Catholic Church and Slavery

[yinekka]

I was asked by a family member to search out some information re the Catholic Church and racism. I came across a now closed thread from which I copied notes. Coming to the end I realised that a book I had found helpful was not mentioned in the thread so I thought I would recommend it:

The Popes and Slavery
Fr Joel S Panzer

 

[Tomdstone]

I was asked by a family member to search out some information re the Catholic Church and racism. I came across a now closed thread from which I copied notes. Coming to the end I realised that a book I had found helpful was not mentioned in the thread so I thought I would recommend it:

The Popes and Slavery
Fr Joel S Panzer

Did Catholic clergy hold slaves, or buy and sell slaves?

 

[AnnArbor]

Did Catholic clergy hold slaves, or buy and sell slaves?

Yes.

 

[Tomdstone]

Yes.

Was it considered acceptable to buy and sell human beings for cash, just as you would buy or sell a puppy dog or pig?

 

[edwest2]

Was it considered acceptable to buy and sell human beings for cash, just as you would buy or sell a puppy dog or pig?

What about slavery today? Yes, people are sold as if they are less human than the sellers.

globalslaveryindex.org/findings/

w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_05051888_in-plurimis.html

Ed

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

What about slavery today? Yes, people are sold as if they are less human than the sellers.

It was wrong then and is wrong now. Neither is excusable.

 

[Tomdstone]

What about slavery today?

IMHO,the buying and selling of human beings, just as you would buy and sell a pig or a dog, is wrong and I don’t see why it should be allowed today, and I don’t see why clergymen owned slaves in the past. Actually, there was a case of a candidate for governor who gave speeches against illegal immigration, but at the same time, her gardener was illegal and she had a maid living in her house who was an illegal immigrant. It may not be exactly slavery to have an illegal maid living in your house and doing all your housework and not paying wages to her, but such a person is not exactly free to come and go as she pleases.

 

[edwest2]

IMHO,the buying and selling of human beings, just as you would buy and sell a pig or a dog, is wrong and I don’t see why it should be allowed today, and I don’t see why clergymen owned slaves in the past. Actually, there was a case of a candidate for governor who gave speeches against illegal immigration, but at the same time, her gardener was illegal and she had a maid living in her house who was an illegal immigrant. It may not be exactly slavery to have an illegal maid living in your house and doing all your housework and not paying wages to her, but such a person is not exactly free to come and go as she pleases.

Who is allowing it? There are consequences if you don’t follow the wishes of your new masters. You make them money, when you are sold, and do as you are told. It takes little imagination to understand the short list of consequences if you behave incorrectly. You’re just another body with a street value and can be replaced by another. The “experts” in this business are experts. That is why it happens: there is money to be made.

Ed

 

[LookAWayDixieLd]

Did Catholic clergy hold slaves, or buy and sell slaves?

No. Not in the classical sense of owning a person or in the daily practice. It was an automatic excommunication to do so.

Pope Eugene IV stopped any acceptance of removing native people from there homeland on Jan 13, 1435. We just past the 582nd Anniversary of this Papal Bull a couple of weeks ago.

papalencyclicals.net/Eugene04/eugene04sicut.htm

Also see this video on slavery by the years and shear numbers.
youtube.com/watch?v=31E1gHowYcA

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

No. Not in the classical sense of owning a person or in the daily practice. It was an automatic excommunication to do so.

Pope Eugene IV stopped any acceptance of removing native people from there homeland on Jan 13, 1435. We just past the 582nd Anniversary of this Papal Bull a couple of weeks ago.

papalencyclicals.net/Eugene04/eugene04sicut.htm

Sicut Dudum certainly did not make a blanket statement preventing the taking of people from their homelands to be enslaved. Far from it, it allowed Portugal to take slaves provided that they were pagans. That’s the key. The threat of slavery was an encouragement for the natives to become baptized and convert to Christianity. There were some who were taking baptized natives of the Canary Islands, which set off the pope; but it’s simply not true to say Sicut Dudum limited slavery against non-Christians. It would be like using Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” as an endorsement of the meatpacking industry.

