Robert Sungenis

Robert A. Sungenis (born 1955) is an American Catholic author of apologetic and polemical works critiquing the Protestant doctrines of Faith Alone and Scripture Alone. He is the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing and executive producer of the film The Principle.^[1][2] Sungenis is known for his advocacy of geocentrism^[3][4] and his controversial statements about Jews, Judaism, the Holocaust, and the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults.^[5][6]

Biography

Robert Sungenis was raised in a Catholic family, but became a Protestant at age 19.^[7] He obtained his B.A. in religion from George Washington University, an accredited private research university located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in 1979, an M.A. in theology from Westminster Theological Seminary, an accredited Presbyterian and Reformed Christian graduate educational institution located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, in 1982, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from the Calamus International University (CIU),^[7][8] a private, unaccredited^[9][10][11] distance-learning institution incorporated in the Republic of Vanuatu (a diploma mill^[12][13]). His dissertation was on the subject of geocentrism and was then edited and self-published as the two-volume set, Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right.^[7][14]

After spending roughly 18 years in several different Protestant denominations, Sungenis returned to Catholicism in 1992 at the age of 37. Having previously worked for and studied under Harold Camping during his time as a Protestant, Sungenis authored a book critiquing Camping's eschatology.^[15] The story of his conversion to Catholicism is chronicled in the first of the Surprised By Truth books edited by Catholic apologist and author Patrick Madrid.^[16]

Faith alone

Sungenis is known for his defense of the Catholic Church's doctrine of justification and his critique of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone.

Sungenis believes that Saint Paul used the word "alone" more that any other New Testament writer, many usages appearing in the very contexts which speak of faith and justification, but never as a qualifier or description of faith. He is of the opinion that the only time Sacred Scripture couples the word "faith" with the word "alone" is in the Epistle of James where it teaches that we are not justified by faith alone. Sungenis believes that faith is the beginning of salvation and that when Saint Paul wrote that man cannot be justified by works or through the law, he was referring to any and all works done by man outside the realm of grace. However, works done under the auspices of God's grace, that is, works done that do not demand payment from God but are rewarded only due to the kindness and mercy of God, are the works that God requires for salvation. Sungenis claims that passages in Sacred Scripture that speak of works being judged with a view toward gaining eternal life and/or suffering eternal damnation are not hypothetical.

In 1997, he published Not By Faith Alone which has received praise from S. M. Hutchens (Senior Editor of Touchstone Magazines) and an endorsement from Fabian Bruskewitz (Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska), but criticism from Robert N. Wilkin (Editor of Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society).^[17][18][19] Sungenis has been interviewed by Michael Horton^[20][21][22] on the Catholic Church's doctrine of justification and has debated James White^[23] on whether or not sinners are justified by grace through faith alone apart from human works of merit.

Jews and Judaism

Sungenis's controversial views of the Jewish people and Judaism have been sharply criticized by fellow Catholics and by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being antisemitic.^{[24][25][26][27]} In 2002, he claimed it was a fact that no one had ever proven that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust and that demographic statistics show no real difference in the number of Jews living before and after World War II. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he also "repeated a series of ancient anti-Semitic canards" and later wrote about the involvement of Jews and Israel in a Zionist Satanic conspiracy aimed at Satan ruling the world.^[26][27] Sungenis has also claimed that Israel orchestrated the JFK assassination in retaliation for the president's opposition to Israeli nuclear weapons.^[28]

