . That [Paul V and Urban VIII] were convinced anti-Copernicans cannot be doubted, nor that they believed the Copernican system to be unscriptural and desired its suppression. The question is, however, whether these pontiffs condemned the doctrine ex cathedra. This, it is clear, they never did. As to the decree of 1616, we have seen that it was issued by the Congregation of the Index, which can raise no difficulty in regard of infallibility. . . . Nor is the case altered by the fact that the pope approved the Congregation’s decision in forma communi, that is to say, to the extent needful for the purpose intended, namely to prohibit the circulation of writings which were judged harmful. The pope and his assessors may have been wrong in such a judgement, but this does not alter the character of the pronouncement, or convert it into a decree ex cathedra.”42
More recently, in 1981, Pope John Paul II set up a commission to study the affair, and in 1992 gave a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in which he stated, “One might perhaps be surprised that at the end of the Academy's study week on the theme of the emergence of complexity in the various sciences, I am returning to the Galileo case. Has not this case long been shelved and have not the errors committed been recognized? [emphasis mine]” Later in the same speech he states that “Cardinal Poupard has also reminded us that the sentence of 1633 was not irreformable, and that the debate which had not ceased to evolve thereafter, was closed in 1820 with the imprimatur given to the work of Canon Settele.” Finally, he states: “The error of the theologians of [Galileo’s] time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. . . . In fact, the Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning.”
Sungenis tries to use this speech himself, quoting the pope when he says, “It is a duty for theologians to keep themselves regularly informed of scientific advances in order to examine if such be necessary, whether or not there are reasons for taking them into account in their reflection or for introducing changes in their teaching.” Although the pope obviously meant that the Inquisition had erred by not taking scientific advances into account, Sungenis uses this statement to support his claim, saying, “keeping ‘regularly informed of scientific advances’ so that theologians can ‘introduce changes in their teaching’ is precisely what this book, Galileo was Wrong: The Church was Right, is encouraging modern theologians to do.”43 But however Sungenis approaches it, it is evident that Pope John Paul II held modern cosmology to be correct and the sun to be at the center of the solar system. In fact, he considered the whole discussion closed. Was he then a heretic? There is a slippery slope to sedevecantism in this line of thinking.
Cosmology is Not a Matter of Faith
As John Paul II pointed out, the mistake the Inquisition made when it condemned Galileo, and the mistake the geocentrists make today, is to equate a cosmological model with a matter of faith. Even if the pertinent passages in scripture were far more clearly geocentric than they are, the geocentric cosmology, or any cosmology, would not be a matter of faith. Sungenis disagrees with this, and blames the fact that John Paul II thought this way on the result of the Galileo Affair. He laments:
“Once geocentrism had been rejected because it was assumed that science had proven heliocentrism, the Bible would never be looked at the same way again. If the Fathers of the Church, the medieval theologians, and the prelature were wrong about interpreting the Bible as a source that gave literal and accurate truth concerning history and the cosmos, then this would forever set the stage for limiting the Bible’s domain. . . . It is a cataclysmic shift in thinking that is comparable to no other in the history of the Church.”44
But the belief that the Bible is not concerned with teaching cosmology as a matter of faith does not date to the acceptance of heliocentrism, but far earlier. Sungenis claims medieval theologians on his side, but we find the contrary in the writings of the greatest medieval theologian of them all, the Angelic Doctor himself.
In the Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas responds to an objection that everything in scriptures is a matter of faith:
"[O]f things to be believed some of them belong to faith, whereas others are purely subsidiary, for, as happens in any branch of knowledge, some matters are its essential interest, while it touches on others only to make the first matters clear. Now because faith is chiefly about the things we hope to see in heaven, 'for faith is the substance of things hoped for,' [Hebrews xi.1] it follows that those things which order us directly to eternal life essentially belong to faith; such as the three Persons of almighty God, the mystery of Christ's incarnation, and other like truths. . . . Some things, however, are proposed in Holy Scripture, not as being the main matters of faith, but to bring them out; for instance, that Abraham had two sons, that a dead man came to life at the touch of Elisha's bones, and other like matters narrated in Scripture to disclose God's majesty or Christ's incarnation."45
Cosmology is one of those subjects in scriptures which do not “order us to eternal life” but serves to “bring out” or illustrate a matter of faith and to “disclose God’s majesty.” Since cosmology is not a matter of faith, it follows that it cannot be doctrine. If I believed the entire universe went around the moon, I would be mistaken, but I would not be a heretic.