 

[BornInMarch]

It was wrong then and is wrong now. Neither is excusable.

I like this worldview.

It bothers me when people say “It’s wrong now but it wasn’t wrong then” or “It’s only wrong from our point of view”. If Ethics were subjective, then they would be meaningless and nobody would have any reason to follow them.

 

[LookAWayDixieLd]

Sicut Dudum certainly did not make a blanket statement preventing the taking of people from their homelands to be enslaved. Far from it, it allowed Portugal to take slaves provided that they were pagans. That’s the key. The threat of slavery was an encouragement for the natives to become baptized and convert to Christianity. There were some who were taking baptized natives of the Canary Islands, which set off the pope; but it’s simply not true to say Sicut Dudum limited slavery against non-Christians. It would be like using Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” as an endorsement of the meatpacking industry.

This is the intent, letter and spirit of Sicut Dudum, the first sentence of par. 4.

“4. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery.”

I am sure back then it was like it is today where you had people who called themselves Catholic but were evil to the core, like Joe Biden, Nancy Peloci, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, etc. who are baby killers.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

This is the intent, letter and spirit of Sicut Dudum, the first sentence of par. 4.

“4. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery.”

I am sure back then it was like it is today where you had people who called themselves Catholic but were evil to the core, like Joe Biden, Nancy Peloci, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, etc. who are baby killers.

Look at paragraph two where it says:
Sicut Dudum:

Some of these people were already baptized; others were even at times tricked and deceived by the promise of Baptism, having been made a promise of safety that was not kept.

Do you see that? The pope was unhappy that the slavers had taken those natives who had been baptized. He also said that the promise of baptism came with a promise of safety. No baptism, no safety. This was blackmail, yet the problem for Eugene wasn’t the blackmail but those Europeans who reneged on the promise for those who submitted to the blackmail.

Another papal document, Creator Omnium, was released a year before Sicut Dudum and as summarized in this article by historian Richard Raiswell
Richard Raiswell:

Christianity had gained many converts in the Canary Islands by the early 1430s however the ownership of the lands had been the subject of dispute between Portugal and the Kingdom of Castille. The lack of effective control had resulted in periodic raids on the islands to procure slaves. Pope Eugene IV was concerned that the enslavement of newly baptized Christians would impede the spread of Christianity and therefore issued a Papal Bull, “Creator Omnium”, on 17 December 1434.

As noted in this article (page 5) in the same year that Eugene issued Creator Omnium he issued Regimini Gregis (which is different than the bull of the same name issued 40 years later). Both bull stressed that those newly baptized of the Canary Islands were not to be enslaved and that those slaves taken that were Christian were to be returned. A year after Sicut Dudm Eugene capitulated to the will of the crown of Portugal by issuing Romanus pontifex. That bull declared that the previous bulls regarding the Canary Islands only pertained to those islands already inhabited by Christians. Portugal was given free reign over those yet unconquered islands to enslave those natives who would refuse to convert.

Forty years later Pope Sixtus IV issued Regimini Gregis (different than the bull of the same name Eugene issued in 1434) regarding Portugal’s slave trade along the coast of Africa. That one reinforced that those who enslaved Christians specifically would be excommunicated. It was not saying don’t enslave anyone, just don’t enslave those natives who recently converted to Christianity (some likely under duress since that was the only protection against being enslaved).

Now I want to stress that there were those within the Church who fought against slavery. The Church today especially fights hard against slavery and other human trafficking. But as a whole the people in power for at minimum the first 17 centuries of its existence not only endorsed slavery but had an active role in spreading it, increasing it, and partaking in it.

 

[LookAWayDixieLd]

Look at paragraph two where it says:

Do you see that? The pope was unhappy that the slavers had taken those natives who had been baptized. He also said that the promise of baptism came with a promise of safety. No baptism, no safety. This was blackmail, yet the problem for Eugene wasn’t the blackmail but those Europeans who reneged on the promise for those who submitted to the blackmail.

