I have not read the book by "Cardinal" Brandmüller ...

... so, part of what Eric Sammons is talking about here is beyond me.

Crisis Magazine: A Truly Traditionalist Approach to Science Isn’t What You’ve Been Told
Eric Sammons | March 12, 2025
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-truly-traditionalist-approach-to-science-isnt-what-youve-been-told

However, I am somewhat familiar with what happened in 1820. The names Settele and Anfossi are no Egyptian hieroglyphs to me (I wouldn't be using this simile if I were an even amateur Egyptologist, obviously).

Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera: Father Filippo Anfossi was right against Giuseppe Settele
mercredi 20 février 2013 | Publié par Hans Georg Lundahl à 01:21
https://triv7quadriv.blogspot.com/2013/02/father-filippo-anfossi-was-right.html

That's twelve years ago.

Now, whather Eric Sammons understood Brandmüller correctly or not this passage by Eric Sammons contains a historical error about the events in 1820:

The main defender of Settele (and opponent of Fr. Anfossi) was Fr. Maurizio Benedetto Olivieri, the commissioner of the Holy Office. ....

...

The summary of Olivieri's argument can probably pass, apart from "forcefully refuted" .... but I'm more concerned with two more paragraphs:

Further, because the Church Fathers accepted Ptolemy’s cosmology like everyone else in their time, they had no reason to look for a different interpretation of those passages, but now that we understand that Ptolemy is wrong, we can adjust our interpretation. Olivieri noted that this is exactly the path that St. Robert Bellarmine suggested: if scientific proof is furnished, then the Church can adapt accordingly, since these were not matters of faith or morals. To be intransigent to change in this matter would actually be harmful for souls.

St. Robert Bellarmine actually used the hypothetic here, and added "but I think such a proof will not be possible" or words to that effect. So, while Olivieri probably presented things like this in 1820, this involves a historic falsehood about St. Robert Bellarmine.

By accepting Olivieri’s arguments and methodology, the Church, including Pope Pius VII, established a solid framework for Catholics in the scientific age. We do not reject scientific theories out of hand when they seem to contradict either our interpretation of Scripture or the consensus of the Fathers. We don’t blindly accept them without proof, either. Until they are proven, in fact, we can stick with what we’ve always believed, but we don’t make our interpretations “sacred doctrine.” If proof arises, then we don’t—like Anfossi and Owen and Sungenis—stick our heads in the sand and refuse to adapt to new information. What is found to be true in the natural sciences cannot contradict what we know to be true from Scripture. If there is an apparent discrepancy, then the issue is either that the scientific discovery is faulty in some way or that our interpretation of Scripture is faulty. As Fr. Olivieri and then Pope Pius VII made clear, we can’t deny that second possibility.

The judgement did not ask Anfossi to retract his words, it did not state that all Catholic publications henceforth need to be Heliocentric (and some very clearly weren't, like when a XXth C. priest, whose work was reissued by Pope Michael I, got nihil obstat for giving the nine papal condemnations of Heliocentrism).

We do not in fact know from the verdict that Pius VII accepted Olivieri's argument. We just know he found Heliocentrism sufficiently defensible to not get condemned.

There was never any corresponding condemnation of Geocentrism, or of Biblical Literalism, apart from "John Paul II's" speech in 1992 or from §283 in CCC. Events which I do not count as Catholic. But events which even Brandmüller and Sammons ought not to pretend were just a repetition of what Pius VII and the Church had already said in 1820. The content of the 1820 verdict was not:

You have to believe Heliocentrism now, it's proven.

It was also not even:

You can believe Heliocentrism now, condemnation of the doctrine is liften, if you think it's proven.

It actually was:

You may read and you may print that stuff now.

No less. But also no more.

Now, if Olivieri thought Heliocentrism was in the meantime proven, pray for his soul. He might still need it. I mean, Mussolini may have got out of Purgatory after perhaps 3 years or so, according to a mystic, but I have less confidence for Olivieri. And pray for Emmanuel Alzon too. He had Olivieri as a mentor, which given he founded Assumptionists in France may have indirectly contributed to the worse débacle of an "Assumptionist" giving readers a free pass to deny Adam and Eve lived individually rather than being symbolical literary figures.

But the gesture of Pius VII in its official wording does not involve and also in its legal application doesn't morally imply "Heliocentrism is proven" ... so, unless you have an extremely good biography of Pius VII that states that he was privately convinced of Heliocentrism, we can simply assume that it bears the moral meaning of "since this is generally accepted by nearly all of the world, we cannot stop it from spreading by refusing to print it and even those who would want to refute it would need to read it first" ....