Whether one believes that the earth rotates around the sun or the sun rotates around the earth really does not matter to one’s own life of faith. One can be Catholic and believe either without detrimental effect to one’s spiritual life, because the question of what is at the physical center of the universe is not a question of faith at all. Geocentrism is therefore a peripheral issue that is unimportant to the Catholic Faith except to vindicate the Church in the Galileo Affair — and a better way to do that is to look at the history of the Galileo Affair rather than the legend, as Dr. William Carroll does, as Jason Winschel does, as the Catholic Encyclopedia does.
The Dangers of the Evangelization of Geocentrism
In this confused time, a time in which secular science holds as its principle dogma the explicitly anti-Catholic philosophy of metaphysical naturalism, a time in which the Catholic Church herself has been corrupted from within by the influence of modernism, it is only natural that traditional Catholics question much that comes out of both modern science and the modern Church. But it is possible to question too much. Rejecting modernism does not mean rejecting scientific concepts like heliocentrism. Doing so, in fact, can be very harmful to the traditional Catholic community. It is possible to take contra mundi too far, especially if we make a matter of faith out of a subject that does not have any special bearing on spiritual matters.
We should remember that the real issue at stake whenever the Galileo Affair is brought up is not whether geocentrism or heliocentrism is true, but whether or not the Church is anti-scientific. Sungenis believes that by claiming that geocentrism is scientifically true he can vindicate the Church and uphold the absolute truth of scriptures. But he fails to realize that he is doing exactly what the modernists accuse the Church of doing: trying to force scientific data to fit an unyielding model of the cosmos which he obtained from a false interpretation of the scriptures. The modernists will ignore St. Thomas when he carefully explains the complementary relationship between faith and reason and addresses the question of whether or not the scriptures are trying to teach natural science. They won’t ignore Sungenis: he’s too good a source of propaganda. Already one can find papers by college professors on the internet which point to Sungenis as proof that religion is anti-scientific.
Sungenis is correct in believing that much of modern science is being used as a vehicle for an anti-Catholic worldview. But anti-Catholicism is not inherent in science, but is added to it when it is interpreted by scientists hostile to religion. The Big Bang is not inherently anti-Catholic, but is made to seem so by those who incorporate it into a worldview of chance-based metaphysical naturalism. Heliocentrism is not inherently anti-Catholic, but is made to seem so by those who mock the Church’s earlier adherence to geocentrism and subscribe to the Galileo Legend. The atheists think that if they disprove physical centrality they disprove Catholicism, which is ridiculous, but by accepting these things as anti-Catholic instead of stripping the atheistic assumptions away and examining them on their own merits, Sungenis plays right into the atheist's hands and condones their interpretations and assumptions.
It would not be so bad if Sungenis held geocentrism as his own eccentric, personal view. But he acts as if it is official Catholic teaching. I spoke to an African seminarian who had attended one of Sungenis’ lectures on geocentrism. He told me, a little wonderingly, “This man speaks like a theologian, as if he speaks for the Church. But where does he get that authority?” Where, indeed? Sungenis evangelizes geocentrism. Because of his strong assertion that geocentrism is a Catholic doctrine, Mr. Sungenis and the Catholics he appears to speak for will be irrevocably associated with a falsehood by those who hear him, and all the atheists who insist that religion is anti-scientific will have more ammunition to use to confuse uneducated Americans and students in colleges around the country.
We must be wary of suffering a loss of credibility. If any non-Catholic hears a Catholic, especially one who, like Sungenis, presents himself as a Catholic authority, talk about geocentrism as both scientific fact and Catholic teaching, and that person later hears a Catholic talking about matters of genuine faith and morals such as abortion, homosexuality, or any of the dogmatically defined Catholic truths, they will lump these moral subjects in with the mistaken scientific subject and believe that Catholics are wrong about both. Will anyone’s opinion that the Church’s teaching against contraception has no validity in modern times be changed when they know that the person trying to convince them believes the genuinely outdated notion that the sun revolves around the earth? It is doubtful.
Or consider a hypothetical case that is closer to home: if we teach our own children that geocentrism is Catholic teaching, what will happen when these children then grow up, enter college, and take a basic astronomy class in which they see that geocentrism is scientifically untenable? There is great danger that they will then doubt the Church in matters of genuine faith and morals, such as what they ought and ought not to do with their girlfriends.
