Some years back, a friend of mine was leaving evening prayer at our local Dominican parish when he found himself confronted by an angry lady scowling at the Dominicans in their habits. My friend happens to be a history prof at the University of Washington. The lady started muttering at him about the monstrous crimes of the Dominicans and how everybody (including my friend) was a blind sheep because they knew nothing about the medieval Church and the crimes it has committed. (Surely, if any subject is taboo in our culture, it is discussion of the sins, both real and imagined, of the Catholic Church). My friend asked, “What crimes do you mean?” She replied, “Why don’t you ask your Dominican friends about the 46 million people they killed in the Inquisition in the 14th century?”
My friend had nothing to say in reply to this. The woman took that as confirmation of her crushing rhetorical blow. My friend was thinking, “That was roughly the entire population of Europe at the time. The Dominicans slaughtered all of Europe and then killed themselves?” The woman wandered off, muttering.
The 46 million (or 5 million) killed by Dominicans, or the Vatican, or Constantine’s Vatican if you are a Da Vinci Code true believer is a classic example of pseudoknowledge. One of those things you pick up somewhere and repeat with a knowing air that substitutes for actual familiarity with the subject you are expounding upon. If somebody questions whether you know what you are talking about, you don’t deal with the question of whether you know what you are talking about. You simply say, “So! You want to make excuses for the murder of innocent people by religious bigots!” in the same tone you use to say, “You left your soiled underwear on my coffee table.” For, of course, at the end of the day, it will remain the case that some number of people (46 million? Several thousand?) were put to death… well, not by the Inquisition exactly but certainly by the secular authorities working with the Inquisition. So the story is close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades and that’s all that matters. The idea is not so much accuracy as truthiness: the sense that you have righteously scored off bad guys. And if they are bad guys, then they don’t really deserve to be spoken of accurately, do they? They should have thought about that before they started killing off their millions, or however many it was. The point is: I am righteously angry and when I have righteousness on my side, I don’t need to know what I’m talking about so long as I land some good hard punches on the jaw of Evil.
I think of this as I watch other truthy memes work their way through the consciousness of people who only know what they read for a second on the web. For instance, there is the “Rome is shielding Bernard Law from prosecution” meme currently floating about. The notion is that Law was spirited away to Rome to avoid landing in a Boston pokey for his role in covering up sex abuse. In fact, Law cooperated with the civil investigation, but we (that is, we laypeople, who run all the courts, own all the guns, and staff all the jails) decided not to prosecute. Law is not on the lam from anything. One can (and I think, should) question the wisdom of putting him in charge of a basilica instead of putting him out to pasture for his atrocious decisions to reshuffle and cover up abuse. But nothing is served by regurgitating the stupid claim that he is a fugitive from the law. He’s just not. At the end of the day, the quarrel is not about civil justice, but about how the Church should deal with an internal bit of housekeeping: punish the miscreant by making him clean toilets in a monastery or leave him to pad around some Roman Church saying Mass and greeting visitors. It’s fine to be angry about John Paul for making the latter call. I think it was the wrong call too. But it’s what experts in morality call “lying” to say that Law is wanted by the Boston cops.
Similarly, one of the latest memes to arise is the claim that Crimen Sollicitationis (a 1962 Vatican letter dealing with the crime of solicitation in the confessional) threatens victims of abuse with excommunication for denouncing or providing testimony against an abusive priest. Indeed, we are even informed that this still remains as official policy, all due (naturally) to the unbelievably evil machinations of Nazi Pope Ratzinger.