Another papal document, Creator Omnium, was released a year before Sicut Dudum and as summarized in this article by historian Richard Raiswell

As noted in this article (page 5) in the same year that Eugene issued Creator Omnium he issued Regimini Gregis (which is different than the bull of the same name issued 40 years later). Both bull stressed that those newly baptized of the Canary Islands were not to be enslaved and that those slaves taken that were Christian were to be returned. A year after Sicut Dudm Eugene capitulated to the will of the crown of Portugal by issuing Romanus pontifex. That bull declared that the previous bulls regarding the Canary Islands only pertained to those islands already inhabited by Christians. Portugal was given free reign over those yet unconquered islands to enslave those natives who would refuse to convert.

Forty years later Pope Sixtus IV issued Regimini Gregis (different than the bull of the same name Eugene issued in 1434) regarding Portugal’s slave trade along the coast of Africa. That one reinforced that those who enslaved Christians specifically would be excommunicated. It was not saying don’t enslave anyone, just don’t enslave those natives who recently converted to Christianity (some likely under duress since that was the only protection against being enslaved).

Now I want to stress that there were those within the Church who fought against slavery. The Church today especially fights hard against slavery and other human trafficking. But as a whole the people in power for at minimum the first 17 centuries of its existence not only endorsed slavery but had an active role in spreading it, increasing it, and partaking in it.

It is impossible to accurately lay down 2000’s western sensitivities on events and decisions from the 1400’s. Many historians try and do this under the pretense of new discoveries and new knowledge writing new books with today’s insights. This gives today’s historians income from book sales and tendered professorships at universities. I am not saying historians do this out of direct malice it simply is a fact of how to make an income, pay off student dept with a liberal arts degree and keep a roof over their heads.

Again I believe the statement “restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery.” describes more accurately the mind of the Church and are the words of the Church.

I can see a scenario were the Pope could be told “Your Holiness if we can take these uneducated poor natives as slaves we can baptize them and thus save their eternal souls and they will be set free later”. “It is for their own good your Holiness that we save their eternal souls, isn’t it”? Back then people truly understood what eternity is and that only those who were friends of Christ made it into Purgatory or Heaven.

I would agree the worldly powers that be did keep the slavery going into the 1800’s but the OP should also look at the part the Muslims play in world slavery especially trans African slavery as well the Jews owning the majority of the slave ships and the financing which transported the slaves through the centuries.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

It is impossible to accurately lay down 2000’s western sensitivities on events and decisions from the 1400’s. Many historians try and do this under the pretense of new discoveries and new knowledge writing new books with today’s insights. This gives today’s historians income from book sales and tendered professorships at universities. I am not saying historians do this out of direct malice it simply is a fact of how to make an income, pay off student dept with a liberal arts degree and keep a roof over their heads.

Is the idea that one should not take men, women, and children from their homes and brutalize them a “2000’s western sensitivity”? Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:13 were hundreds of years old at that point. It’s not a matter of sensitivities but a matter of basic decency.

Again I believe the statement “restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery.” describes more accurately the mind of the Church and are the words of the Church.

I can see a scenario were the Pope could be told “Your Holiness if we can take these uneducated poor natives as slaves we can baptize them and thus save their eternal souls and they will be set free later”. “It is for their own good your Holiness that we save their eternal souls, isn’t it”? Back then people truly understood what eternity is and that only those who were friends of Christ made it into Purgatory or Heaven.

I’m going to start with the last sentence first. Are you saying that the Church did not believe in invincible ignorance at the time, that there was a later change in understanding by the Church? Backing up further on your statement the scenario you give seems to indicate that the pope felt that God erred in some way in spreading his message to the world so much that the Church would allow Portugal and Spain to do so by blackmail and force? There is a very bright moral line between evangelization and conversion under threats of enslavement.

On top of that there is no more justification in using force to spread a religious belief then there is now. The world today is filled with religious conflicts where violence is justified (or more accurately rationalized) because the group perpetrating the act believes they are right. BornInMarch makes an interesting point about ethics. If it was right to enslave people then is it right to enslave them now? Why the change? There are plenty of non-Christians out there now whose souls who, by your perspective, are in just is much danger as the ones in the Canary Islands centuries ago. What makes slavery immoral now but moral then?