The crux of the matter is this: whether one is geocentrist or heliocentrist simply does not matter. We should be wary of making what is already difficult for non-Catholics to accept even more difficult than is necessary. We should not let traditional Catholicism become cult-like. Rather than trying to convince the world that an obscure psuedo-scientific model that is only incidentally related to the Faith is correct, we traditional Catholics should instead expend our energy trying to convince the world that the doctrines and teachings of the Church on faith and morals are true. Not only are these teachings rationally tenable, they also have immediate relevance to virtuous living, a quality which geocentrism can never claim.
We have our work cut out for us already without wasting time and attention on cosmological models. Let’s not make converting the world more difficult than it already is.
________________________________
Sources:
1 Dr.
Michael Tkacz, “Thank God for Science! Medieval Learning, Christian Faith, and
the Origin of Modern Science” (paper
presented at the University of Delaware, March 10, 2008).
2 “Specter
Comments on Bush Statement Regarding Cloning Ban,” Arlen Specter’s official web
site, http://specter.senate.gov (retrieved
Oct. 30, 2008).
3 Dr .
William Carroll, “The Legend of Galileo,” International Catholic University, http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02901.htm (retrieved August 4, 2008).
4 Robert Sungenis, “The Historical
Case for Geocentrism” (public lecture, Songbird Theater, Coeur d’Alene,
ID, August 9, 2008).
5 Robert Sungenis, Galileo was Wrong: The Church was
Right, vol.
1 (Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, 2007), 37.
6
Ibid.,
28.
7 Ibid.,
266.
8 Marc
Lachièze-Rey, The Cosmological Background
Radiation (Cambridge, UK: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 132.
9 Rhett
Herman, “How Fast is the Earth Moving?,” Scientific American, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-fast-is-the-earth-mov (accessed November 13, 2008).
10 Sungenis, 279.
11 Ibid., 2
12
Ibid.,
353-357
13 Aaron
Brown, “Equatorial Rocket Launches,” aerospaceweb.org, http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0080.shtml
(retrieved Oct. 30, 2008).
14 Sungenis, 104-106
15 Ibid.,
105
16 Robert
Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, “Rotating Earth from Galileo,” Astronomy Picture of
the Day, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070514.html
(retrieved Oct. 30, 2008).
17 Steve
Roy, “See Earth from Mercury-Bound Spacecraft,” NASA’s Marshall Space Flight
Center web site, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/multimedia/video/2004/video05-145.html,
(retrieved Oct. 20,
2008).
18 Sungenis, 365
19
Ibid.,
361
20
Ibid.
21 Ibid., 364
22
Ibid.,
211
23 Sungenis, vol. 1, 194.
24 Robert Sungenis, “The Historical
Case for Geocentrism” (public lecture, Songbird Theater, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, August
9, 2008).
25
All
scriptural quotes are from the Douay-Rheims version.
26 Thomas Aquinas, II Sent., dist.
12, q. 3, a. 1., quoted in William E. Carroll, "Creation, Evolution, and Thomas Aquinas," Revue des Questions Scientifiques 171 (2000):
319-347.
27 Rev. Patrick O’Connell, Science of Today and the Problems of
Genesis, (Rockford,
IL: TAN books and Publishers,
1993), 8.
28 Robert Sungenis, “The Historical
Case for Geocentrism” (public lecture, Songbird Theater, Coeur
d’Alene, Idaho, August
9, 2008).
29
Sungenis,
61.
30 Dr.
William Carroll, “The Legend of Galileo,” International Catholic University, http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02901.htm (retrieved
August 10, 2008),
31 Robert
Sungenis, Galileo was Wrong: The
Church was Right, vol. 2 (Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, 2007), 89
32 Ibid., 90
33 Ibid., 91
34 Ibid., 95
35 Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37 John Paul II, “Faith Can Never
Conflict With Reason,” L'Osservatore
Romano 44
(November 4, 1992):
1264
38 Fr. Robert Spitzer, “Faith and
Reason” (class lecture, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, April 24, 2007).
39 Mark Mibdon, “‘A Day Without
Yesterday’: Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang,” Commonweal (March 24, 2000):
18-19.
40 William E. Carroll, “Aquinas and
the Big Bang,” First Things 97 (November
1999): 18-20
41
Sungenis,
vol. 2, 146-148
42 John Gerard, “Galilei, Galileo,”The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. VI
(Cambridge, UK: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 342-346
43
Sungenis,
vol. 2, 131
44 Ibid., 138
45 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 1, a.
6, ad 1, quoted in William E. Carroll, "Creation, Evolution,
and Thomas Aquinas," Revue
des Questions Scientifiques 171 (2000): 319-347