Fact: this is just not true. Last things first, Crimen Solicitationis was superceded by 2003 (due largely to the work of one Joseph Ratzinger), so the claim that it is “still official policy” is bunk. But far more important is the claim that it “automatically excommunicated” witnesses for reporting on or testifying to abuse. As Sean Murphy points out, this meme is the coinage of Christopher Hitchens’ brain, not a brain known for sane or accurate readings of any documents pertaining to religious belief. Hitchens, it will be recalled, is an almost preternaturally sloppy reader of religious documents. As David Hart notes about God is not Great:
On matters of simple historical and textual fact, moreover, Hitchens’ book is so extraordinarily crowded with errors that one soon gives up counting them. Just to skim a few off the surface: He speaks of the ethos of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as “an admirable but nebulous humanism,” which is roughly on a par with saying that Gandhi was an apostle of the ruthless conquest and spoliation of weaker peoples. He conflates the histories of the first and fourth crusades. He repeats as fact the long discredited myth that Christians destroyed the works of Aristotle and Lucretius, or systematically burned the books of pagan antiquity, which is the very opposite of what did happen. He speaks of the traditional hostility of “religion” (whatever that may be) to medicine, despite the monastic origins of the modern hospital and the involvement of Christian missions in medical research and medical care from the fourth century to the present. He tells us that countless lives were lost in the early centuries of the Church over disputes regarding which gospels were legitimate (the actual number of lives lost is zero). He asserts that Myles Coverdale and John Wycliffe were burned alive at the stake, although both men died of natural causes. He knows that the last twelve verses of Mark 16 are a late addition to the text, but he imagines this means that the entire account of the Resurrection is as well. He informs us that it is well known that Augustine was fond of the myth of the Wandering Jew, though Augustine died eight centuries before the legend was invented. And so on and so on (and so on).
Who better then, to turn to as your Sure and Certain Guide to the interpretation of an obscure Vatican document that many bishops were unaware even existed? Yet, mysteriously, Hitchens’ reading has become Received Wisdom for many people who now live in the strange delusion that they must have, at some point, read Crimen Sollicitationis , even though they could not cite five words from it if their lives depended on it. They seem to get this notion from Hitchens, who only cites about five words in order to buttress his claim that the sole purpose of the document was to tell victims, “If you talk, you will go to Hell.” Yet common sense should move us to ask, “Why are there 39 pages of detailed discussion about how to proceed with reporting abuse, inquiring into the merits of the case, and kicking pervy priests down the stairs if the standing policy was simply to muzzle witnesses from so much as reporting abuse?” If the sole purpose of the document was simply to prevent the reportage on crimes from ever happening and to muzzle witnesses under the threat of the fires of hell, it would appear that the other 39 pages of the document were rather superfluous.
Here’s the real scoop:
Crimen Sollicitationis did not threaten excommunication of people who revealed “child rape and torture” by priests. On the contrary: it imposed not only a duty to denounce such crimes (and the lesser offence of solicitation) to the bishop, but the automatic excommunication of anyone who knowingly failed to do so.13
Officials investigating or involved in proceedings pertaining to these “unspeakable crimes” were required to take an oath of perpetual secrecy, on pain of excommunication.14 This was the passage perverted by Mr. Hitchens’ selective quotation and extraordinary accusation. An oath of secrecy was also to be given to witnesses in the proceedings, but was not, it seems, to be backed by a threat of excommunication.15 Analogous oaths of secrecy and confidentiality are taken by secular professionals and officials. Confidentiality is usually maintained during secular investigations, and secular proceedings – Family Court hearings for example – sometimes proceed in secret.16
Once again, as with the Inquisition and the Church’s actions with regard to Cardinal Law, there is real room for criticism. The document does not address perverts who operate outside the confessional. This means two things.
First, that all the business about excommunication in the document has in view the protection of the Seal of the Confessional, not a universal policy applying to all crimes by all priests against all victims.