I would agree the worldly powers that be did keep the slavery going into the 1800’s but the OP should also look at the part the Muslims play in world slavery especially trans African slavery as well the Jews owning the majority of the slave ships and the financing which transported the slaves through the centuries.

This is moral relativism, something the Church tells its followers not to partake of. You can’t look at an evil act and then point to others and say they are doing it too.

 

[LookAWayDixieLd]

Is the idea that one should not take men, women, and children from their homes and brutalize them a “2000’s western sensitivity”? Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:13 were hundreds of years old at that point. It’s not a matter of sensitivities but a matter of basic decency.

I’m going to start with the last sentence first. Are you saying that the Church did not believe in invincible ignorance at the time, that there was a later change in understanding by the Church? Backing up further on your statement the scenario you give seems to indicate that the pope felt that God erred in some way in spreading his message to the world so much that the Church would allow Portugal and Spain to do so by blackmail and force? There is a very bright moral line between evangelization and conversion under threats of enslavement.

On top of that there is no more justification in using force to spread a religious belief then there is now. The world today is filled with religious conflicts where violence is justified (or more accurately rationalized) because the group perpetrating the act believes they are right. BornInMarch makes an interesting point about ethics. If it was right to enslave people then is it right to enslave them now? Why the change? There are plenty of non-Christians out there now whose souls who, by your perspective, are in just is much danger as the ones in the Canary Islands centuries ago. What makes slavery immoral now but moral then?

This is moral relativism, something the Church tells its followers not to partake of. You can’t look at an evil act and then point to others and say they are doing it too.

It is easy for hindsight to be 20/20 and I don’t disagree with anything you have said about the morality of slavery. I still maintain you cannot accurately understand exactly what people where thinking in every instance 600 years ago. The Pope said “restore to their earlier liberty all and each person” if you don’t want to believe those words and believe other words ok.

I only said it could be a scenario that I mention above. How many times did Jesus state that slave holders were damned? Exactly how brutalized where the slaves back then? Where they beaten daily within an inch of there life, were they starved daily, were they abused every minute of there existence on earth? Again no excuse for slavery however if dozens of them were given responsibility for food preparation, given sharp tools for working and harvesting the crops and slaughtering live stock, the slaves could have taken care of a bad slave holder.

Again no excuse but neither one of us were there at the time. We do know that Divine Justice has taken care of what happened for all eternity. Great good can come out of evil situations. You’ll have to ask God about that one day if you get the chance. That is part of Redemptive Suffering and would be a great topic for you to launch from this one.

 

[Wesrock]

Far from it, it allowed Portugal to take slaves provided that they were pagans. That’s the key. The threat of slavery was an encouragement for the natives to become baptized and convert to Christianity.

It was also the Church putting it’s foot down and setting some limitations on the titanic institution of slavery which had been an integral part of civilized living for millenia.

The Church (and I mean this in a broader sense encompassing Christian morality as a whole, something bigger than the scope of just the people who make it… the Christian “worldview,” if you will) is a tide pulling against the more base elements of our nature. Christian living is ever at odds with secular culture (and by secular I don’t mean atheist), even at times when Christianity was essentially the religion of the state, the Christian worldview was still pulling against mainstream culture.

But I don’t think you’ll agree, or you’ll miss the dynamic. To you, the Church is just the institution and the people. To me, it’s something living in itself. Men and women compose it, but the men and women aren’t simply it.

But I’ve gone on a long enough digression. Quite fundamentally, people do have the authority to sell their labor. It’s a staple of our modern economy, after all. In different times, parents who sold their children into slavery could ensure that their kids were provided with work, a home, food, and shelter. There is a legitimate thought in people selling their labor, though not in selling themselves. Certainly it’s been terrible throughout history in practice, and we’re well rid of it. But we can’t think of the entire thing in terms of chattel slavery, the ownership of people (as opposed to labor), either.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

It is easy for hindsight to be 20/20 and I don’t disagree with anything you have said about the morality of slavery. I still maintain you cannot accurately understand exactly what people where thinking in every instance 600 years ago.

