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pete_29
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Lazerlike42
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Little Les, I think you misunderstand. Catholics were not required under penalty of excommunication to believe that God positively Willed - that is, commanded - that heretics be burned. What was condemned was the notion that it was objectively and always sinful to burn heretics.
Let’s say I am out with friends and we are trying to decide where to eat. Someone might suggest we get Italian. Now if I say that it’s not against my will to get Italian, that means that I’m ok with Italian - it doesn’t necessarily mean that I actually desire Italian. It doesn’t mean I positively will for us to get Italian. It just means that I am not opposed to it.
In the same way, the condemnation from Exsurge Domine means, as was said below, that it is heretical to say that God prohibits the burning of heretics. This is evident for one simple reason: God commanded heretics to be killed in some places in Scripture, so it can’t be objectively sinful.
On the other hand, there are cases in Scripture where God explicitly commanded that heretics not be killed but be kept alive, so we know that God does not always will for heretics to be killed.
The reality is that the killing of heretics is not objectively sinful - its not in its very nature opposed to the Will of God - but it is not positively the Will of God either - He doesn’t command it absolutely, as can be seen from His own actions in Scripture.
In fact, the suggestion that Exsurge Domine had in mind that we must believe it is the explicit and commanded Will of God to burn heretics can’t hold any water at all for the simple reason that the Church allowed countless heretics to go unburned. In fact when you consider the power the Church had in many areas and the sheer number of heretics around, there were hardly any heretic burnings at all. So if Pope Leo X was teaching that God commanded that heretics be burned, he did an abismally bad job of following through.
God bless!
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Lazerlike42
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Little Les,
A brief run through of papal encyclicals will show that the Catholic Church has been the single greatest enemy of slavery in human history. She was condemning it back when the American slave trade was just getting started.
Again, all that is being stated here is that it is not objectively evil in and of itself to buy and sell slaves, and a quick look through the Old Testament will show that this is correct. God gave laws regarding how slaves ought to be handled in the Old Testatment, so its apparent that He doesn’t expressly forbid the practice.
What He does forbid, and what the Church forbade even in the 16 and 1700s, is the the practice of enslaving innocent people against their will. There are other forms of slavery that are perfectly legitimate.
Prisoners who are working on the chain gang are slaves - yet this is not immoral. This is similar to the sort of slavery practiced in the Old Testament, where prisoners were made slaves. Indentured servitude, where a person willfully sells himself as the servant of another for a period of time, is not intrinsically evil.
Yet in case afer case after case, the Church condemned the practice of enslaving innocent people against their will. Here are a few examples from an article on Catholic.com:
God bless!
A brief run through of papal encyclicals will show that the Catholic Church has been the single greatest enemy of slavery in human history. She was condemning it back when the American slave trade was just getting started.
Again, all that is being stated here is that it is not objectively evil in and of itself to buy and sell slaves, and a quick look through the Old Testament will show that this is correct. God gave laws regarding how slaves ought to be handled in the Old Testatment, so its apparent that He doesn’t expressly forbid the practice.
What He does forbid, and what the Church forbade even in the 16 and 1700s, is the the practice of enslaving innocent people against their will. There are other forms of slavery that are perfectly legitimate.
Prisoners who are working on the chain gang are slaves - yet this is not immoral. This is similar to the sort of slavery practiced in the Old Testament, where prisoners were made slaves. Indentured servitude, where a person willfully sells himself as the servant of another for a period of time, is not intrinsically evil.
Yet in case afer case after case, the Church condemned the practice of enslaving innocent people against their will. Here are a few examples from an article on Catholic.com:
- source
God bless!
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Little_Les
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Thats exacltly what Catholics were/are required to believe by the Papal Bull Exsurge domine.