Second, the document thinks entirely in terms of ecclesial law and not in terms of civil law. That, I think, is its chief defect. For while a careful reading of paragraph 13 shows it does not “automatically excommunicate” witnesses against the pervert, it certainly does not encourage them to go to the cops either. It gives laypeople (and their pastors) every reason to think that pervert priests should be dealt with “in house” and not by civil authorities when they commit grave crimes against their flock. And while I suppose that in some remote theoretical sense a biblical rationale could be constructed for this approach based on St. Paul…
When one of you has a grievance against a brother, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life! If then you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who are least esteemed by the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no man among you wise enough to decide between members of the brotherhood, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is defeat for you. (1 Cor 6:1-7)
...I also think that, as our bishops have made all too plain by their egregious failures, any such theoretical hope that they could be trusted to swiftly remove and punish miscreants was, shall we say, over-optimistic?... on the part of the drafters of CS. Weak excuses can be trotted out. Yes, the false charge of perversion was a favorite tool for Nazis and Commies in attacking the Church, so a 1962 hierarchy in spitting distance of the Iron Curtain might not be too eager to let Caesar take a look at the skeletons in the closet since there is still the reality that priests can be falsely charged. But still, what should have been built in to the document, and what is conspicuously absent, is any discussion of the remedy of civil law for victims. Nero wasn’t too keen on the Church either, but Paul still said he had the right to wield the sword in matters of civil crime (Romans 13). In Crimen Sollicitationis, there simply is no consideration of the possibility of victims going to the cops and lots of pressure against it. It is simply assumed that everybody involved would and should turn to the bishop alone and that the bishop would, of course, punish the abusive priest, not shuffle him off on new parishes with a fresh batch of children awaiting rape, sodomy and a raft of fresh horrors that the bishop never bothered to warn anyone about. The unbelievably egregious and criminal failure of our church’s shepherds, in so many places around the world and for so long, makes it plain, I think, that Rev. Ladislas Orsy of Georgetown University is right when he says, “This document reflects a mentality and a policy. I do not think [the document] initiated it. And I do not think as a practical matter [the document] contributed much to it, because for the most part this document was just sitting in the archives,” he said. “But it is a manifestation of it.” The culture and mindset it reflects is the notion that the priest mattered more than the victim—vastly more. One can say that without shouting hysterically that universal policy threatened all whistleblowers, victims and witnesses of all priestly crime everywhere with automatic excommunication and that this is “still official policy.”
The point is this: there’s enough real stuff to be upset about. There’s no point borrowing trouble by believing hysteria from cranks who can’t be bothered to get elementary facts straight. It doesn’t help victims and doesn’t bring anybody to justice. It’s just that simple. Knowing what we are talking about is not aiding and abetting coverups. It is doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before our God, a quality not highly prized by the author of God is not Great, but one which, I hope, Catholics are still aiming to achieve.
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The lesson to be learned: Never let the facts get in the way of your ideaology!
Hitchen is an atheist. Atheists, like Hitchen are so unsure of their belief (atheism), they have to criticize other beliefs to uphold theirs.
Thank you, Mark.
Thanks Mark.
I am so glad that the bloggers at NCR are getting the REAL story out.
You can’t trust Mark Shea! Don’t you know he conducts black masses in his basement? He even admits he lives in a dark tower! Well, maybe not black masses, but he DOES live in Seattle, so QED!!!!!1!! :-P
Huh? Get real.
I attended a dark grey, pinstripe mass once.
I see.
Lisieux:
Don’t worry. Mike’s kidding.
Carbon Monoxide, however, really is evil. I mean, pinstripe? Come on!
Mark how can you stomach all this hatred? The first link is appaling, oozing with anticatholicism.
Ironically (but not in a funny way!) the comments sound like a witch hunt with phrases like: “From now on every Priest should go directly to jail for booking and staying over night if necessary until he has a Court hearing.”
I think this is extremely sad.
I understand that what happend is horrible and a few priests committed horrible acts… and for sure I am not gonna defend them, but some people are clearly so full of hate that they care NOT about the victims, but they care only about hating itself.
Thanks, Mark. I was wondering and didn’t know which way he was going with that.
Ismael, I know what you mean, but from my lay Catholic mom’s point of view:
Mark’s blog, and others like him, are very important. I do believe that we’re going to find this type of anti-Catholicism everywhere, even on the NCR blogs. I want to ENCOURAGE Mark Shea and Jimmy Akin to PLEASE keep this information coming.
I can’t tell you how much they have helped me when I discuss these items with non-Catholics on the internet or face to face. Because of them, I don’t have to rely on the Associated Press for a distorted view.
We must keep up the good fight, even in the face of rude, crude posters.
Just beating the computer here.,,,,
Besides, I’m sure Mark has a delete button. I do on my own blog, and it’s a nice device.
There was a letter to the editor about cutting out the comment boxes because of nonsense posters. I hope that doesn’t happen. I wrote my own letter to the editor of the Register, commenting on that issue.
This is my training ground to go out and spread the TRUTH about what society spills out about the Church, the pope, or Catholicism in general.