There is no excuse or gray area. The golden rule is straightforward on this one. “Would I like to be taken from my home? Would I like to be whipped for not working hard enough? Maybe I shouldn’t do these things to others.”

The Pope said “restore to their earlier liberty all and each person” if you don’t want to believe those words and believe other words ok.

I believe those words were written, but you’re trying to say that these few words mean that the Church was against slavery period.

Despite:

1. I listed two bulls a year earlier which specifically stated that it was only wrong to ensalve Christians, leaving non-Christians to fend for themselves.
2. That in the very document that we’re talking about the pope lists the problem as slavers reneging on deals made by the natives to convert to Christianity in exchange for not being enslaved.
3. I listed a bull which reinforced that slavers were allowed to enslave non-Christians but could not enslave Christians.

I could list many other Church documents endorsing slavery if you’d like.

As far as whether those quoted words mean that all of the Canary Islands slaves were released and not just the Christian ones, it’s possible. Let’s note in that first article I mentioned a few posts ago historian Richard Raiswell stated regarding Creator Omnium (which you may remember was a bull issued a year before Sicut Dudum) “Eugene excommunicated anyone who enslaved newly converted Christians but no protection was offered to those who declined to become a Christian.”

If Sicut Dudum released all of the Canary Islands slaves, it’s not a statement against slavery but an assurance to other natives elsewhere that any future blackmail to either convert or ensalved will be honored. Like I said, just on the Canary Islands alone the pope soon after gave Portugal the right to enslave those Canary Islands natives in the islands not yet inhabited by Christians who won’t convert.

I only said it could be a scenario that I mention above. How many times did Jesus state that slave holders were damned?

And I’m telling you it’s a scenario steeped in cruelty. So Christians encounter a group of people who are not Christian. If they haven’t heard of Christ, it causes us to ask why if knowing and believing in God is so vitally important why it has to be spread by humans. But that’s another topic for another day. The Christians would like to introduce these non-Christians to Christ. OK, fine. Perhaps a preacher could demonstrate why the Christian God is real, and the necessity of churchgoing and prayer. No, threats of violence are needed. If a native doesn’t find Christianity convincing then the Church gives men the right to take, beat, work them mercilessly, and kill them. We have a God who is supposed to be infinitely loving and powerful yet is startlingly impotent to the point where a few of his followers have to use whips and chains to make converts. And then this impotent god is praised for being perfect, for calling for such heinous acts. There are a multitude of ways to spread a religious without resort to blackmail, violence, and the descruction of human dignity.

I never said Jesus said these people were damned, but he surely didn’t say to release slaves or not beat them. The only thing Jesus has to say about slavery is in an analogy where slaves who don’t know what they are doing is “wrong” should be beaten, but just not as much as those slaves who knew what they were doing. Truly, God is love, right?

Exactly how brutalized where the slaves back then? Where they beaten daily within an inch of there life, were they starved daily, were they abused every minute of there existence on earth? Again no excuse for slavery however if dozens of them were given responsibility for food preparation, given sharp tools for working and harvesting the crops and slaughtering live stock, the slaves could have taken care of a bad slave holder.

This is a strange turn. Are we blaming victims for not escaping more? Should the three victims of Ariel Castro have taken him out because they access to forks and knives? Or are you saying that slavery then wasn’t so bad because they maybe could have risen up? Again, I already talked about moral relativism. It’s something that Catholics are not supposed to be immerse themselves in, yet it’s the go-to move when the topic of the Church and slavery comes up. It’s the same nonsense that tries to make Southern U.S. slavery look like Gone With the Wind or Song Of the South.

Again no excuse but neither one of us were there at the time. We do know that Divine Justice has taken care of what happened for all eternity.

You may believe it, but we certainly don’t know it.

Great good can come out of evil situations. You’ll have to ask God about that one day if you get the chance. That is part of Redemptive Suffering and would be a great topic for you to launch from this one.