In June 2007, Sungenis's bishop, Kevin C. Rhoades, directed Sungenis to stop writing about the Jewish people and Judaism. He also threatened to remove the name "Catholic" from Sungenis's organization, if he did not comply. However, after a meeting with the Diocese of Harrisburg in July 2007, Sungenis was allowed to continue publishing and speaking about Jewish issues pertaining to Catholic doctrine provided he take an approach quite different in tone and content. After this July 2007 meeting, Sungenis published an article entitled "Catholic Apologetics International and Its Teachings on the Jews" on his website which stated that, "All forms of hatred against the Jews are to be condemned and Christian love should be shown to Jews at all times". Rhoades responded to Sungenis' article and indicated that the views expressed in it did "not adhere to explicit Church teaching and are not imbued with the living voice of the Magisterium, which includes charity and respect for the Jewish people and for Judaism itself." Rhoades then returned to asking Sungenis to refrain from publishing on all topics directly or tangentially related to Judaism or the Jewish people. He further indirectly warned that if Sungenis did not comply with this request, he would remove the name "Catholic" from Sungenis' organization.

In April 2008, Father Brian Harrison defended Sungenis, claiming that Sungenis was still a Catholic in good standing with the Church and had disobeyed no binding precept from his bishop. According to Harrison, Sungenis voluntarily removed the name "Catholic" from his organization in response to the dispute with Bishop Rhoades. Harrison further claimed that the bishop's command to silence Sungenis was revoked on July 2007 and the bishop's request that Sungenis remain silent did not constitute a singular precept (a legally binding order). Harrison acknowledged that a few of Sungenis' statements in "Catholic Apologetics International and Its Teachings on the Jews" were "unnecessarily combative and polemical in tone, and/or open to misinterpretation", however, he considered the bishop's statement regarding Sungenis' article not adhering to explicit Church teaching to be an exaggeration.^[29] In September 2008, Rhoades denounced Sungenis' views of the Jewish people and Judaism as "hostile, uncharitable, and unchristian". According to a September 2008 report in The Washington Post, Rhoades made Sungenis remove the word "Catholic" from the name of his organization.^[25]

In May 2014, Michael Voris interviewed Sungenis in order to help Sungenis promote his new movie, The Principle. During the interview, Voris defended Sungenis in regard to his views on the Jewish people and then asked him, "Are you a Holocaust denier?" and "Do you hate Jews?" Sungenis answered "no" to both questions.^[30] On October 2014, in response to accusations of Holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism from Lawrence Krauss and others, Sungenis said that his past statements about Jews and Judaism have been blown out of proportion and that he believes in the Holocaust, loves the Jewish people, and is not an anti-Semite. Sungenis' supporters say that he is the victim of made-up stories and half truths.^[5][6]

United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

Sungenis has also been noted for being the first to voice concern about a controversial sentence regarding the Mosaic Covenant found in the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (USCCA). He claims to have written to the Vatican and met with officials from the bishops' conference in order to voice his concerns that the sentence implied that people can be saved without believing in Jesus. In the summer of 2008, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted to remove the sentence "Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them" and replace it with "To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, 'belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ". Monsignor Daniel Kutys stated that the sentence was changed because of the confusion it was generating and not because of what Sungenis said. Kutys thinks that Sungenis may have been the first to raise the issue about the sentence, but he does not think Sungenis deserves credit for revising the catechism.^[25]

Geocentrism

Sungenis believes that the Catholic Church condemned heliocentrism as a formal heresy in the 17th century and that the observable universe would fit a geocentric model, with the Earth immobile at the barycenter and everything else revolving around it. He claims that observational evidence from the 2001 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe showed the Earth's central position and experiments performed from Dominique Arago in 1818 to Michelson-Morely in 1887 showed that the Earth was not moving. His views are often confused with the Ptolemaic system, where Earth is at the center of the solar system, with the sun and all planets revolving around it. Instead, they more closely resemble the Tychonic system. Catholic writer David Palm has criticized Sungenis' work, particularly as it relates to the teaching of the Catholic Church, stating that Sungenis is misrepresenting it so as to falsely give the impression that geocentrism is "an official church teaching that had been covered up for centuries.".^[8][24][31]

