Galileo Was Wrong, and the Church Was Right

Robert Sungenis wrote a book on this theme, with above title. He has made films on this topic, and this one is on the side history of ideas (inside and outside the Church), enjoy:

The Church Versus Galileo (Official) - Introduction
Robert Sungenis | 21 April 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH092GTREYM

Note: Dr. Robert Sungenis believes Vatican II was a Council and John Paul II a Pope of the Church./HGL

Note two, here he's citing Ernst Bloch cited by Ratzinger and commenting:

According to Ernst Bloch, the heliocentric system, just like the geocentric, is based upon presuppositions that can't be empirically demonstrated. Among these, an important role is played by the affirmation of the existence of an absolute space. That's an opinion that in any event has been cancelled by the theory of relativity.

Here, Cardinal Ratzinger courageously revealed one of the main thesis of geocentric cosmology. Not only does he admit there is no empirical proof for helioentrism, he realizes that the very foundation of modern science permits and promotes the geocentric universe.

Obviously, the Classic Geovcentric universe is finite, and therefore has absolute movement./HGL

Robert Sungenis Graciously Answered my Question in the Livestream

I didn't know that.

I left early, bc of the library's closing hours.

Here is the livestream:

Geocentrism and Spacecraft, Mary's Vow, Usury, and What John 1:1 Really Says
Robert Sungenis | 26 Aug. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2udV5yiQZTk

I have reservations on some things he said, like denying the Mediatrix of all Graces, but I'm happy he answered./HGL

Angels for Sungenis and Levi Pingleton

It is a common opinion that only 1/3 of the angels fell, based on Apoc. 12:4.

It is also a common opinion (perhaps less so) that God decided to create man in replacement for those images of God that had definitely fallen with Satan.

This means, there are two angels to each demon, and two angels to each man.

Now, in order to fight a demon, one single angel is sufficient, because he has God on his side.

However, most of the time any given angel are not fighting demons, because most of the time demons are not overstepping what God allows them or rather will allow them. They certainly DO fight demons on occasion, like when St. Michael is invoked for the purpose, and guardian angels as well as principalities for communities certainly COUNTER demons in suggestions given to men, which is different from direct fighting them and far more frequent.

But overall, most angels would have nothing to do if fighting demons and guiding men were all there was. Maths. Just imagine the scenario of each angel either having a demon to fight or a man to protect, most of the time, they would have nothing to do. Already explained as to fighting demons, and as for guardian angels, a human life is so much shorter than an angel's existence over created time.

My guardian angel was created 4 days before the Sun. So was yours. 5199 + 2025 = 7224 years, possibly somewhat rounded, if St. Jerome was 20 years off on the pre-Flood period, by a copying mistake in his LXX, possibly some other years off if Fr. (Br.?) Denis the Lean was a few years off about how long ago in his time Christ was born. I count on living perhaps 20 more years, 30 would be a stretch because of how harsh things I have been through at hands of people sharing your mockery.* What mockery? I'll come back to it.

Point is, each of us is active in the created universe a fraction of the time that our guardian angel is.

At one point, when we were babies, possibly as far up as toddlers, our angels were arguably doing company with Seraphs and Cherubs watching God on His throne and praising Him (bilocation? leaving us to God alone in our most vulnerable stage and just praying? doing both but taking turns with God? I don't know). But this does not mean they were in God's throne room all of the previous time. What were they doing?

Not guarding some other man, that would be uneconomic, especially as not all demons need one angel to fight them, they have lost anyway, so, what are they up to?

Well, I gave you Job 38 with the interpretation of St. Thomas. I can add Prima Pars Q 70, A 3:

A proof that the heavenly bodies are moved by the direct influence and contact of some spiritual substance, and not, like bodies of specific gravity, by nature, lies in the fact that whereas nature moves to one fixed end which having attained, it rests; this does not appear in the movement of heavenly bodies. Hence it follows that they are moved by some intellectual substances.

I can mention that God in the flesh spoke of hosts of angels** where, when speaking to Moses, He had spoken of "host of heaven"*** ... this means that angels actually are in some sense equated to the creatures of day IV. Precisely as Job 38 verse 7 and lots of other passages consistently suggest. That would be a sensible thing for a future and (for the men already dead) past guardian angel to do.

Now, to your mockery. There is a cabale surrounding me, probably with some kind of "trying to help me" intent, because cabales for directly evil purposes don't tend to get all that much following. There was a certain GrimFabel on a Swedish Forum° who suggested to me that if I believed that angels made water boil at 100 ° C at the pressure of 1 at. and at a lower temperature up near lake Titicaca, that's fine, but it's more economic as a description to drop the angels. I obviously pointed out that I very much do NOT replace angels for each and every naturalistic explanation there is. On your example, I would not state that the pen dropped because an angel pushed it down. And getting harrassed about this ludicrous parody of my position years on end after stating my position in a way which neither stated nor logically implied such a thing, that's harrowing. That's one reason why I believe the Popes your priests and bishops are under are evildoers. They arrange for Catholics to ignore my work, if possible even avoid to name me, or at least someone does, and if not the Pope, WHO? I refuse to believe that you've taken an oath to the Illuminati, whoever else may have done so! And they actively PUSH for my work to be misrepresented in such ways as the one you gave.

So, how come you stated "if the pen falls down, it's not an angel pushing it down" as if you were teaching me sth? Come on, I never DID say that all natural processes were moved by angels any more than St. Thomas did. It is you who are either pushing the narrative that no natural processes have any moving cause other than causes that are material, physical, which is metaphysical nonsense, or you are illogically pushing an application of such a principle that you in sober moments don't believe (sober as when not carried away by your irritation). It's a principle of Marxism, and I don't mean economics, I mean Dialectic Materialism. Physicalism is a Marxist heresy. As a Catholic you are not supposed to push it.

Again, you refer to my position as "angels pushing planets" and I have not expressed myself that way. I have expressed myself as God pushing the universe around Earth each day, but not as angels pushing planets. Moving is the verb I use, consistently, and celestial bodies is more often than planets the object I give for this angelic action. As Riccioli gave it.°° So, since "pushing planets" isn't my actual words, someone is pushing a misquote about me. And I recall that parody being used decades ago on forum debates. Possibly, the forum was read by someone behind this way of getting around my actual work by constantly referring to a misrepresentation, and the words of my opponent are now reused against me.

Now, let's get back to the pen. If all that happens is that the pen drops to the nearest lower surface, the action of gravitation on the pen, is, as far as resulting movement, interrupted by that surface. If you catch the pen in the other hand, the effect of gravitation as to moving the pen is interrupted by your hand, moving on your will. So, it would be your will interfering with the effect of gravitation. Either way, gravitation is interfered with. In ideal Newtonian orbits, gravitation is interfered with by inertia of a movement sideways compared to inward to the heavier body. There too, gravitation is interfered with, only in this case, the interference is less arbitrary than your decision or not to catch the pen with the other hand, less arbitrary than the height of the pen above the nearest stable surface, because inertia also is a law, and also is proportional to mass, in this case only the mass of the body itself. But the fact that a very special case (if it occurs at all in purity and without interference) actually has two natural laws interfering with each other does not mean that only natural laws, or more correctly, processes described by natural laws, which are our abstractions, can interfere with workings of causes that are according to natural laws. If you admit, as you should, that your mind is not the product of material forces between particles in your brain, but considered as such actually more similar than that to the immaterial God it is an image of, then you must admit that spirit or mind is one of the things that act on material bodies, since your mind acts on your own body, like my mind acts on mine.

St. Thomas makes an application about this to angels.

I answer that, As Dionysius says (Div. Nom. vii): "Divine wisdom has joined the ends of the first to the principles of the second." Hence it is clear that the inferior nature at its highest point is in conjunction with superior nature. Now corporeal nature is below the spiritual nature. But among all corporeal movements the most perfect is local motion, as the Philosopher proves (Phys. viii, 7). The reason of this is that what is moved locally is not as such in potentiality to anything intrinsic, but only to something extrinsic—that is, to place. Therefore the corporeal nature has a natural aptitude to be moved immediately by the spiritual nature as regards place. Hence also the philosophers asserted that the supreme bodies are moved locally by the spiritual substances; whence we see that the soul moves the body first and chiefly by a local motion.

Article 3. Whether bodies obey the angels as regards local motion?
Prima Pars, Question 110. How angels act on bodies
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1110.htm#article3

However, in order no wise to be accused of making celestial bodies the body with which angels are united as souls, which is forbidden in Paris and in England and arguably also in all of Canada and parts of the US not originally colonised by Spanish or by Irish, Germans and Italians along the French and English, let's take objection 3:

Objection 3. Further, the corporeal members obey the concept of the soul as regards local movement, as having in themselves some principle of life. In natural bodies, however, there is not vital principle. Therefore they do not obey the angels in local motion.

Reply to Objection 3. The power of an angel is not so limited as is the power of the soul. Hence the motive power of the soul is limited to the body united to it, which is vivified by it, and by which it can move other things. But an angel's power is not limited to any body; hence it can move locally bodies not joined to it.

Now, go back to the discussion in Q 70, and I'm skipping most of a pretty long corpus, but I resume it accurately in the following:

... Hence it follows that they are moved by some intellectual substances. Augustine appears to be of the same opinion when he expresses his belief that all corporeal things are ruled by God through the spirit of life (De Trin. iii, 4).

