6:32
"and your argument for the sake of argument is made precisely to prove that position" (which one has made clear).
Fine, but a concessive clause was made in order to precisely illustrate that certain things do NOT follow against the faith (in large) even from Heliocentrism.
A weak concessive clause, not an "I grant you that", but more "even if I grant you that".
However, to be fair to Dimond brothers, they were probably looking at an official English translation which bungled that precise point. See earlier comments in earlier parts.*
7:04
"Benedict XV does not say anywhere that the Earth IS the centre of the Universe"
Nor that it isn't.
He is however arguing for its being irrelevant to the things THAT he is stating, if such were the case.
Earth was the scene of Incarnation, and Dante's treating it such remains edifying. Dante being the larger context.
This is enough for a room that Bendict XV was making an argument, not indeed starting from a position he held as counterfactual and had distanced himself from as such, but from a position which he held to be an adiaphoron, or hoped to be an adiaphoron, and wanted to illustrate as such.
But a Pope in one subordinate clause hoping Earth's position to be an adiaphoron does not equal a clear magisterial statement that it is in fact a licit position about the matter.
By the way, at 7:04, I have STILL not heard Dimond brothers clearly state that In Praeclara Summorum is about Dante and not about the Copernican books and their theorems.
7:14
"And he is not saying that he is ... soleley for the sake of an argument proving that the Earth is the centre of the Universe".
No, but by the choice of subordinating conjunction licet, by the choice of sit rather than est, and by the choice of non dicenda sit rather than non sit, he is indicating AMPLY that HE is HERE not concerned to DISCUSS whether Heliocentrism or Geocentrism be the true position.
He is only concerned to establish that the scientific errors of Dante are adiaphora as to his Divine Comedy being edifying.
He takes that in two points, first straighter off, whether praecessus scientiarum, with items such that Tychonian astronomy (which was accepted at the time of the Galileo process, though not by Galileo) suffices as example of this progress of sciences. The second is the more roundabout, and that is what he is refusing to directly discuss, namely if Earth could be not centre of the universe, all he has to say about that being that the question is unimportant in relation to salvific truths embodied in Dante's Divina Commedia.
Be it noted, a Pope wanting a certain point to be treated like adiaphoron, but not directly defining that it is so (which is how Benedict XV went about this matter) is a behaviour reminiscent of Honorius : if he was not a Monothelite, he sinned (as far as following council and Pope St Leo II are concerned) by calling Monothelite controversy an adiaphoron.
But according to usual Catholic theology on papacy not enough to be a non-believer and a non-Pope.
7:32
"this should be immediately recognised by an honest person"
If anything should that, it is that an encyclical on Dante is clearly not a magisterial statement bearing directly on the question whether Heliocentrism has become licit to actually believe.
And Dimond brothers have STILL not said a word (that I heard at least) on the fact that the encyclical was on Dante and not on astronomy. An unwary and ignorant person hearing them might get the impression that Benedict XV wrote an encyclical as a direct response to an astronomical query, when in fact he didn't. Or to a query relating to what astronomies are licit for a Catholic to accept, when in fact he did not do that either.
Is that somehow NOT dishonest on their part? What am I missing?
Will they at least admit it later?
8:19 It is true that St Paul's procedure is not perfectly parallel, but it is also true that it perfectly ILLUSTRATES that one can use hypothetical conjunctions before a sentence or clause which by itself, as a complete sentence, would be contrary to that faith - which was the level of parallel that Paul Smith intended to convey against a rash statement meaning ultimately that one couldn't.
8:55
"you can then reason FROM THAT TRUTH and assume for the sake of argument"
But the argument in Corinthians is not from the truth that Christ resurrected, but in order to illustrate importance of that truth, from fact of its being central, to a consequence, either Christ resurrected or we are idiots.
This consequence is in and by itself NOT built on the truth of faith which he had clearly stated earlier.
9:14
"he did not say anywhere that he believes the truth is that the Earth is the centre of the Universe, rather he simply stated that the Earth may not be the centre of the Universe."
No, he did not SIMPLY STATE that.
And Earth being and not being centre was still not the point.
If he had wanted to state SIMPLY that Earth may not be the centre of the Universe, he would have written an encyclical on the subject, perhaps in 1920 commemorating hundred years of Settele's book winning against the censorship of Anfossi and in a main clause, not a subordinate one state:
**Esse potest (esse facile potest, esse potest et immo probabile est etc) verum, quod terra non sit centrum universi.
He never included these precise terms in a main clause in indicative in his encyclical either, and his doing so (or something clearly tantamount) is what the terms "simply stated" convey to a listener who cannot check what it was.
Because he doesn't know Latin.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Day after Sts Simon and Jude
29.X.2016
* Or here : "hanc autem terram quam nos homines incolimus licet ad universi caeli complexum iam non quasi centrum, ut opinio fuit, obtinere dicenda sit, ipsam tamen et sedem beatae nostrorum progenitorum vitae fuisse, et testem deinde tum eius, quam illi fecerunt ex eo statu prolapsionis miserrimiae tum restitutae Iesu Christi sanguine hominum salutis sempiternae." Not equivalent to "translation": "and though this earth on which we live may not be the centre of the universe as at one time was thought, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. A real, not official translation: and though one might not be right to say of [our earth etc] that it obtains the so to speak the centre of the complex of all heaven.
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