In 2014, Sungenis funded the production of a film called The Principle, which features interviews with Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Max Tegmark, Julian Barbour, and George F. R. Ellis.^{[1][30][32][33]} Krauss has since stated that he was featured in the film without permission and agrees with the scientific community that geocentrism has been thoroughly debunked. Krauss said of the film that if people ignore it, “Maybe then it will quickly disappear into the dustbin of history, where it belongs.”^[34] Kate Mulgrew, who narrated the trailer, released a public statement on her Facebook page disavowing the film, saying that she does not subscribe to Sungenis' views on history or science and would not have gotten involved in the documentary had she known of his involvement in it. She stated that she was "a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that."^[35][36] Several other scientists featured in the film came forward to say that they had been misled about its true agenda, and that they would never have taken part in it had they known its aim.^[35] Co-producer Rick DeLano responded to these allegations, insisting that the documentary is an examination of the Copernican Principle and does not explicitly promote the geocentric point of view, adding that he is in possession of signed releases from Krauss and Mulgrew, neither being misled about the content of the documentary or its intention to "explore controversial aspects of cosmology, even highly controversial ideas and theories."^[37] Sungenis and DeLano suspect that the criticisms and complaints against their movie are part of a coordinated campaign to keep people from concentrating on the evidence presented in it.^[5]

In May 2015, Sungenis initiated the heliocentric challenge claiming that $100,000 would be awarded to anyone who could provide qualified experimental proof that the Earth revolves around the Sun.^[3]

Publications

• Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification, Queenship Publishing (1996), 774 pp. ISBN 1-57918-008-6
• Not By Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, Queenship Publishing (1997), 650 pp. ISBN 1-57918-055-8
• How Can I Get to Heaven? The Bible's Teaching on Salvation Made Easy to Understand, Queenship Publishing (1997), 334 pp. ISBN 1-57918-007-8
• Not By Bread Alone: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for the Eucharistic Sacrifice, Queenship Publishing (2000), 450 pp. ISBN 1-57918-124-4
• The Gospel According to Matthew (Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 1), Queenship Publishing (2003), 427 pp. ISBN 1-57918-236-4
• The Apocalypse of St. John (Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 2), Queenship Publishing (2007), 544 pp. ISBN 1-57918-329-8
• The Epistles of Romans and James (Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 3), CAI Publishing, Inc. (2009), 665 pp. ISBN 0-9818660-6-9
• The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1 – 11 (Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 4), CAI Publishing, Inc. (2009), 692 pp. ISBN 0-9818660-7-7
• The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. 5), CAI Publishing, Inc. (2009), 423 pp. ISBN 0-9818660-8-5
• Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right: The Scientific Evidence for Geocentrism, (CAI Pub. Inc, 2009, 653 pages). ISBN 0-9818660-4-2
• Speaking in Tongues: Sign of Blessing: Sign of Judgment: A Critical Analysis of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, (CAI Pub. Inc. 2010, 80 pages). ISBN 0-9841859-5-X
• Catholic/Jewish Dialogue: Controversies and Corrections, CAI Publishing, Inc. (2010), 734 pp. ISBN 0-9841859-3-3
• Bob's Dictionary of Big Words (smaller version), CAI Publishing, Inc. 2011 ISBN 0-9841859-8-4
• Bob's Dictionary of Big Words (larger version), CAI Publishing, Inc. 2011 ISBN 0-9841859-7-6
• The Consecration of Russia: How Seven Popes Failed to Heed Heaven’s Command and Brought Turmoil to the Church and the World, Hometown Publications, Inc. copyright 2013, 384 pages, ISBN 978-0-9841859-9-3.
• The Gospel According to John, CAI Publishing, Inc. copyright 2011, 497 pages, ISBN 978-0-9841859-1-7.

References

External links

• Robert Sungenis' Catholic website
• Galileo Was Wrong, Sungenis' website on geocentrism
• "The Principle Movie"
• "Journey to the Center of the Universe Movie"
• Skeptical Inquirer article by Matthew P. Wiesner about Sungenis