From what has been said, then, it is clear that the heavenly bodies are not living beings in the same sense as plants and animals, and that if they are called so, it can only be equivocally. It will also be seen that the difference of opinion between those who affirm, and those who deny, that these bodies have life, is not a difference of things but of words.

A 3 Are they living beings?
Prima Pars, Question 70. The work of adornment, as regards the fourth day
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1070.htm#article3

In other words, St. Thomas like Aristotle thinks a spirit is joined to a celestial body like a biker to a bike. But, if St. Thomas admits Plato thought spirits are joined to celestial bodies like souls to human bodies, it's because he considers Plato considered soul and body in man joined only as a biker to a bike. St. Thomas didn't believe that any philosopher actually considered that angels or spirits or (philosophical jargon) intelligences were the actual forms of which the visible celestial bodies were the matter. Even though arguably that was precisely what Plato thought, and that, rather than Newton, was what was replacing Scholasticism in fashionable quarters of the Renaissance. No, Thomas wouldn't believe that he had thought such a stupid thing. We can look at stars and planets and they don't seem to have any organs, so they can't be living organisms.

It is not, however, possible that the functions of nutrition, growth, and generation, through which the nutritive soul operates, can be exercised by the heavenly bodies, for such operations are incompatible with a body naturally incorruptible.

If there is something St. Thomas might change his mind on had he lived on to today in a pre-Flood patriarch's lifespan, it may perhaps be this sentence.

Now YOU and Levi were all about, had he lived today, he would have changed his mind once he saw the mathematical line up between the orbits and the graviation and the inertia and the masses. Well, for starters, it is not a perfect one. It is always being slightly changed in response to new observations that don't quite line up. But over and above this, no astrophysicist has ever stopped the orbits, picked out a body, whether sun or planet, posed it on scales, verified the mass, put it back and then started to the solar system's orbits again. The masses are not independently known, they are calculated from the orbits on the assumption that they must match. Sure, the set-up doesn't run into problems all that obvious (all that often, last time was a thing about Mercury that Einstein proposed a solution to, and it took minute observation to detect it), but this is certainly a grade below independent verification of each mass and comparing that to orbits. If Voyager has made real flyby's near planets, or other space probes, it is at least verified that gravitation exists, but still not that gravitation is the sole cause with inertia of the orbits.

Especially as that works best in the two body problems. I'm actually not sure how much Newton could improve predictions due to his mechanistic explanation, his views were largely spread by his ex-Huguenot fan Desaguyliers, who was one of the founders of freemasonry. I will probably check on quora, and I will not be content with very general "oh, sure, it certainly improved predictions" ...

Now, you can of course say the calculations are at least overall on average clearly correct. Fine. You know sth else which on average is very clearly a product of inertia and gravity? A biker on a bike in full speed, when he isn't pedalling. Nevertheless, the bike would very certainly cease to roll forward and simply fall if the biker didn't do fine regulations. So, even presuming gravity exists, there is a conceivable role for angelic movers. Especially if one doesn't take your view (perhaps a bit idiosyncratic) that planets follow Tychonian orbits mechanistically, because of the gravitational field of the Sun. If we agree that Geocentrism of a generally speaking Tychonian type is the truth, here not yet entering the difference between classically Tychonian (with Riccioli taking ellipses from Kepler) or Neo-Tychonian, exclusing or including stars into centeredness on Sun, instead of positing such an effect of the gravitational field of the Sun, we can posit that much of the Tychonian orbits would definitely have the own inertia of each body and the gravitation of the Sun as causes, but the narrow turns would in part be possible due to angelic movers.

You mentioned going there only as a last resort, I cannot for my life understand why. If your priority was to get a message as little different from the general tenor of the world as possible, the sensible thing would have been to skip Geocentrism altogether. I was into Geocentrism on August 24th, 2001. I think that was before you were so. And angelic movers were already part of, not just my intellectual background (read a lot of the Summa in a kind of "wild novitiate" which didn't lead to monastic life and which was interrupted on 5.II.1998) and then reread some after last of June 2000 leading up to this. They were also part of my motivation.

In Geocentrism, apart from your hypothesis of a mechanistic link between Sun and stars, which constitutes the Neo-Tychonian difference, which I definitely do not share, there is no proof or a priori likelihood that the movement analysed as parallax (for instance 0.76 arc seconds in α Centauri and 0.13 I believe I recall in Vega) is really parallactic. Therefore, no implication about the distance. The one thing we can know about the distance (if we trust Voyager is genuine) is, fix stars and therefore α Centauri and Vega are at least a light day away. Because Voyager 1 is 23 light hours 12 light minutes 00 light seconds away (hh:mm:ss) ... provided the distance is not exaggerated by gravitational lensing. But by now, that's a small component, I think. If it actually is 1 light day up, we will soon know. In fact, we would have known a long time ago, if the cameras facing the stars hadn't been off. If not, I think it was the case on days 4, 5 and 6, because not just Adam and Eve saw stars all over the sky that Friday evening, but previous day some birds and fishes had their inbuilt orientation fixed on available light from the stars. Now, this is a case against the idea of there even being a Distant Starlight problem for Young Earth Creationism. Instead of an Andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million light years from us, we have an Andromeda spiral nebula one light day up, and accordingly smaller. Instead of it having an isophotal diameter (whatever that means) of 152,000 light-years, you find its real diameter by ...

2 500 000 * 365 = 912 500 000
152 000 * 9 460 730 472 580.8 km = 1 438 031 031 832 281 600 km
1 438 031 031 832 281 600 km / 912 500 000 = 1 575 924 418.4 km

Furthermore, the idea of angels moving the celestial bodies and of God moving heaven overall each day (or each 23 h and 55 min), goes together. In St. Thomas and in me, God moves the whole shebang each day, not meaning "habitually" as per what He set in motion at creation and set back in motion after Joshua's long day, but each day and moment providing the movement. Then the individual celestial bodies are moved by angels. The taking away of the one has tended to go with the taking away of the other.

And here is the rub. Riccioli did two mistakes in philosophy.

• Given the planets at least aren't in solid spheres of crystal, already proven by Tycho Brahe when observing a comet, he thought God didn't move Heaven as a whole. Hence, he concluded, against St. Thomas, not to use this as proof of God (prima via), but to instead use the Ontological Argument of St. Anselm.
• He wanted a mechanism by which angels moved celestial bodies. Instead of saying "at some point, spirit moves matter" he said "spirit moves matter by a mechanism" ... there certainly is a mechanism inside our bodies that's involved, and if it's damaged, we can't move, like can't move an arm if the nerve is cut in the shoulder, can't even breathe if certain other nerves are damaged. This doesn't mean spirit per se needs a mechanism to move matter per se. He indirectly contributed both to getting away angelic movers, and to getting away from a sound philosophy of the mind, and between them to getting away from angels and demons being involved in physical nature all around us, like demons in thunderstorms.

A Yaqui friend of mine, a Catholic, asked, in defense possibly of sth like Naiads, "if there are no pixies, whom did Jesus tell 'be still' " ...

Not sure if the exact word was "pixies" but the point is, you don't rebuke lifeless matter.

And rising up, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm.
[Mark 4:39]

Molecules of oxygen and nitrogen are presumably not guilty of any offense, they are presumably just moving as mindless forces push them to move. So, what is the thing about "rebuke"? Well, look at this:

And Jesus rebuked him, saying: Hold thy peace, and go out of him. And when the devil had thrown him into the midst, he went out of him, and hurt him not at all.
[Luke 4:35]

Is Jesus God omniscient and knowing that both the possessed man and the physical winds were moved by unseen and evil agents, created more than 5000 years earlier? Or was He just a man influenced by his culture and seeing things that weren't there? Whichever you chose, there seems to be a parallel, the rest of the time Jesus rebukes (apart from three possessions and the storm), it is people with obvious freewilled agency.

Now, the idea of Riccioli and Descartes of seeking a mechanism behind every movement of bodies including freewilled, it seems to have actually contributed to no longer attributing storms and lightnings to demons at all. I'm not sure if you are aware, some people have argued that the lightning rod disproved any kind of demonic influence on where the lightning strikes. In fact, some Secularists have pretended, and I have got some of them°°° away from the internet, they have pretended that the belief in demons striking lightnings motivated Catholic opposition to lightning rods, with a disaster in Brescia as consequence.

I proved by examples there was no absolute ban on lightning rods, and the disaster in Brescia was attributed to a refusal of the Church to instal lightning rods in the Church. It actually seems the gunpowder was stored in a Bastion, not the Church itself, but a Bastion of the adjacent City Gate, so, it was not up to the Church to instal or not instal a lightning rod there.

But the site which is still~ up states:

For centuries Protestant and Catholic churches, basing their teachings on various texts in the Bible, taught that the air was filled with devils, tempests, and witches. Saint Augustine held this belief to be beyond controversy. Saint Thomas Aquinas stated in his Summa Theologica, “Rain and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons. It is a dogma of faith that the demons can produce winds, storms, and rain of fire from heaven.”

Here is the misinformation on Brescia:

One sixth of the city was destroyed and three thousand lives were lost, just because the clergy had refused to install the "heretical rod."