Good can come from evil situations, but this is different than an outside force doing evil then trying to make good from it. This is the Church, which is supposed to do right, not only engaging in immoral acts (as it and several popes owned slaves) but giving near carte blanche in telling other Christians how to perpetrate and spread evil.

With regard to redemptive suffering, the idea the end justifies the means, that it’s ok to enslave non-believers if it leads them to Christ, is no different than what some others do in the name of their deities. We are supposedly judged by our actions on Earth. Will someone who engages in slavery be punished for doing exactly what the Church said they could do?.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

It was also the Church putting it’s foot down and setting some limitations on the titanic institution of slavery which had been an integral part of civilized living for millenia.

As I said above, moral relativism is the go-to move when trying to justify slavery in the Church. Did Christians in the centuries past do some things that other cultures did not do? Did Christians in the centuries past not do some things that other cultures did do? Didn’t God tell the Israelites in Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.”? Just because the slight limitations on slavery made by the Church were only 95% as evil as some other groups, it doesn’t mean that it’s not evil. Just because other groups were practicing slavery doesn’t make it right to do so.

The Church (and I mean this in a broader sense encompassing Christian morality as a whole, something bigger than the scope of just the people who make it… the Christian “worldview,” if you will) is a tide pulling against the more base elements of our nature. Christian living is ever at odds with secular culture (and by secular I don’t mean atheist), even at times when Christianity was essentially the religion of the state, the Christian worldview was still pulling against mainstream culture.

How on earth could the Christian worldview pull against the mainstream culture in places like Portugal and Spain when it was the mainstream culture? Time after time after time after time the Church said the only thing one couldn’t do when enslaving someone was enslave a Christian. It wasn’t pulling against the mainstream culture, it was pushing it along as it saw fit.

But I don’t think you’ll agree, or you’ll miss the dynamic. To you, the Church is just the institution and the people. To me, it’s something living in itself. Men and women compose it, but the men and women aren’t simply it.

A thing can be living and do utter wrong. Thankfully it can change, and the Church now is so much better than the Church then when it comes to slavery.

But I’ve gone on a long enough digression. Quite fundamentally, people do have the authority to sell their labor. It’s a staple of our modern economy, after all. In different times, parents who sold their children into slavery could ensure that their kids were provided with work, a home, food, and shelter. There is a legitimate thought in people selling their labor, though not in selling themselves. Certainly it’s been terrible throughout history in practice, and we’re well rid of it. But we can’t think of the entire thing in terms of chattel slavery, the ownership of people (as opposed to labor), either.

Were the people of the Canary Islands selling their labor, or were they taken away against their will? The same with the people on the coast of Africa? The natives of the New World? It’s a bit disgusting to try and equate slavery with employment or indentured servitude.

This is why I participate in these slavery threads whenever possible. It’s an event to witness excuses for the inexcusable, defenses for the indefensible.

 

[Barricade]

The Catholic Church has changed its teaching on slavery and how this isn’t more of a controversy I don’t know.

Slavery is now considered an intrinsic evil by the Church, based on Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, and John Paul II’s reiteration of this labeling of slavery as intrinsically evil in Veritatis Splendor. This wasn’t always the case however as slavery was accepted as moral in certain circumstances. Kidnapping someone and selling them into slavery was considered an unjust form of slavery however selling yourself or your children into slavery was not considered unjust. The body of canon law set down by Pope Gregory IX included in it just titles for owning slaves, no just title is possible if slavery is intrinsically evil.

I don’t see how it can be disputed that the Catholic Church has contradicted itself on this moral question of such vital importance.

Apologists might argue that no Pope ever infallibly defined slavery as moral in some cases, but this is a terribly weak argument. It was taken for granted that slavery was in some cases moral based on scripture and the constant practice of the Church. St. Paul in divinely inspired scripture said that slaves had a moral obligation to obey their masters, this legitimized the institution of slavery in at least those cases. So if slavery is morally permissible in some cases then it cannot be intrinsically evil as the Catholic Church now maintains.