Once again, the plain meaning of words:
“With the advice and consent of these our venerable brothers, with mature deliberation on each and every one of the above theses, and by the authority of almighty God, the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own authority, we condemn, reprobate, and reject completely each of these theses or errors as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, and AGAINST Catholic truth. By listing them, we decree and declare that ALL THE FAITHFUL of both sexes MUST regard them as condemned, reprobated, and rejected . . . We restrain all in the virtue of holy obedience and under the penalty of an automatic major excommunication…”
“That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.”
To remain Catholic, one had to reject the above belief. They were required to believe the opposite,“That heretics be burned IS the will of the Spirit.”
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Little_Les
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Yes. It is wise to retreat from the field of inquiry if one cannot defend one’s opinion with facts.
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Pete_1
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Hi, i don’t know if you know this (i am sorry if i am being patronising, i do not intend to be) but those …'s mean that a chunk of text has been removed. Without this text we can’t set the quote in context or arrive at its true meaning. It’s like saying “I really dont like cucumbers you know”, then someone quoting it as this: “I really dont like…you”. I may just be missing something here though
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Little_Les
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What was condemned was not believing that it was the will of God that heretics be burned, just like the words of Exsurge Domine say. To believe otherwise was cause for excommunication.
God commanded genocide be committed in scripture too. Does that make it morally correct?
NUMBERS 30:
"They waged war against the Midianites, as the LORD had commanded Moses, and killed every male among them.
Besides those slain in battle, they killed the five Midianite kings: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba; and they also executed Balaam, son of Beor, with the sword…
Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the clan and company commanders, who were returning from combat.
“So you have spared all the women!” he exclaimed. …
Slay, therefore, every male child and every woman who has had intercourse with a man. But you may spare and keep for yourselves all girls who had no intercourse with a man."
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Little_Les
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RESPONSE:
We are not speaking generally about capital punishment here. We are talking abour burning someone to death for their religious beliefs. That’s intrinsically evil.
Until the latter part of the 20th century, the Church did not teach that slave ownership was intrinsically evil. Now it does.
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ChangingHeart
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That is where your logic is flawed. That is not a correct opposite. The opposite would be, “That heretics be burned is NOT against the will of the Spirit.” An absolute does not have to be refuted with another absolute, as you are attempting to do. In fact, to refute an absolute, you only need one exception.
For example, if I made the statement, “All shapes are circles,” you would NOT have to prove that no shapes are circles in order to refute it. All you would have to do is find one shape that is not a circle, and then you would refute my argument.
Had Martin Luther said, “Burning all heretics is not an absolute requirement willed by the Spirit,” his statement would not have been regarded as heresy. It is because he stated or wrote that heretics being burned is against the will of the Spirit, that he then made an absolute statement, which can be refuted with just one exception. It does not require belief to the outright opposite, as you are claiming.
At this point, you might as well just cut your losses and admit that your attempt to prove the Church wrong has failed. While only God can judge your heart, it seems that your intentions were antagonistic, rather than a genuine attempt to understand a teaching. You won’t find any false teachings(in matters of faith and morals) in the entire history of the Roman Catholic Church, so you might as well save your time and stop your witchhunt against The Bride of Christ.
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Little_Les
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It is apparent that you are confusing indentured servitude with chattel slavery. In the case of chattel slavery, the slave is the property of the owner aas are all offspring of the slave. That’s quite different.Little Les,
A brief run through of papal encyclicals will show that the Catholic Church has been the single greatest enemy of slavery in human history. She was condemning it back when the American slave trade was just getting started.
Again, all that is being stated here is that it is not objectively evil in and of itself to buy and sell slaves, and a quick look through the Old Testament will show that this is correct. God gave laws regarding how slaves ought to be handled in the Old Testatment, so its apparent that He doesn’t expressly forbid the practice.
What He does forbid, and what the Church forbade even in the 16 and 1700s, is the the practice of enslaving innocent people against their will. There are other forms of slavery that are perfectly legitimate.