Omitting the part about Protestants, irrelevant for discussion between Catholics, though it may have given rise to bad guesses on the history of Brescia, this view obviously became unfashionable in the time of Benjamin Franklin, which probably highly contributed to Settele wanting an angel-free and especially angelic-movers-free astronomy, which to his mind was a Heliocentric one. It probably contributed to an atmosphere in which Fr. Anfossi was seen as an old fogey for clinging to Geocentrism. He was 20, 21, at the lightning strike in Brescia, and if Benjamin Franklin advocated lightning rods, he would probably not have heard of it directly.

Now, you or Levi mentioned talking to scientists. You seem to mentally be living in a world where:

• most people listen to school teachers
• school teachers listen to scientists
• so, your best option for reaching most people is to discuss with scientists, and then they will change what they tell school teachers ... at least you have done your best.

In actual fact, however, this is a situation which has rarely been the case and which is waning since the internet arose, so the real situation now looks again like:

• most people's world views are not made up by school teachers on all points
• school teachers do not always listen to scientists
• so, your best option for reaching most people is going to most people, as broadly as possible, whether it will fly with the scientists or not.

That's what I am doing, and instead of lauding me, it seems to bother you. You have for very long kept a kind of "cordon sanitaire" around my work, as they say in French. Last example, probably, unless it's from the cyber, you hid the direct chat, where I had made many comments. There are older examples.~~ To quote Rick DeLano (link below~~), hoping God has forgiven him, or will do so:

Because the movements of the stars and planets are exquisitely predictable, it is false to say that the empirical evidence of that predictable motion is not part of the science of astrophysics.

He has not proven astrophysics is a science of mainly determined by empirical evidence. He is just affirming that predictable motion is empirical evidence for non-voluntary causes, like exclusively gravitation and inertia, therefore masses. However, that affirmation is not proof that the empiric observation of predictable motion is that, it is his own analysis, not supported by St. Thomas, who certainly didn't settle for angelic movers because stellar movements appeared erratic to him. Dito for Riccioli°° who was far better at predicting celestial movements than St. Thomas was.

I used the analogy of a football field to point out that there is not a general exceptionless rule that a smaller body's movement is determined by the biggest body to the exclusion of will. Rick DeLano spoofed this to a pretention that football fields don't hold as a complete analogy (never my intention) because football matches aren't predictable. Oh "from physics" ... well, one can find sth predictable and yet use the wrong analysis metaphysically to predict it. Predictability per se is no guarantee for the analysis being right. When it comes to this level, predictability, rather than the level of gravitation of the biggest body, my analogy is how certain folk dancers move in very predictable ways, because they have a very high degree of self control. But even so, we know they are not robots. I think this level of skill is the least we can credit angels with.

Now, you made a point about "the spiritual world" ... if you mean the human psyche as it is laid bare before God, as angels and demons fight, the proper angel to fight a demon who's tempting would usually be the guardian angel. And the guardian angels cannot at any given time be even 1/2 of the angels, at least not guardian angels in active service. However, if you are suggesting that angels and demons live in a kind of parallel reality called "the spiritual world" this is not the traditional Roman Catholic view. You can partly find it in Tolkien (whose upbringing involves not just father Francis Xaver Morgan, Oratorian, but also Methodists) when explaining the invisibility of ring wraiths and it is frankly an explanation which, suggestive as it is, and effective in dramatic setting, is clearly more suited to that particular work of fantasy than to a manual of theology. Apart from Lord of the Rings, it is also found in some Evangelical circles. You will find the channel "God in a nutshell", alias Trey Smith time after time refer to demons (and consequently also aliens and pagan gods, which he on average correctly identifies with demons) as "dimensional beings" ... beings from other dimensions than our three dimensions.

That's not how St. Thomas or bishop Tempier viewed the so to speak "habitat" of angels or of demons. Heaven and Hell are places in our material universe, with Hell in the centre of the Earth (a view that Galileo started to challenge before being Heliocentric), and with Heaven above the fix stars (a view not challenged up to Newton). Between these "poles" angels and demons are "placed" so to speak where they are at work. No angel and no demon is two places at once, and none of them can go from A to B without going through the places between them. However, as they are not material, they aren't stopped by walls. In fact, the Bible also suggests this about Satan:

Now on a certain day when the sons of God came to stand before the Lord, Satan also was present among them And the Lord said to him: Whence comest thou? And he answered and said: I have gone round about the earth, and walked through it
[Job 1:6-7]

Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour
[1 Peter 5:8]

Going round the earth or going about means moving from A to B in other ways than teleportation. No, angels and demons are not similarily material and not in a spiritual world, they are spiritual, but similarily in our three dimensions, except the adage "body is inside space, angel is around space" ... but even so, still one place at a time. Given that they are in our three dimensional world, given that they can move objects, why would their activity be nearly always just spiritual and never physical?

It's like Kant's idea of the physical world showing no observational evidence of being moved at any point by the spiritual, including to the point that Kant made free will a postulate rather than a solid and obvious fact. And that idea goes hand in hand with the idea that all events in the physical world "obey the laws of nature" ... rather than forces described by such laws being some of the things that bodies obey, and angels and demons and human freewills being some other ones, especially as to movement.

For a person promoting the philosophy of Kant while using Thomistic terminology, the theologians of last century had the pejorative term "Aquikantian" .... there was no pejorative term attached to being Thomasic.

Just before finishing, I get some debate under a video by Gavin Ortlund. He rightly rejects the Lutheran idea that Jesus' body is ubiquitous. Here are three lines by me and someone else:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

4:02 As an ex-Lutheran, a convert as yet to Novus Ordo (I became Trad somewhat later), and apart from the question of the Sacrifice of the Mass, where I obviously agree and already agreed with the priest that it was wrong to deny that, I asked "why transsubstantiation, why not for instance ubiquity" (which by the way was one of the Lutheran tries, another being impanation, I think, another consubstantiation).

The reply was very prompt. Ubiquity = Monophytism.

Jeremy Bamgbade

@jeremybamgbade

The Lutherans are simply being honest about the implications of their view. The Roman Catholics will say Jesus's body is not present locally, yet teach that the bread that is eaten in a spatial location, was the same body that was crucified, resussurected , and glorified, which obviously demands ubiquity.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@jeremybamgbade bilocation will do.

Jesus' body is primarily present in Heaven. Above the stars.

Same shape as He rose up from Mount of Olives.

This is the highest reason I go with Tychonian over Neo-Tychonian, and this shell formed sphere of fix stars requires "parallax" to be a proper movement, performed by an angel.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Faustinus and Jovita
15.II.2025

Brixiae natalis sanctorum Martyrum Faustini et Jovitae fratrum, qui sub Hadriano Imperatore, post multa praeclara ob Christi fidem suscepta certamina, victricem martyrii coronam acceperunt.

PS, "Brixiae" is Latin for "in Brescia" ... confer the place with the lightning strike and explosion in 1769, which I discussed .../HGL

PPS, Sungenis has denied turning off the chat feed, and Pingleton has denied being against Angelic Movers./HGL

PPPS, the chat feed is back. Temporary glitch./HGL

* This post is a follow up to my participation in the direct chat on this live stream:

Creation Theology Roundtable
Robert Sungenis | 15.II.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlRriIbiYu0

** Matthew 26:53

*** Deuteronomy 17:3.

° discussion on the posts Gud heter intet sol eller måne · Fortsättning and my reply to him with the complaint about his parody being on Fortsättning, A, my reply 6.II.2025, kl 10:17, so the actual parody has to be somewhere on the previous post, the first one.

°° New blog on the kid: What Opinion did Riccioli call the Fourth and Most Common One?
Thursday, 28 August 2014 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 17:24
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-opinion-did-riccioli-call-fourth.html

°°° Φιλολoγικά / Philologica: Did Catholic Authorities Oppose the Lightning Rod?
Friday, July 15, 2022 | Posted by Hans Georg Lundahl at 8:07 AM
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2022/07/did-catholic-authorities-oppose.html

~ Christian Churches vs. the Lightning Rod
Lee Carter speaking for Atheists United — the Rational Minority
https://www.miltontimmons.com/ChruchesVsLightningRod.html

~~ Partly in opposing me in debates: Ross Earl Hoffmann, Rick DeLano, Tom Trinko

Hear Robert Sungenis

Steve Ray Criticized Pope Francis in Interview with Matt Fradd......here's a few thoughts on it
Robert Sungenis | 21 Sept. 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZD8ODeuEg

Robert Sungenis Studies the Apocalypse

The Apocalypse of St. John: Introduction
Robert Sungenis | 5 Febr. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZqiAjq1jZw

Quibbles?

1) He stated the Apocalypse is one vision, like one dream, I would say the book itself supports very clearly that it's divided into many visions.