I must admit I haven't read Giuseppe Settele's work. But I have read lots of other Heliocentric stuff. At age 8, after my grandfather died, I became the youngest registered member of M.A.R.S.* Obviously Heliocentric and Big Bang and all that. I was equally an Evolution believer at the time, and when I reverted on either question, it was not from obliviousness. It was a conscious rejection of what I had previously held. In both cases preceded by some time when I had no definite opinion one way or the other.

Now, Sammons and possibly Brandmüller (and certainly others) have stated a theological error and canonic nightmare. Let me repeat part of the last paragraph I quoted.

Until they are proven, in fact, we can stick with what we’ve always believed, but we don’t make our interpretations “sacred doctrine.” If proof arises, then we don’t—like Anfossi and Owen and Sungenis—stick our heads in the sand and refuse to adapt to new information.

Now, let's break down what's wrong with it:

1. It's a theological error to admit that doctrine to the level of dogma or Scripture can need to change because of scientific discovery. It was specifically condemned in the Syllabus.
2. It's a conundrum how a Pope or anyone else could infallibly consider a scientific doctrine not revealed in Scripture as proven, and especially if it contradicts quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ... or even what used to be that.
3. It's a rhetoric pep talk point to say "we don't stick our heads into the sand" ... translated into canon law, such a decision is impossible to make unless it be by defining a new doctrine apart from the sources of Revelation. So, there is no possibility for the individual Catholic to know when "we" (that is the Catholic Church on Earth, the Church Militant) are supposed to bow down to such a supposed proof.

If you pretend to take a hint from Pius XII, Humani Generis, as a solution, the one logic way of reading "submit to the decision of the Church" is making Council of Trent Sessions IV and V those decisions. "John Paul II" mendaciously pretended that Pius XII by the fact of issuing Humani Generis already had defined that Evolutionary origin of Adam was OK, this is not the case, or if not mendaciously, confusedly.

Now, I submit, there are two places in Scripture which in and of themselves could be taken as "this was phenomenological language" ... Joshua 10:13 and possibly Psalm 18:6. There are others which as certainly cannot be so taken, like Joshua 10:12. Joshua did not order Earth to cease rotating. Even more, if, as I think is eminently probable, St. Paul in Romans 1 thought of the Aristotelic proof of God from Geocentric observations (generalised but not denied in Prima Via), taken as actual physical reality, you would contradict St. Paul's saying the ones who refuse to worship God are without excuse. If someone is turning the visible universe around Earth each day, that someone needs to have power over all the Earth. If we instead grant Seneca's** miserly point that "a god" could instead be turning Earth around its own axis each day, even apart from reducing things from the complexities of Tychonian orbits being above purely mechanic causes and conservation of angular momentum not being so, that "god" which Seneca could envisage would only have demonstrated power over Earth.

While the flagellum of the bacterium, the impossibility of Evolution at more than one point (Abiogenesis as starting point included) do, and Big Bang cosmology would if true, point to God, this cannot be what St. Paul is talking about. He specified "from the creation of the world" ... and these discoveries of modern science, as well as the pseudo-discovery, simply were NOT visible back then.

Let's just quickly add how Voyager 1 could have proven Geocentrism if the cameras hadn't been turned off, starting with a dialogue under the Anfossi-post some 12 years ago:

Anonyme

Hello Hans-George,

I must say that I very much enjoy reading your blogs.

If I may ask a question - is possible for Voyager 1 to prove Geocentrism?

Hans Georg Lundahl

I was wondering whether they stopped sending pictures because it was starting to prove Geocentrism rather than Heliocentric Modern Cosmology.

I may have thought of the possibility of the reverse I adumbrated in my letter to Nathan A. Unterman.

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: Asking an Erudite for Optical Proof
Wednesday, 3 September 2014 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 01:24
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2014/09/asking-erudite-for-optical-proof.html

But foremost, if Geocentrism is true, and if Fix Stars are one light day up, the angle from which Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 came to see them would be radically different from the one we see them from Earth. Ophiuchus would be really big, while a constellation with Right Ascension 5h rather than 17h and a Declination of 8° instead of -8° would be twice as far from Voyager as it was when Voyager started or as it is from Earth.***

As it is, the cameras of Voyager 1 as well as of Voyager 2 have been turned off. If I am right that the Fix Stars are one light day up, we may soon know, since Voyager 1 has less than 45 light-minutes to that limit. But we do not know it from cameras.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Ember Friday of Lent
14.III.2025
(or 2025.3.14 for some)

* Malmö Astronomiska och Rymdfärds-Sällskap. The Astronomical and Space Travel Society of Malmowe.
** Let's not forget that Seneca and Burrhus were counsellers to Emperor Nero.
*** No, I'm not good enough at astronomy to know what constellation that is, or even how and where to look it up.