Prisoners who are working on the chain gang are slaves - yet this is not immoral. This is similar to the sort of slavery practiced in the Old Testament, where prisoners were made slaves. Indentured servitude, where a person willfully sells himself as the servant of another for a period of time, is not intrinsically evil.
Yet in case afer case after case, the Church condemned the practice of enslaving innocent people against their will. Here are a few examples from an article on Catholic.com:
- source
God bless!
Prisoners are not chattel slaves also. Their offspring are not enslaved.
You are mising apples and oranges.
The Church started to object to some abuses in the slave trade, but never (until the 1900’s) to slave ownership itself. Slaver ownersip was considered to be legitimatized by scripture and the natural law.
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Little_Les
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That is absolutley untrue. The Catholic Church supported the moral legitimacy of slave ownership until the 1900’s.Little Les,
A brief run through of papal encyclicals will show that the Catholic Church has been the single greatest enemy of slavery in human history. She was condemning it back when the American slave trade was just getting started.
Item 1 Leviticus 25:1, 44-46
“The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai……"Slaves, male and female, you may indeed possess, provided you buy them from among the neighboring nations. You may also buy them from among the aliens who reside with you and from their children who are born and reared in your land. Such slaves you may own as chattels, and leave to your sons as their hereditary property, making them perpetual slaves.”
Item 2 Instruction of the Holy Office, 1866, Pope Pius IX:
“It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given…”
Item 3 Catholic Encyclopedia – Ethical Aspects of Slavery
“From the beginning the Christian moralist did not condemn slavery as in se, or essentially, against the natural law or natural justice. The fact that slavery, tempered with many humane restrictions, was permitted under the Mosaic law would have sufficed to prevent the institution form being condemned by Christian teachers as absolutely immoral.”
Note: The above was written in 1912 and the Church was still insisting that slavery was justified by both scripture and the natural law.
But then the reversal of this previous constant Catholic teaching occurred and slave ownership became absolutely immoral and contrary to the natural law.
Item 1 Catechism of Catholic Church.#2414
“The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity.”
Item 2 [Veritatis Splendor #80] Slave ownership is intrinsically disordered or against the natural law.
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."… there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image … they are such “always and per se,” in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances."
Item 3 Gaudium et Spes (Vatican II) #27
“…whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed.”
Conclusion: The claim that the Catholic Church did not support slavery is attempted by some apologists in the hopes that their readers are not familiar with such Church documents as listed above.
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Little_Les
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Exsurge Domini provides for no exception.
“That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.”
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1ke
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dmar198
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The first Lutherans were, but the first generation of Lutherans doesn’t qualify as “most Protestants”.
Besides, ChangingHeart clarified what “against the will of the Holy Spirit” means, and mine should now be read in that context.
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Lazerlike42
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Little Les,
The problem is that you are interpreting “will of the Spirit” to indicate a positive Will - that is, a requisite command. There is no reason why this interpretation needs to be accepted, for the simple reason that phrases such as “against the Will of the Spirit” were used frequently to refer to what was prohibited by Divine Law. So for example, adultery would be said to be against the Will of the Spirit because it was absolutely prohibited by the 6th Commandment.
Then there are things that are not against Divine Law, but not required by it either. In fact there are countless things like this, literally. Anything that isn’t either prohibited or required qualifies. Let me give you an example.
Say that tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI issued a bull in which he declared that it was heretical to say that eating carrots was against the Will of the Spirit. Well that would be true; it would be heretical to say that, because the Divine Law does not prohibit eating carrots absolutely. It only prohibits eating carrots in certain circumstances, such as when you’ve already had too much to eat and so it would be gluttonous to have one.
That wouldn’t in any way mean that it was commanded or required* by the Will of the Spirit that we eat carrots. Just look at it from the standpoint of common things. If I say its not against the Will of dad that my sister gets a tatoo, that means dad doesn’t prohibit it, but it doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that my dad is requiring my sister to get a tatoo. In fact, it may be something that dad would really rather not have her do at all, but he isn’t going to prohibit it.