I John, your brother and your partner in tribulation, and in the kingdom, and patience in Christ Jesus, was in the island, which is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 1:9-10]

After these things I looked, and behold a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard, as it were, of a trumpet speaking with me, said: Come up hither, and I will shew thee the things which must be done hereafter And immediately I was in the spirit: and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 4:1-2]

The following three could be referring to prominent details in the previous, but could also mean new visions continuing the theme:

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne, a book written within and without, sealed with seven seals And I saw a strong angel, proclaiming with a loud voice: Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 5:1-2]

And I saw: and behold in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the ancients, a Lamb standing as it were slain, having seven horns and seven eyes: which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 5:6]

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the ancients; and the number of them was thousands of thousands
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 5:11]

The argument for these being new visions on continued theme is strengthened if you take these as being so:

And I saw that the Lamb had opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures, as it were the voice of thunder, saying: Come, and see And I saw: and behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow, and there was a crown given him, and he went forth conquering that he might conquer
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 6:1-2]

And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair: and the whole moon became as blood
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 6:12]

Here is probably a new one:

After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that they should not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor on any tree 2 And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the sign of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 7:1-2]

I will not go through all of the Apocalypse right now, but the references with "I saw" are Apocalypse 1:12, 5:1, 5:2, 5:6, 6:1, 6:2, 6:9, 6:12, 7:1, 7:2, 7:9, 8:2, 9:1, 9:17, 10:1, 10:5, 13:1, 13:2, 13:3, 13:11, 14:6, 14:14, 15:1, 15:2, 16:13, 17:3, 17:6, 18:1, 19:11, 19:17, 19:19, 20:1, 20:4, 20:11, 20:12, 21:1, with "I John saw" 21:2 and then 21:22. "I was in the spirit" comes at 1:10 and 4:2. These are potential divisions between different visions. I can easily count the verses by using a word to change : to , in previous sentence and it was changed 40 times. So, perhaps the Apocalypse is 40 visions. If so, some of them are very short, interrupted and then JOhn goes back in a visionary state and has a vision of the continuation. Counting this way, John was arguably startled out of the visionary state 3 times, and the fourth vision continues to 14:5. Unless the "I beheld" are also vision divisions, in which case a new one starts at 14:1.

I will not dispute the division of the Apocalypse into "7 dramas", but just say that rather than all 7 being parts of one vision, all 7 were rather subdivided into several visions. Possibly there is actually a continuation of vision from 11:19 to 12:1, as some Catholics have mentioned that the woman of Apocalypse 12 is the Ark of the New Covenant, mentioned in 11:19, here:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 11:19]

However, I will dispute the idea that as all 7 end in the Second Coming therefore each thing mentioned before that is all of Church history from First to Second coming. In Apocalypse 6:9—11 we see the position of saints that are praying for us right now, specifically martyr saints. This part is clearly sth the Church applies to the time from the First to the Second coming. Therefore not one of the signs foreboding the imminent Second Coming. But this does not mean that for instance chapter 11 must be primarily about all the time from the First to the Second comings, though St. Cyprian took it to be so, it does not preclude that it is about the actual span of less than half a decade before the Second Coming.

2) He takes for granted that St. John the Gospeller is the same as John of Zebedee, the younger of the Boanergs. I used to do so until I read the Catholic priest Fr. Jean Colson. He was ordained in 1938 and wrote the book in 1968. He traces this misidentification to St. Irenaeus, who left Asia Minor while still a teen. So, when both were prominent, both were called John, both were venerated, who's excluding he could have got it wrong?

Now, the mere possibility is of course not an argument in itself, but he adds some other evidence. It falls into three categories, and he dismisses the Acts of John as a novel. His three categories are:

• some discrepancies about John the Beloved being one of the Twelve, the son of Zebedee, with facts in the Gospels ("all fled" / the Beloved was at the Cross, "ye will all drink of this chalice" / John wasn't martyred, the absence of account of the Last Supper Eucharist in his Gospel, the absence of the transfiguration, where John was very probably the son of Zebedee, since mentioned with James) as well as hints in the Gospels he could be a Cohen and have property in Jerusalem (the host of the Last Supper is never named and would have had access to the discourses Jesus gave while the eating was going on, the Beloved disciple could host the Blessed Virgin immediately on Good Friday, the Beloved was known to the High Priests, I'm not sure he mentioned it, but like Matthew has lots of references to money, John has more than usual references to feasts);
• an early Gallican martyrology supports John of Zebedee being martyred in boiling water;
• Asia Minor references, excluding Irenaeus, never directly identify the Gospeller with the son of Zebedee, and mention a "John who has worn the golden headband" ...

Now, the Church clearly says that the Fourth Gospel is written by "the Apostle John" and public revelation was finished "before the death of the last Apostle" ... but the word Apostle is sometimes used to refer to other groups than just the 12, like the 72 or the group (whether same as or other than the 72) that included Andronicus and his wife Junia. Therefore obviously Fr. Colson latched on to the wiggle room this provided and wondered if it could be applied fruitfully. I bet he celebrated his patron the 27th of December rather than the 24th of June, for "Jean" so he had a holy and pious curiosity (I actually commemorate both as patron saints, "Hans" being an abbreviation of "Johannes").*

3) He presents a dichotomy about literal and symbolic, which I think is ... wrong. "When so and so gave me a meal with lots of spices he pulled my leg, it gave me diarrhea" is a literal story, even if "pulled my leg" doesn't literally mean he held my ankle and pulled it with my leg towards him. Apart from the four senses, in which the literal and the allegoric sense are always different, literal and symbolic are a gradient with many possible combinations.

In the case of relation to OT symbolism, I do think the Four Beasts of Daniel (one of them fourheaded) and the seven heads of the Beast from the Sea are related. I also think the Lioness in Daniel may well have been Queen Elizabeth II. Not sure if that means Charles III or someone else after him or beside him is going to be the spokesman of the Antichrist. If you consider that the Four Beasts were already fulfilled, the Senatorial Rome being the Fourth Beast (and Antiochus Epiphanes was not just a Greek, he was even more notoriously a vassal of the Roman Senate!), I agree. I just think there is a correspondence between two fulfilments.

Speaking of end times, and Apocalypse 11, St. Cyprian could have been speaking about the moral sense of the passage, which differs from the literal.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Saint Amand
6.II.2025

* I noted that two Church Fathers cited identifying John the Beloved with the son of Zebedee, both were some decades younger than St. Irenaeus.

Father Raymond E. Brown, Father of Apostasy

Dr. Robert Sungenis doesn't go quite that far, but at least calls it "The Demise of Catholic Scripture Scholarship" ...

It's a video series, and the first part is about this man:

The Demise of Catholic Scripture Scholarship Video Series...
Levi Pingleton and Robert Sungenis | Dec 16, 2024
https://robertsungenis.substack.com/p/the-demise-of-catholic-scripture?r=3b450t

See also the first few minutes of the video debate between him and Dr. Fazale Rana:

Age of the Earth Debate | Dr. Robert Sungenis vs. Dr. Fuz Rana - Young Earth vs. Old Earth
Standing For Truth | 17 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOe8nV_pU9Q

Agreement and Disagreement with Robert Sungenis

Karl Keating

cited by Sungenis

[The New Geocentrics]: page 10: “In gratitude, I dedicate this book to the memory of Curtis Wilton.”

From a radio interview, Keating adds: “We had to take certain elective courses, and I took one on the History of Science, taught by Professor Curtis Wilson. He is the top American expert in Johannes Kepler. Kepler was a scientist in the 17th century who formulate the three laws of planetary motion on which all of modern astrophysics is based....The class was actually on geocentrism. And what we did was to take Ptolemy’s ancient writings...and he was the first to come up with a consolidated theory of how the planets and the sun and the stars interacted. And it’s his theory that the Earth is at the center. The planets that could be as far as Saturn...and the sun, rotated in circles around, revolved in circles around the Earth. He had to elaborate this with many accoutrements in order to make his theory seem to accommodate the observations he had at the time....In this course, while I was in school Professor Wilson took us through Ptolemy’s work; through his much later successor Tycho Brahe who died in 1601, who had an alternative theory but with Earth still in the center, and took us through the actual calculations and observations. We did the math. We did the arithmetic and the geometry and worked this through. And we were able to see over the course of the class that as time went on and observations became ever more precise, that the Ptolemaic theory and later the Tychonian theory did not accommodate the appearances. And as time went on they were less and less able to explain why the planets and the stars and the sun were doing what they seemed to be doing...Now I see that decades later, this notion of geocentrism has made a comeback.”

Catholic Answers radio program of February 13, 2015, an interview between Keating and Patrick Coffin, recorded beginning at 13:50 when Coffin asked Keating how he got into the present subject matter.

Robert Sungenis I

The key sentence in his description is:

And we were able to see over the course of the class that as time when on and observations became ever more precise, that the Ptolemaic theory and later the Tychonian theory did not accommodate the appearances.

If that is what Professor Curtis Wilson taught Karl Keating, then Prof. Wilson was wrong. If Prof. Wilson was only dealing with kinematics and not dynamics, then it would be true to say that Ptolemy’s model can be shown to be inadequate, but Tycho Brahe’s model matches both the Copernican and the Keplerian models, orbit for orbit, equation for equation. My suspicion is that Keating probably misunderstood Prof. Wilson, but unfortunately, this means Keating has carried the same fallacious idea with him for the last forty years, namely, that the Tychonic model is inadequate, when it is only the Ptolemaic that has proven to be so. I suggest that Mr. Keating go back and check the notes that Prof. Wilson gave him. I know of no professor in astrophysical kinematics that would ever claim that Tycho Brahe’s model was inadequate to explain the motions in the heavens, and I dare say that I don’t think Prof. Wilson would dare to do so either. ...