This blog is part of the New Evanglization, and it helps get out the Good News.
God bless you, Mark Shea.
Ismael:
It’s not hatred that hurts the Church but sin. A thousand falsehoods from Christopher Hitchens can’t hurt the Church. But one real sin by a pervert priest or a neglectful bishop is what put Jesus on the cross. I wrote the above primarily for the sake of those who, in addition to being wounded and scandalized by the real sins and evils of the abuse scandal, are unnecessarily wounded and scandalized by the false hysteria of Hitchens. But the real evils are bad enough. The hatred of hysterics can’t send us to Hell. Our own sins can. We Catholics have to look to our own house in addition to quelling hysterics from dishonest critics.
“Our Lady Untier of Knots pray for us” - Bless you Mark - Rene
Boy, it’d be something to have Shea and Hitchens debate each other.
Mark, everyone knows that all of this disinformation is the fault of the sacred monkeys in the Vatican, who have been corrupted by the animal rights movement into thinking that spreading disinformation is the same thing as freedom of speech.
(I hope liseux doesn’t mind a bit of humor referencing “Brideshead Revisited” for the sake of non-Catholics who may not yet have encountered this magnificent work of literature. The spreading of Catholic culture ought to be within the bounds of the New Evangelization, yes?)
I recently finished reading The Life of Saint Dominic by Augusta Theodosia Drane. For those interested in this saint and his times, it is a good book!
Thanks, Erin for ‘splaining it to me… We Catholics need some good humor.
“The culture and mindset it reflects is the notion that the priest mattered more than the victim — vastly more.” YES. And it is THIS that people outside the cloistered little community of the Catholic Church are reacting to. The specifics you point out, however accurately, are not as important as this one overarching fact. To continually ignore this makes Catholics, in their heated defense of the hierarchy, look like oblivious enablers. Congratulations, Mark, for being one of the few Catholic conservatives who sees this and will admit it; but it’s tragic that so few will, much less appreciate its central importance. And thus, good people end up talking past each other.
Conservative Catholic? I admire our current bishop and holy father, first that mean I don’t acknowledge the horrible abuse in which I can’t fathom the thougts of the molesters actions. Those who defend are saying stop with the pitch forks on the current innocent priests and pray for cleanup, as our holy father is in the process of conducting. Stop bringing politics into religion, I’m an independent anyway.
Ok, so the distraught women had her facts wrong. The inquisiton was started by pope gregory IX in the 9th century and just in spain alone there were 31912 people burned at the stake for heresy, that means they had disagreed with the church. The inqusition ended around the second half of the 18th century due to ‘enlightment ideas’. The point is that the catholic church has murdered people then and today. Copernicus was so afraid of the catholic church that he waited until he was on his death bed to proclaim that the earth as was believed by the catholic church was not the center of the universe and that it was the sun. The pope and his minions are a disgrace and anyone who supports the catholic church is an accomplice in the past and present abuse that has or will occur.
31912
You’re sure? That precise number? Document, please.
Copernicus was so afraid of the catholic church that he waited until he was on his death bed to proclaim that the earth as was believed by the catholic church was not the center of the universe and that it was the sun.
For the actual, non-Dan Brown devotee account, go here.
Seriously, if you are going to attack the Church on historical grounds (and there are lots of grounds to do this), make the effort to know what you are talking about.
Ok, I am not going to debate history with you, answer this has the church been responsible for the deaths of anbybody either through the crusades or the inquisition or through sexual abuse ? And if the catholic chruch is a victim, then why have they selltled civil lawsuits regarding the sexual abuse of children why did they not take it to court? Have you read the Phila Grand Jury Report where there were 63 + creditable priests named ? As a result of the statute of limitations those so called priests were not prosecuted ! Where are they now ? Again has the catholic church caused the death of anyone ?
Thanks, Mark, for this clarification. It might have been better for B. Law to be sent to Africa where the Church is in need. It would have taken him out of the privileged milieu of Boston and put him in touch with reality. He is still living in privilege in Rome but is likely too old to be sent anywhere else.
The problem with solicitations in the confessional is that there are no witnesses. It would take several accusations from unrelated persons to form a case without witnesses. This is the problem: Whom to believe?