Furthermore, if the Church believed that it was the explicit and positive will of God - that is, a requisite command - that heretics be burned, then why did the Church not in fact burn the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of heretics that She had the power to do?*
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Lazerlike42
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Firstly, this was not genocide, for the simple fact that it was not all of the Midianites. There were other Midianites whom were friendly with the Israelites and lived elsewhere. On top of this is the fact that Israel was again attacked by Midianites later on, so it couldn’t possibly have been genocide.
Secondly, this was not indiscriminant killing, it was capital punishment executed for capital crimes. I will provide a brief summary here, but please check the full, very detiled article out for a fuller grasp:
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Lazerlike42
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Little Les,
The Catholic Encyclopedia is not a Church document. The Church documents condemning chattle slavery which I quoted earlier are.
That being said, even the very article you quoted contradicts the concept that you are putting it forth in support for.
First, it quotes this explanation as to a sort of slavery which is permissible under the natural law:
It’s the same thing as the fact that it’s not intrinsically evil for a man to look at a picture of a naked woman, but in practice it so very nearly always is because our fallen nature causes the vast majority of men to violate the dignity of the woman when they do look at such a picture.
Far from being contradictory, when one considers that the Church’s teachings on social issues (such as slavery) invariably stem from Her teaching on the dignity of the human person, the Church’s teachings on slavery show themselves to be utterly profound in their coherence and meaning.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is not a Church document. The Church documents condemning chattle slavery which I quoted earlier are.
That being said, even the very article you quoted contradicts the concept that you are putting it forth in support for.
First, it quotes this explanation as to a sort of slavery which is permissible under the natural law:
Then, it says the following:
And most significantly,
To sum all of this up in other words, slavery is not intrinsically evil because it is not intrinsically evil that a person may have rights over another person for various reasons, the most obvious of which being that one may voluntarially give himself to another as a slave. However, in practice slavery is almost always immoral because we are a fallen race burdened by original sin, and so the respect of the dignity of the human person is always violated by the master thanks to the corruption of our nature.
It’s the same thing as the fact that it’s not intrinsically evil for a man to look at a picture of a naked woman, but in practice it so very nearly always is because our fallen nature causes the vast majority of men to violate the dignity of the woman when they do look at such a picture.
Far from being contradictory, when one considers that the Church’s teachings on social issues (such as slavery) invariably stem from Her teaching on the dignity of the human person, the Church’s teachings on slavery show themselves to be utterly profound in their coherence and meaning.
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Neithan
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I just read this whole thread, and I recommend that you take your own advice here.
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TMC
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Les, it seems to me that you are pointing out a teaching that seems troublesome and presenting it as if you were merely confused so that you can eventually progress to using that ‘confusion’ to argue that the Church is in error or illegitimate. Is that about right? Or have I misread both this thread and your thread on apparent contradictions in Scripture?
Don’t get me wrong, I really have no problem with people arguing these things here, that’s part of what the forum is about. But it is more productive, I think, to just say you think the Church is wrong and have at it then to come at it sideways for a few pages.
Anyway, this has been beat to death on a couple recent threads that directly address infallibility. I recommend the discussion on this thread that has beat infallibilty back and forth for 11 pages now. List of Infallible Teachings
Don’t get me wrong, I really have no problem with people arguing these things here, that’s part of what the forum is about. But it is more productive, I think, to just say you think the Church is wrong and have at it then to come at it sideways for a few pages.
Anyway, this has been beat to death on a couple recent threads that directly address infallibility. I recommend the discussion on this thread that has beat infallibilty back and forth for 11 pages now. List of Infallible Teachings
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catharina
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Liitle Les, a little note:
Having read many of your posts I find nothing to convince me that you’re a Catholic of any kind within the Church.
Having read many of your posts I find nothing to convince me that you’re a Catholic of any kind within the Church.
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