Me

I heartily agree on this one.

Robert Sungenis II

... Moreover, if Prof. Wilson taught Keating that only the Keplerian model could explain stellar parallax, he is wrong there also. Although accusing Tycho’s model of being unable to explain parallax was popular a few years ago, it has been discredited, for the simple reason that we now know that if the stars are aligned with the sun instead of the Earth, then both parallax and aberration are produced. As one professor from the University of Illinois put it in his 2004 lecture notes:

It is often said that Tycho’s model implies the absence of parallax, and that Copernicus’ requires parallax. However, it would not be a major conceptual change to have the stars orbit the sun (like the planets) for Tycho, which would give the same yearly shifts in their apparent positions as parallax gives.

University of Illinois, Physics 319, Spring 2004, Lecture 03, p. 8.

Me

I may come off as a conspiracy theorist, but bear with me ... in 2001 to March 2004, I had a precarious stay in an appartment my mother was not fully in control of, and I was eventually kicked out. But while I had it, I was often enough in libraries and internet cafés, and very much the Lund University library especially from early 2003 on, debating, and putting debates onto my then site MSN Groups Antimodernism (all MSN Groups finished in 2009, and I had too little internet time to salvage the big group onto the MSN substitute for the groups, namely "Multiply" (a very ironic term from the genius of a Bill Gates who after all is depopulationist).

The point is, if I had had adequate time on the internet back in 2004, I would have heard of that professor, and I would have answered.

The parallax as discussed by Copernicus, Tycho, Galileo was NOT the parallax we see. Only Bruno and Newton would have predicted that one. To all of Copernicus, Tycho, Galileo, to a man, the fix stars were one shell, the limit between the visible heavens, and the heaven that is God's throne room. Neither Bruno nor Newton were fully Christian, the one a kind of trace amount Gnostic with traces of Mormon poly-universe polytheism (or the reverse is the road, perhaps, it's probably Joseph Smith who had it from Bruno via Freemasonry, rather than the reverse:

The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the dead in 1840, and in 1841 construction began on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering lost ancient knowledge.[122] An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fullness of the priesthood"; and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing".[123] The endowment resembled the rites of Freemasonry that Smith had observed two months earlier when he had been initiated "at sight" into the Nauvoo Masonic lodge.[124] At first, the endowment was open only to men, who were initiated into a special group called the Anointed Quorum. For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society, a service club and sorority within which Smith predicted women would receive "the keys of the kingdom".[125] Smith also elaborated on his plan for a Millennial kingdom; no longer envisioning the building of Zion in Nauvoo, he viewed Zion as encompassing all of North and South America, with Mormon settlements being "stakes" of Zion's metaphorical tent.[126] Zion also became less a refuge from an impending tribulation than a great building project.[127] In the summer of 1842, Smith revealed a plan to establish the millennial Kingdom of God, which would eventually establish theocratic rule over the whole Earth.[128]

The other, Newton, was an Arian, and probably a Magician.

Now, why is this important? You see, the parallax you would predict about stars in a kind of shell would be very different. If instead of Sun moving between Virgo in August~September and Pisces in February~March, it was really Earth that moved between Pisces in August~September and Virgo in February~March, Virgo would as a whole seem bigger in February~March and shrink towards early August or whenever it was being hidden by the Sun, and appearing after the hiding, Virgo would at first be small in late September or whenever she reappaears, and then grow bigger into February. And vice versa for Pisces. This is not what we see.

What we do see can be accounted for in only two ways:

• if Earth is moving, or if they align with the Sun, stars do not form a shell, they are really at very different distances;
• if Earth is not moving, and stars do also not align with the Sun, if they do form a shell, the stars show proper movements within that shell.

In the case of "stellar" or "annual" aberration, the apparent position of a star to an observer on Earth varies periodically over the course of a year as the Earth's velocity changes as it revolves around the Sun, by a maximum angle of approximately 20 arcseconds in right ascension or declination.

So, that part of the movement of each star would instead be a proper movement. Not part of all stars moving around the Sun (in non-orbitting ways) as Sungenis suggested, not orbits around the Sun, but proper movements. With Angelic movers, that is not a problem.

The most important fundamental distance measurements in astronomy come from trigonometric parallax, as applied in the stellar parallax method. As the Earth orbits the Sun, the position of nearby stars will appear to shift slightly against the more distant background. These shifts are angles in an isosceles triangle, with 2 AU (the distance between the extreme positions of Earth's orbit around the Sun) making the base leg of the triangle and the distance to the star being the long equal-length legs.

Well, the thing that stands out here is, that if parallax is a proper movement, done by Angelic movers, we don't have any trigonometry here. The Heliocentrics, and Sungenis aligning with them here and with Bruno and Newton ultimately in saying the stars align with the Sun, will pretend we do have valid trigonometry consisting of one known side and three known angles. I will argue, that as we cannot know that the star (for instance α Centauri or Vega) travels the same distance as the Sun, or the same distance as each other, for that matter, we cannot know that α Centauri is 4 light years or Vega 25 light years from us.

The furthest off object we can measure the distance of without parallax trigonometry are Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Both are less than 1 light day up. Both of them are however closer to the stars (if they are 1 light day up) than to us. So, wouldn't their cameras have detected the stars getting significantly bigger to the view? Well, their cameras or not turned on. So, the stars could be preciely one light day up. Let's calculate the real size of Vega if that's the case currently. It's supposed to have a radius medium 2.572 that of the Sun, at 25 light years' distance. Same visible size to us at one light day's distance, what's that? Recall, the equatorial radius of the Sun is 109 earth radii. For diameter, we take twice the radius.

2.572 * 109 * 6 371 000 m * 2 = 3 572 194 216 m
25 * 365 = 9125
3 572 194 216 m / 9125 = 391 473 m

2 * 6 371 000 m / 391 473 m = 32.549 — Vega would be 32.549 times smaller than Earth in each dimension, and 34 484 times smaller than Earth in volume. This is obviously anathema to Atheists, who would argue "if Jupiter which is so much more massive than Earth and has the right gasses didn't ignite fusion from gravity, who would Vega have, supposing it were that small?" ... but Vega is clearly much more massive than anything they have at CERN, where they are presumably studying ways to make fusion work on earth. We as Christians have no allegiance to the idea that stars ignited spontaneously by gravitational compression of gasses. We believe those that are in fusion were "ignited" on day IV.

Robert Sungenis III

Another possibility for the miscue is that Keating, without telling us, believes that Tycho’s model is inadequate because Tycho’s original model did not include elliptical orbits of the planets. Since the elliptical orbits of Kepler’s model made the heliocentric version more accurate, Tycho’s geocentric model would not be able to match it. If this is Keating’s reason, then he is playing a shell game. Every professor of astrophysical kinematics, including the late Christopher Wilson, knows that if elliptical orbits of the planets are included in Tycho’s model, it is just as accurate as Kepler’s model. This was already known in the time of Galileo. In 1665, Giovanni Riccioli, in his book, Astronomia Reformata, added elliptical orbits to Tycho’s model for this very reason, and afterward he remained a devoted geocentrist.

Me

Apart from "devoted" I totally agree. Riccioli was a devoted Christian. Geocentrism would however have been matter of fact. To him as to me.

Hadn't Riccioli added elliptic orbits already in Almagestum Novum? A work where, by the way, he argues for Angelic movers being the theologically most probable mechanism for movements of celestial bodies:

III. Quarta Opinio, eaque communissima, est; cælos & sidera moueri ab Intelligentijs seu ab Angelis, tanquam assistentibus, & immediatis causis effectiuis, non autem tanquam ab animabus informantibus cælum, atq. adeò moueri ab extrinsecò principio, sed creato.

Cited via:
New blog on the kid: What Opinion did Riccioli call the Fourth and Most Common One?
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-opinion-did-riccioli-call-fourth.html

I will not cite more from Sungenis' work, right now at least, but I'm leaving you the link to his refutation of Keating:

A Critical Analysis of Karl Keating and His Book The New Geocentrists
By Robert Sungenis
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzb8s1zUN8qOTHpjWUMzZWsyRVU/view

Meanwhile, don't let urban legends about Geocentrics having neither argument nor explanation sway your view of your Geocentric neighbour. Ideally not even of me.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Wenceslaus, Duke and Martyr
28.IX.2024

Apud Boleslaviam veterem, in Bohemia, sancti Wenceslai, Ducis Bohemorum et Martyris, sanctitate et miraculis gloriosi, qui, dolo fratris sui necatus, victor pervenit ad palmam.

PS, another text by Sungenis which a friend shared from his substack says:

The Sun is the GEOMETRIC Center of the Universe, and the CENTER OF MASS is the 🌎 Earth....

I'd say, whether the Earth is inside the centre of Mass or not, is irrelevant. God keeps the Earth in place anyway. And the Earth is the actual Geometric centre of the visible universe. Not the Sun. The following image is a feature, not a bug:

What Happened to the Sungenis Debate?

HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS: Geocentrism, Tradition and Science · New blog on the kid: What Happened to the Sungenis Debate?

From my youtube feed and from clicking the link shown above. Below we see the video exists, but is private.

GWWatCWR

What Does this acronym mean?