The prof sounds right when he says this was a policy of the times when priests were getting accused of confessional solicitations during Communism. Still, it should remain in place to protect priests from kooks who try to cast aspersions in the dark of the confessional. Does anyone ever ask how many priests have been solicited in the confessional? Hello, any priests out there to whom this has happened?
Uttrust, individuals within the Church have been responsible for evil and great good. To me it is proof of the Holy Spirit working with the Church that in over 2000 years the rot within the Church has not destroyed it.
We are always in need of reform, from apostolic times and Judas until today.
Through the grace of God, it has been more of an instrument for healing, good, and salvation.
In our own time, we’ve seen what living the fullness of the Catholic faith can do with a simple woman like Mother Teresa:
“Mother Teresa received 124 awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Medal of Freedom. She built hundreds of orphanages, hospitals, hospices, health clinics, homeless shelters, youth shelters and soup kitchens all over the world, and is revered in India for her work. She created the first hospice in Greenwich Village for AIDS patients. Not surprisingly, she was voted the most admired woman in the world three years in a row in the mid-1990s. But she is not good enough to be honored by the Empire State Building.”
(from the Catholic League)
You might like to count the deaths of that those within the Church have sinfully brought about- I’ll look at the millions more LIVES that the Catholic Church has protected and helped.
And there are thousands of unsung Mother Teresas and Terences throughout the world today.
And you can accuse me of being an accomplice to that and an enabler as well!
Please cite your souces as to the ‘millions of lives’ that have been saved by the catholic church. If one child died as a result of the catholic church it is ONE TO MANY! An again how many people died as a result of the catholic church. Remember the “Death of Dogma is the Birth of Morality ” Emmanuel Kant 1724-1804.
UAtrust, today, the Missionaries of Charity have over 500 houses which care for the sick, feed the poor, and take in orphans, among other great works.
Times those houses by those in past centuries manned by selfless Franciscans, Daughters of Charity, Carmelites, etc. and you have many millions.
You can curse the darkness all you want- I tend to look at the light around us.
I don’t think the Catholic Church has killed a single person. Can you docuemnt that?
Perhaps people within the Church, but I’ve never heard of the Church itself killing people.
Evidently u are not equipped to think ! And you still have not named your source all you did to support your claim is provide rhetoric. Keep donating !
I shall.
@unabletotrust
You are quite ignorant my friend. Your facts are ludicrous. Who schooled you?
Your numbers are far exagerated…
“Please cite your souces as to the ‘millions of lives’ that have been saved by the catholic church. “
Cite YOUR sources… can you do that or do you get facts from your imagination or from anti-catholic progaganda?
“Evidently u are not equipped to think ! And you still have not named your source all you did to support your claim is provide rhetoric. Keep donating ! “
Neither have YOU! There are many sources, go to ANY library or check the websites or books about Missionaries of Charity or any other Catholico order.
Check the story of Giovanni Bosco and many others like him.
““Ok, I am not going to debate history with you”“
You do NOT know history that is why.
“”. The pope and his minions are a disgrace and anyone who supports the catholic church is an accomplice in the past and present abuse that has or will occur. “”
This words mark you as an hypocrite and a sexual abuse and murder accomplice, by YOUR STANDARDS.
You defend anti-catholicism, like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Lenin and other many who killed TENS OF MILLIONS. Since you associety to their ideas of anticatholicism, then by YOUR standards this makes you an accomplice to their murders
Also you defend so much anticatholic ‘Enlightment’... just like Jean Jascques Russeau, Sartre and Voltaire.
Russeau bought a 10 years old girl in Venice to satisfy hi sexual depravity and Voltaire and Sartre tried to legalize sex with minors….
So this by YOUR standards makes you a pedophile as well…
I hope you see the irony in this…
““Evidently u are not equipped to think ! And you still have not named your source all you did to support your claim is provide rhetoric. Keep donating ! “”
Evidently it his you who canNOT think. You are so full of prejudice and hatred that you see only bad things, fueled by irrational thoughts and ignorance…
And you do not cite your sources ;)
“I don’t think the Catholic Church has killed a single person. Can you docuemnt that?