Galileo Was Wrong and the Church Was Right.

Robert Sungenis is making material available on these themes, and here it is on the process part:

The Church Versus Galileo (Official) - Introduction
21st April 2018 | Robert Sungenis Channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH092GTREYM

Is the Multiverse "inherently atheistic"?

Note, I am not saying that God HAS created an infinity of universes past, present, and will so in future. I am saying that God CAN do so, there is no obstacle in it to His Omnipotence.

Bruno may have been burned for among other things saying there is an infinity of worlds (though he meant that in a sense of each star being a "solar system" and such continuing into infinity, as new horizons would be potentially infinitely variable ... if the world were a flat disc).

That God could not have created more worlds than this one is however also condemned, though no heretic got burned in the process. As far as I know. Laetare Sunday in Mid Lent, early March, late 1276 (as they said when March 25 was new years day) or early 1277 (as one counts now), a syllabus of 219 propositions was attached to a general condemnation of bad teachers and bad books circulating at Paris University.

Condemned proposition 34 is what I would call the Narnia clause:

Quod causa prima non posset plures mundos facere.*

Note that this is a subordinate clause, attached to some main clause in the introduction, I have not the wording of the original by Stephen Tempier, but the republication in England which makes the same proposition the ninth proposition of chapter VI, errores de Deo has:

Isti articuli qui sequuntur, condempnati sunt a domino stephano parisiensi episcopo, de consilio magistrorum theologie, anno domini M °. CC °. LXXVI, die dominica qua contatur "Letare Ierusalem" in curia parisiensi, ubi excommunicauit in scriptis omnes illos qui scienter eos docuerint uel defenderint. Et primo ordinantur qui sunt de deo, scilicet :*

Note very well, the document as such was not revoked, only whatever excommunication could have been suspected of lying over a Thomist thesis by reason of these condemnations, which happened 48 years later. However, St Thomas Aquinas never defended

Quod causa prima non posset plures mundos facere.

And therefore the condemnation of said error is NOT revoked by Stephen III 48 years later. It still stands, in the diocese of Paris as well as in the Medieval dioceses of England.*

So, I would not be inclined to say the multiverse were inherently atheistic.

As Hawking was being honest with his own scientific postulates (which then led him to the infinite Multiverse), Fr. Spitzer obviously couldn’t go in the same direction since the Multiverse is intrinsically atheistic. It has no beginning and needs no God.

From Sungenis' criticism of "Father" Spitzer "SJ" and his Cosmic Origins.**

As Chesterton noted***, the proofs of God's existence given by St Thomas Aquinas are such as work equally well if you assume the universe to be eternal. The prima via would work for each universe in an eternal multiverse, plus the unity of the multiverse would need an infinite consciousness to be aware of them all (since they are assumed to be different universes, they cannot be connected by simple material unity), so, a multiverse, though very possibly not true, would still need a God.

What they would work less well for:

• A) prima via per se as well as showing unity of God less well in a multiverse would also show it less well in the kind of "Bruno multiverse" a k a Modern Cosmology which is more Classic, since when after discussing existence of God, when coming to the attribute unity (I, Q 11, A 3), St Thomas does refer to the unified daily movement of the one universe around the one earth°;
  
  
• B) prima via also works somewhat less well if you assume constant speed and unilinear movement to be equivalent to rest. Especially if you add the in Newton's first three laws as such unwarranted equivalence of constant orbital movement to a non-accelerating movement and forget about all factors which could slow down the orbit (like friction from a yearly shower of asteroids);
  
  
• C) a totally mindless universe (or, paradoxically, one in which mind were a byproduct of matter via life, but that is impossible) would not have the proofs of IV and V viae in I, Q 2 A 3.

This old post of Sungenis** came up - and I'll return to read the rest of it after making these quibbles - because "Father" Spitzer "SJ" has since then refused debating Sungenis.°°

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Day after St Bartholomew Apostle
25.VIII.2016

Notes: * Stephen Tempier's condemnations:

Index in stephani tempier condempnationes from where you click on capitulum VI, errores de deo where you find the heading Collectio errorum in Anglia et Parisius Condempnatorum ...

It is presumably operative not just in Paris with suffragan dioceses and in all English dioceses, but also in colonies and former such of England and of France. For England it is obvious, due to all dioceses being invoked, for France one should know that Québécoué is an off-shot of 17th or 18th C. Paris dialect - not of any rural dialects from back then, even if now it is seen as another rural one.

** Here is the blog post and pdf for Sungenis' paper:

GWW : Cosmic Origins: The Movie
Just Another Heresy in Religious Garb
Download PDF
Posted by galileowaswrong on Oct 8, 2013
http://galileowaswrong.com/cosmic-origins-the-movie/

The Movie: Cosmic Origins: Just Another Heresy in Religious Garb
http://galileowaswrong.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Cosmic_Origins_Movie.pdf

The latter is better for reading the text, the former for commenting or for browsing other posts.

*** See his Biography of St Thomas Aquinas:

St. Thomas Aquinas
G. K. Chesterton
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/aquinas.html

See further his [G. K. Chesterton's] Works on the Web
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/

PS, one could of course consider that creating a new universe after having created this one - like creating a Narnia around a new pool in the "wood between the worlds" when Digory and Polly and Jadis and Strawberry and its owner and Uncle Andrew had gone there by magic - is not something which is according to the Revelation for God to do, since He is said to have on the seventh day 7099 or so years before the meeting of Digory and Polly is set in the novel to have rested from new works of Creation. But it would still be true that He didn't do so because He needed to./HGL

° Quoting:

Thirdly, this is shown from the unity of the world. For all things that exist are seen to be ordered to each other since some serve others. But things that are diverse do not harmonize in the same order, unless they are ordered thereto by one. For many are reduced into one order by one better than by many: because one is the "per se" cause of one, and many are only the accidental cause of one, inasmuch as they are in some way one. Since therefore what is first is most perfect, and is so "per se" and not accidentally, it must be that the first which reduces all into one order should be only one. And this one is God.

°° I know that from a comment under the video, which I have not yet seen:

FB : EWTN online : 23 août, 16:33 ·
From Fr. Spitzer's Universe
https://www.facebook.com/ewtnonline/videos/10153954636677582/

Know as in "am reasonably aware", I will know it, I presume, once I hear the video.

Everything a Giant Miracle? Why, Yes!

1) Creation vs. Evolution : In Today's Article on Maxwell, CMI Linked Back to an Oldie · 2) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : What Cusa Really Said · 3) New blog on the kid : Everything a Giant Miracle? Why, Yes!

« Carter/Sarfati: In a geocentric universe, everything is one giant miracle with no simple explanation (see below). Certainly, a geocentrist would not expect the sun to stop or to move backward, but why not? There is no rational explanation for the way the universe operates, so why could something out of the ordinary not happen?* »

In a Geocentric universe, everything is one giant miracle with God as simple explanation. See Romans 1:20.

« Certainly, a geocentrist would not expect the sun to stop or to move backward, but why not? »

Why not indeed, if the simple explanation, namely God, so wills it ? As He willed it on two occasions, with Joshua and with Hezekiah, with the namesake of God made man and with the at least legal ancestor of God made man. The Sun also refused to shine over Calvary when Our Lord Himself was being mishnadled by His creatures.

« There is no rational explanation for the way the universe operates, so why could something out of the ordinary not happen? »

There is God as rational explanation for the way He operates the universe or lets angels operate its diverse bodies and so, the question is « why would God will it » … and the answer, apart from situations on these OT occasions, is that, unlike Agamemnon praying to Sun to stop so he could rout Trojan Army before it took refuge within city walls, Joshua and Hezekiah were not offending God (and any angel operating the sun, if such, as I think there is), by the idolatrous sin of sun worship. Also, Joshua and Jesus being same name, Joshua was a namesake of Our Lord. Hezekiah being ancestor of St Joseph most chaste Bridegroom, was a legal ancestor at least of Our Lord (he could have been in some line also ancestor to the Blessed Virgin and therefore be also ancestor simply of Our Lord). But beyond this, these miracles also give a certain light on the Heliocentric controversy in our latter days, and God may have wanted to make it clear that Heliocentrism is not how he made either universe or any « solar system » not just surrounding (Tycho) but actually including (as per Heliocentrics) Earth.

« R. Sungenis: It is apparent here that Carter/Sarfati have never thoroughly studied the scientific basis for the geocentric system, otherwise they would never make such sweeping generalizations of geocentrists (e.g., “everything is one giant miracle”). It is difficult to discuss science with someone who doesn’t even know or appreciate the scientific basis of his opponent’s position.* »

Oh boy … some people are so enamoured of their science they miss some obvious remarks.

If Geocentrism means « everything is one giant miracle », well, then Geocentric universe and all observations which most directly testify to it (observing Earth turn around itself from Moon, if Armstrong went there, would be a real parallactic observation, but such observations are extremely rare compared to observations made on Earth) are a giant miracle saying « God is there » and any smaller scaled miracles would be on the one hand minor confirmations to those who had seen the giant miracle or smaller and therefore more visible ones to those who hadn’t, those who had just watched the giant miracle without seeing it as the miracle it is.

But making Geocentrism scientifically explicable is not really a Christian defense, since Democritus and Epicure were, with their Roman disciple Lucrece, geocentrics and at the same time atheists.

And both sides pretend that Newtonian explanations work in general, Sungenis only adding « it works for Geocentrism too ».

Science off the Sphere: Dancing Droplets
Physics Central
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERCioV6amys

Did you see it this time ?

Newtonian mechanics mean « a centrifugal force and a centripetal force – in case of Classic Newtonian Heoliocentrism usually Gravitation, but Electromagnetic force has been suggested – balance each other so as to produce orbit after orbit after orbit ». This is usually illustrated by the experiment of a stone with a string, where apart from the two forces (centripetal ones being tensions in string) you also have a solid object, the string. Or with the « tub of death » in which bikers ride with their bodies and bikes horizontal when riding in fast enough circles. Where apart from the two forces you also have a solid object, the tub. Take away the factor of solid object and have only two forces, I had proposed magnetic hockey pucks on ice around a larger magnet, well, the orbits cease pretty soon, because the two forces don’t continue to balance each other into the orbital movement.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Parmentier
St Stanislas of Krakow
Bishop and Martyr
7.V.2016

* Carter and Sarfati (1) on their own site and quoted (2) by Sungenis, Sungenis (2) on his site:

1) http://creation.com/refuting-absolute-geocentrism
2) https://gwwdvd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Why-the-Universe-does-not-revolve-around-the-Earth.pdf

Later on in the latter, Sungenis says:

« Like a giant flywheel, the universe keeps turning at the same rate year after year, and nothing is able to slow it down. »

Sungenis, get me a film of a giant flywheel turning same rate year after year and never slowing down !

I’d like to see your parallel !

Until then, I prefer saying the Universe is turning day after day for 7000 and more years since God started to turn it around us. And it will stop turning on Doomsday when God stops turning it around us./HGL

Was There No Celestial Mechanics for Tychonian System? Oh, yes!

1) New blog on the kid : GWW got Aristotle and St Thomas wrong. · 2) HGL's F.B. writings : What Mechanism? Are "Angelic Movers Outside Natural Sciences"? · 3) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : GWW vs Plato, HGL vs GWW · 4) New blog on the kid : Was There No Celestial Mechanics for Tychonian System? Oh, yes! · 5) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : One More Quote, if I May, Please! · 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Sungenis Countering Flat Earthers - with Some Lacks in his Argument · 7) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Any Fathers NOT Supporting Round Earth? Any Authorities that DO support Angelic Movers? · 8) HGL's F.B. writings : Debating with Sungenis, Mainly

GWW

One thing missing from Brahe’s model, however, was the power grid. What was making the sun revolve around the earth, and the planets around the sun? How, in fact, could the larger sun revolve around the smaller earth (which was one of the issues that bent Copernicus toward a sun-centered model)? The Greeks believed the power came from their gods; the Christians believed it was God of the Bible, but no one had supplied a natural reason for the celestial movements (even if the natural cause was created by God).

p. 61

NOTE

Riccioli accepting basically Tycho, agreed with St Thomas in angelic movers (a few pages earlier, GWW repeats the false opposition between Aristotle and St Thomas on this item).

Since angels are CREATED, they are natural. They are secondary causes, quite as much as men are. They are not miraculous or divine. Their power over matter is limited. They can as we say "move" bodies, they cannot - directly - change them. If an angel wants to change wood into ashes, that angel needs to move a fire to that wood. Not so for God.

So, the power grid was not at all missing. It was already in place since the scholastics.

GWW's footnote

The objection raised by Hartman and Nissim against Brahe’s system is worded in a similar vein: “Brahe’s system violates conservation of momentum in that the solar system does not orbit around its center of mass and Mach gives no inkling on how to deal with the nonconservation of momentum in Brahe’s system” (“On Mach’s critique of Newton and Copernicus,” American Journal of Physics 71 (11) November 2003, p. 1167). We will thoroughly address this objection in Chapter 2. Suffice it to say for now that the “center of mass” in the geocentric system is no longer defined on a local, solar system, basis but on the basis of the whole universe in rotation around a fixed Earth at the universe’s center of mass.

NOTE

Conservation of momentum is only relevant when body influences body, or physical forces do so. Not when God moves the aether. Not when angels move celestial bodies. Or smaller bodies (including but not limited to* poltergeist infestations - the demons who can no longer move stars are sometimes allowed to move pots and pans and scare people).

GWW

Brahe didn’t offer any solutions. He was merely a planet-charter who was devoted to the biblical geocentric system but didn’t know quite how to use his forty-years worth of figures to prove his case.

NOTE

Ptolemy was also just a planet charter.

Back then, some respected the division of labour between (planar) astronomy (as an optical science) and metaphysics (which included mechanics of celestial bodies, usually angelic movers).

GWW (with footnote)

Of course, although Kepler offered a solution (the magnetic pull of the sun) it would later be discredited.

After reading William Gilbert’s 1600 book De Magnete on magnetism, Kepler believed that each planet contained a magnet, and the sun contained a huge magnet. Depending on how the magnets were positioned, the result would either pull or push the planet around the sun. The farther the planet was from the sun, the weaker the magnetic field, and thus the slower the planet would move around the sun. The precise orientation of the polarities of the sun and the planets would then determine the ellipticity of the latter’s orbits.

p. 61, footnote reaching to p. 62.

NOTE

There are two discreditations of the magnetic theory.

Or, by now, three.

There is of course "gravitation instead of magnetism" - Newton - which has in its turn been set aside by believers in "electromagnetic universe".

There is Riccioli who said that Kepler was wrong to take an inanimate causation for the celestial mechanics. If stars and planets are lower than our nature by being inanimate, at least their movers must be higher than our nature, like God or angels, or God would not have placed them above us.

There is also the doubt (which I referred to in my debate with MS) and a very strong one, if a non-solid simple force could take the place that strings have on the stone on string experiment. Btw, it works against electromagnetic as well as gravitational explanations.

That is my third one and I take some personal pride in it, as well as first of all thanking God for it.

GWW

To this day, no one has found the power grid. Two centuries later, Newton would merely refine Kepler’s area law and show how gravity, not magnetism, was involved with the orbits of the planets, but he couldn’t explain the mechanism that produced gravity. He merely developed an equation to show its effects.

NOTE

... which is why (or one reason why)** he could not prove that gravity was the cause for this. Nor has this been proven to this day (see my debate with MS on supposed proofs for it).

And it is simply not true that there was no such thing as an idea what made the Heavens move, there was a very clear idea : God moves the overall movement each day, angels move the individual movements, like the solar one taking a year or the lunar one taking a month.

The problem noted by Hartman and Nissim is to a scholastic philosopher or anyone considering angels have the skill set they gave them, simply not a problem at all. Conservation of momentum comes secondary to angelic movers, not prior to it.

GWW

As one physics course put it: “However, one could also construct a ‘Tychonean’ model with elliptical orbits.”

University of Illinois, Physics 319, Spring 2004, Lecture 03, p. 11.

p. 63

NOTE

Exactly!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Tuesday after III Lord's Day of Lent
1.III.2016

PS, Agreeing with GWW on this one:

Hence Kepler is driven to Copernicanism because he believes it is better for the Earth to take part in an adventurous excursion through the universe rather than being in a unique and immovable position from which to observe the universe, thus proving once again that modern cosmology is influenced by a significant percentage of philosophical bias. In actuality, a moving earth would not allow man to “more correctly view and measure the single parts of his house,” simply because without an immovable foundation on which to set his measuring stick, there is no accurate way to know the distances, positions, or motions of the house. It is the very reason that Barbour titled his book “Absolute or Relative Motion?” for he, like Kepler, cannot tell what is moving and what is not.

p. 66

NOTE

This is why I entitled a very early writing on Geocentrism, actually laboriously written in Classical Greek, some fifteen years ago, when my contact with Greek studies were only ten years back rather than as now 23, after a dictum by Archimedes:

Δος μοι πω στα και κινασω ταν γαν.***

Archimedes meant leverage and physically causing Earth to move. I meant optically proving it to be moving.

We are NOT watching the Solar System, or supposed such, from an immobile spot outside it, like from the Empyrean Heaven. If we were, we could watch without any hesitation whatsoever what was moving and what wasn't. As we aren't, our best is to assume we were placed to where we can see things best - unless that is proven otherwise. Which, with angelic movers as even a possibility, it isn't.

PPS: Do NOT miss the quote GWW gives about Michelson-Morley on pp. 76-77. These are crucial for the kind of experimental understanding of Michelson-Morley, on which I can only defer to Sungenis and Bennett and their scientific reading./HGL

* See §§15, 16 of: Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera : When a Thought Ceases to be Believable to You, You should Cease to Think It.
http://triv7quadriv.blogspot.com/2012/03/when-thought-ceases-to-be-believable-to.html

** Another reason being, of course, that the angelic movers theory was an option, and he conspicuously failed to give any explanation or demonstration on why it should be excluded as an alternative. *** Title in Doric, as per quote from Archimedes, rest in as good an Attic as still I could muster. Unless it was koiné.

GWW got Aristotle and St Thomas wrong.