Perhaps people within the Church, but I’ve never heard of the Church itself killing people.
“
.
Well this is true… the Church condemned the people to be dealt with by the civil authorities (the so- called ‘secular arm’)
However we must not say that the Church was completely blameless in the suffering of some.
Errors have been made, unfortunately.
—-
However let’s think in perspective. The USA, often seen the ‘pinnacle of civilization’ (at least by Americans) has killed more people in 60 years of death penalty than the Inquisition in several centuries (the numers are a few thousand… only 1-3% of all trials ended up in death penalty).
From 1977 until now the US juridical system has put to death 1206 people… and that is in ONLY 32 years!
That is LESS than the killings in the Spanish Inquisition over 200 years (the total is about 1080 people killed)!!!!!!
Source: http://deathpenaltyinfo.org
W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy
Data from the Aragonese Secretariat
God Bless you Mark. Great article.
I would like to comment on this part of Mark’s article:
“This document reflects a mentality and a policy. I do not think [the document] initiated it. And I do not think as a practical matter [the document] contributed much to it, because for the most part this document was just sitting in the archives,” he said. “But it is a manifestation of it.” The culture and mindset it reflects is the notion that the priest mattered more than the victim—vastly more.”
In the last sentence if one substituted adult for priest, one would be stating the opinion of the world in this matter. In other words, until very recently, abuse of all kinds against children was allowed because adults were the ones that mattered. Children did not. I just read the story of a woman who was sexually abused by her Baptist minister father and her mother counseled her to not tell anyone about her special “relationship” with her father. I have heard numerous stories of this happening in families in the past. Children were subjected to all kinds of horrors because they were not considered important and had few rights. Hence, the necessity for enacting child labor laws, among other things.
The reason I mention this is because this is not a “Church” issue. The world, or at least western culture, thought this way. The Church was merely reflecting this attitude that was endemic to our culture. One can argue that the Church should have been better than the culture in this area, and it should have been. However, as much as we might rather it be otherwise, people in the Church are affected by the culture around them. This is a constant battle that must be fought against. Hopefully the Church will be at the forefront of exposing this crime against children and be the leader in changing the culture regarding this tragedy.
Ismael, some interesting facts. I will certainly notate the information on Voltaire, Sartre, and Rousseau. I knew those guys with the selfish philosophies had to have lived selfishly as well.
God bless you!
Ismael and Mark Shea pleas read and comment :Copernicus is reburied as hero by Polish priests
The Catholic Church had condemned his Earth and sun findings. The astronomer is now hailed.
By Vanessa Gera
Associated Press
FROMBORK, Poland - Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.
His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that Earth revolves around the sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.
Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in what is now Poland, far from Europe’s centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.
His revolutionary model was based on complex mathematical calculations and his naked-eye observations of the heavens because the telescope had not yet been invented.
After his death, his remains rested in an unmarked grave beneath the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, northern Poland, the exact location unknown.
On Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland’s highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried the coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005.
A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory, but also a church canon, a cleric that ranks below a priest. The tombstone is decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets.
At the urging of a local bishop, scientists began searching in 2004 for the astronomer’s remains and eventually turned up a skull and bones of a 70-year-old man - the age Copernicus was when he died. A reconstruction made by forensic police based on the skull showed a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus.
In a later stage of the investigation, DNA taken from teeth and bones matched that from hairs found in one of his books, leading the scientists to conclude with great probability that they had finally found Copernicus.
In recent weeks, a wooden casket holding those remains has lain in state in the nearby city of Olsztyn, and on Friday they were toured around the region to towns linked to his life.
The pageantry comes 18 years after the Vatican rehabilitated the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted in the Inquisition for carrying the Copernican Revolution forward.
Saturday’s Mass was led by Jozef Kowalczyk, the papal nuncio and newly named primate of Poland, the highest church authority in the deeply Catholic country.
Copernicus’ major treatise - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres - was published at the very end of his life, and he only received a copy of the printed book on the day he died - May 21, 1543.
This what I had stated before about Copernicus !!! You are so blind ! Yea keep donating to a group of enablers and abusers !!
UTT:
Take a look at this for a somewhat different take on the Copernicus affair.
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9101prof.asp
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