1) New blog on the kid : GWW got Aristotle and St Thomas wrong. · 2) HGL's F.B. writings : What Mechanism? Are "Angelic Movers Outside Natural Sciences"? · 3) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : GWW vs Plato, HGL vs GWW · 4) New blog on the kid : Was There No Celestial Mechanics for Tychonian System? Oh, yes! · 5) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : One More Quote, if I May, Please! · 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Sungenis Countering Flat Earthers - with Some Lacks in his Argument · 7) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Any Fathers NOT Supporting Round Earth? Any Authorities that DO support Angelic Movers? · 8) HGL's F.B. writings : Debating with Sungenis, Mainly

I will give a few quotes, interspersed with my comments. My own comments are introduced by NOTE (as in NB, NOTA BENE, or NO, NOTA OPTIME). Narrative and comments from Galileo Was Wrong (Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D. and Robert J. Bennett, Ph.D.) are introduced by GWW, quotes in it are introduced by quoted authority and end with the note of reference given by GWW. Each bit or string of bits is also followed by a page reference.

Swerdlow via Barbour:

…in his commentary on the Commentariolus that Copernicus probably discovered the Tychonic [geocentric] system at the same time as his own Copernican system. Why, Swerdlow wondered, did Copernicus choose his own system in preference to the Tychonic one, which avoids all the dynamical problems of terrestrial mobility, to say nothing of the theological problems? Swerdlow concluded…that Copernicus was strongly swayed by purely mechanical considerations to do with his acceptance of the theory that the planets are carried by material spheres. For in the Tychonic system Mars would have to pass at some points in its motion through the sphere of the sun, and Swerdlow believed that Copernicus must have found this an insuperable difficulty, therefore opting for the intellectually much more daring heliocentric system with a mobile earth.

[note 53 : Julian B. Barbour, Absolute or Relative Motion, p. 255-256. Although Barbour doesn’t necessarily agree that Swerdlow’s thesis about the spheres is what motivated Copernicus to reject the Tychonic model; and although Barbour agrees that Copernicus did, indeed, use Aristotle’s crystalline spheres, he admits that “Copernicus seems to be on the point of advancing the Tychonic system as an explicit possibility…” but turns against it because of “Neoplatonic sympathies to see the center of the planetary system as an ideal location for the sun.]

GWW

If true, the sheer irony is that by employing a later-to-be-discredited Aristotelian theory of planets orbiting the sun by being attached to rotating crystal spheres, Copernicus was led to deny the perfectly viable and less complicated geocentric model for the much riskier “terrestrial mobility” of heliocentrism. It was precisely for these kinds of haphazard developments that critic Arthur Koestler titled his book, “The Sleepwalkers,” since the record showed numerous examples that the history of science was comprised of one serendipitous thought process after another, whether good or bad.

pp. 19-20

NOTE

Aristotle considered the planets, including Sun and Moon orbit EARTH by being attached to rotating crystal spheres. The outermost, rotating with fixed stars, moved by God. St Thomas agrees with this, and if crystal spheres are refuted, Copernicus/Tycho style, sth similar can be said of rotating (in the daily motion) along the rotation of an aether moved by God.

Aristotle finally could not comprehend why a God perfectly blissful should WANT to do so, so he came up with an idea (taken over by Averroes but NOT St Thomas) that God did not move the outermost sphere by HIS intention, but by ITS love of Him. In other words, Aristotle or his commentator Averroes at least posited, below God, a kind of "world spirit" which loved God and moved itself with its "body-the-world" around Earth out of love of a more perfect God.

Giordano Bruno was going to blaspheme that: this world spirit is unique only for each what we would call Solar System and, on top of that, in each of them identic to the "Holy Spirit" of that particular "world" (or as we would say : Solar System). This blasphemy is of course not related to what Aristotle thought about movers of the planets, but due to his ideas about God's perfect bliss making "action about lesser things" kind of "psychologically impossible" to God. Hence also the eternity of the world, which St Thomas obviously did not agree with Aristotle on. But perhaps this was just a slip of the pen?

Nevertheless, Aristotle did NOT at all think planets move around SUN in crystal spheres.

GWW

As noted earlier, the very reason Copernicus rejected the simpler geocentric model (later to be demonstrated by Tycho Brahe) was that it required him to reject the Greek’s concept of crystalline spheres, even though he had already rejected their geocentrism. Apparently, the spheres were very important to Copernicus. One reason is that spheres are essentially extended circles, and Copernicus believed, as a fundamental scientific fact, that all celestial motion had to occur by means of circles. He rejected Ptolemy’s non-circular model based on that very premise.

pp. 25-26

NOTE:

GWW is not quoting any passage from Copernicus directly, but he is relying on Swerdlow for his assessment of Copernicus' motive. Probably correctly so, I have no reason to doubt Swerdlow on Copernicus, since he read him and I didn't.

I think the reason is more likely to have been if not exclusively, which is also possible, at least equally, the non-descriptiveness of what we now call spirograph patterns by what geometry had to offer in the days of Copernicus.

If this didn't occur to Swerdlow and Barbour, it is possible that they were thinking in terms of "that's not an argument".

Well, maybe it is in a world in which heavens are still considered eminantly spiritual realities and in which all heavenly movements must therefore by in some sense perfect (especially as angelic movers of celestial bodies are all unfallen angels, not demons!).

First of all, circles as movements are very close to observed and concluded reality - of daily movement. Of any heavenly body. In six months, Sun does not rotate 183 perfect circles, but does a very close spiral either inward or outward which has 183 turns that are at least very close to perfect circles, since moving along the daily movement of the Universe.

GWW

The Greeks, especially after their model was refined by Aristotle, believed that the whole cosmos was structured upon dozens of transparent spheres. Each sphere had an inner and an outer wall. Attached to the inner wall were various celestial bodies. For example, Mars would be embedded into the wall of a sphere and the whole sphere rotated around the earth and thus carried Mars with it, but since the sphere was transparent, it looked as though Mars was revolving around the earth by itself. These spheres were permitted to exist far away from the earth and rotate freely because they were composed of the fifth element, aether (the other four elements were: air, water, fire and earth), which was the lightest or most rarified element of the five.71 Most important is the fact that any extensions in the planets’ movement caused by epicyclic or eccentric variations were permitted in the space between the inner and outer wall of the sphere. Further, Aristotle believed that each sphere rotated around the earth because it was being pushed by one of the gods – who was the “unmoved mover.” The medievals who later used an Aristotelian framework (but did so through Ptolemy’s model) rejected the polytheistic cosmos and replaced it with only one Prime Mover who moved the outermost sphere which in turn moved the rest of the spheres.

p. 26

NOTE:

Here GWW gets Aristotle wrong.

In Aristotle as in St Thomas, the outermost sphere, that of the fixed stars is moved by God alone as Prime Mover.

In Aristotle and in St Thomas, all inner spheres are moved along this outermost sphere by contact with it.

And, in St Thomas as well as in Aristotle, all inner spheres have also another movement than this daily one, which is attributed to lesser spirits than the Prime Mover. Aristotle identified them with Pagan gods. St Thomas says they should not be worshipped and identified them as angels.

In a passage of one popular catechism, the one on the creed, St Thomas (speaking in popular language but taken down in Latin) says that Pagans who worship the Sun are like poor men approaching the palace of a king. They come to the gates and see a servant in a very fine livery and have not seen the king yet - and they think that servant is the king.

This is a very explicit endorsement of the Aristotelic view, in all except its giving divine honours to the spirits that guide Sun through the year, Moon through the month and so on.

Riccioli goes even further. His, not Aristotele's, is the view which GWW attributes to the latter.

Aristotle seems to have been wrong on spheres being impenetrable at edges. So Tycho does away with them. Consequently, instead of Sun, Moon, stars, etc sharing a common westward movement which God produces on a daily basis, Riccioli thinks that Sun, Moon, stars are instead INDIVIDUALLY moved westward on a daily basis. At different paces. Riccioli actually thinks St Thomas should abandon the argument for God's existence from God as Prime Mover (of the outermost and hence all spheres in the daily movement) and instead stick to the argument which we know from Descartes too. He ALSO clutters up the point about angelic movers.

St Thomas says they move matter by a mere act of will. Riccioli introduces a distinction by which there needs to be an "executive faculty" between will and result. This is a false parallel from St Thomas psychology about human will, where "acts of will" without "executive faculty" result in nothing, but this is spoken about the difference between wishing and willing with decision. Angels really by nature do have the faculty of moving matter locally (as opposed to substantially or qualitatively) by a direct act of will. And angelic wills are really not given to the kind of hesitation man often shows, which is why St Thomas introduces an executive power in his very will - unless it be spoken about nervous system, since man cannot move feet or fingers without functioning nerves. Also a bad parallel as to what angels can and cannot.

But despite his cluttered philosophy, Riccioli accurately records that to St Thomas as well as to nearly everyone else, angels move the individual bodies we see up there. By "direct act of will", even if Riccioli thinks St Thomas "must have meant" via the "executive power".

St Thomas agreed with Aristotle in all except two things : he believed the spiritual movers or intelligences moving spheres or stars should not be adored. And, unlike Aristotle not believing in astrological determinism, he believed that there are both human free wills and lots of angelic movers within our very close environment, far below all celestial bodies.

And, unlike above, these are both unfallen, like St Michael, and fallen, like Satan. Hence the exorcisms and so on.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Tuesday after III Lord's Day of Lent
1.III.2016