Catholic Church and Slavery

[Wesrock]

How on earth could the Christian worldview pull against the mainstream culture in places like Portugal and Spain when it was the mainstream culture?

I was right when I said you wouldn’t get that part of my post. Even in places like Spain, Portugal, and Italy, even within the individual Christian, there is an opposition between what we should be and our baser instincts and desires. Just because a culture predominantly practices Christianity doesn’t mean their still isn’t that dichotomy and pull between the secular influences and the religious.

Now cue the part where you accuse me of hand-waving it all away. Certainly the religious practices and beliefs of a culture inform it. Do these beliefs pull it one way or another? Are the beliefs what give rise to certain traits as opposed to others? There’s no denying that.

Still, I see Christianity working against millennia of civilization’s baggage. The abolition of slavery, the “all men are created equal” developments of liberalism, are developments from Christian values and culture, which tilled the soil of civilization for centuries to eventually allow these shoots to sprout, flourish, and bare fruit.

Now that, I suppose, is a separate question thank whether or not the Roman Church changed its teaching. Was there a reversal? Or was there further developments about what it means to the of equal dignity before God and how that should be reflected in human society?

Ultimately, slavery was not seen necessarily as an ideal, but as natural to/a consequence of the fallen state of man. Certainly some forms were to be discouraged. It was to be tamped down when possible, and the ownership of a person itself as opposed to a right to the labor to be severely frowned upon. But it was seen as just that men could sell their labor and that of their children, which could provide them with job security. Slavery may also have been a more feasible option for prisoners of war than simple execution or rotting in a dungeon, as it could provide people with work and shelter. And slaves, like family, because part of a household, and it was up to the heads of the household to be in charge of discipline for everyone who was part of it, family or servant. Some infractions were seen as domestic household issues, not civil cases.

Of course I’m not speaking here of anything of the sort that occurred in the type of slavery that took root in the “new world.”

But I ramble.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

I was right when I said you wouldn’t get that part of my post. Even in places like Spain, Portugal, and Italy, even within the individual Christian, there is an opposition between what we should be and our baser instincts and desires. Just because a culture predominantly practices Christianity doesn’t mean their still isn’t that dichotomy and pull between the secular influences and the religious.

Now cue the part where you accuse me of hand-waving it all away. Certainly the religious practices and beliefs of a culture inform it. Do these beliefs pull it one way or another? Are the beliefs what give rise to certain traits as opposed to others? There’s no denying that.

Still, I see Christianity working against millennia of civilization’s baggage. The abolition of slavery, the “all men are created equal” developments of liberalism, are developments from Christian values and culture, which tilled the soil of civilization for centuries to eventually allow these shoots to sprout, flourish, and bare fruit.

It’s not that I didn’t get it. I disagreed with it. You say there’s a pull between secular influences and religious ones, but in these Church documents there was no dichotomy. No pulling in different directions. The one difference was if Christian slavers could enslave natives who agreed to become Christian to protect themselves. For centuries there wasn’t a call by the Church in opposition to slavery against what the state wanted. It was fine with blackmailing these various natives specifically because it would lead to more Christians without concern for the sanctity of life and human dignity for those who would not succom.

You can’t give credit to the Church for the fruits of things like the enlightenment and humanism. This, like giving credit to the Church for abolishing slavery in the West, is like giving praise to Jack Daniels for getting a person to stop consuming alcohol.

Now that, I suppose, is a separate question thank whether or not the Roman Church changed its teaching. Was there a reversal? Or was there further developments about what it means to the of equal dignity before God and how that should be reflected in human society?

The Council of Gangra (end of page 5 and start of page 6) says:

If any one shall teach a slave, under pretext of piety, to despise his master and to run away from his service, and not to serve his own master with good-will and all honour, let him be anathema.

Anathema to him who persuades a slave to leave his master under pretence of religion.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council (which is seen as infallible) says of this earlier council:

in the Greek Church, the canons of several synods, which were held previously, were gathered into one collection and provided with continuous numbers, and such a collection of canons, as we have seen, lay before the Synod of Chalcedon. As, however, most of the synods whose canons were received into the collection, e.g. those of Neo-

268

caesarea, Ancyra, Gangra, Antioch, were certainly not Ecumenical Councils, and were even to some extent of doubtful authority, such as the Antiochene Synod of 341, the confirmation of the Ecumenical Synod was now given to them, in order to raise them to the position of universally and unconditionally valid ecclesiastical rules. It is admirably remarked by the Emperor Justinian, in his 131st Novel, cap.j.;** “We honour the doctrinal decrees of the first four Councils as we do Holy Scripture, but the canons given or approved by them as we do the laws.”** {emphasis mine}

And not only does that infallible council approve what the Council of Gangra says, but this Catholic.com article says that the use of “let him be anathema” indicates that it probably is infallibly defined. We know that the Church now teaches that slavery is wrong. This brings us to “further developments” regarding the equal dignity of man. This 180 degree change isn’t a development, but an abandonment of earlier teaching. Further development would be a honing or fine tuning of understanding. This is literally the exact opposite – a correction of an earlier grave and terrible error.

Ultimately, slavery was not seen necessarily as an ideal, but as natural to/a consequence of the fallen state of man. Certainly some forms were to be discouraged. It was to be tamped down when possible, and the ownership of a person itself as opposed to a right to the labor to be severely frowned upon. But it was seen as just that men could sell their labor and that of their children, which could provide them with job security. Slavery may also have been a more feasible option for prisoners of war than simple execution or rotting in a dungeon, as it could provide people with work and shelter. And slaves, like family, because part of a household, and it was up to the heads of the household to be in charge of discipline for everyone who was part of it, family or servant. Some infractions were seen as domestic household issues, not civil cases.

Again you’re ignoring the many slaves who were taken away to be beaten and worked sometimes to death. This was all with the full and written approval of the Church. This source of morality failed in a grave way.

When you say that some forms of slavery were discouraged, please show where that is the case apart from the enslavement of Christians. How on earth in over a dozen centuries did the Church try to lead people away from slavery? Just in the documents we’ve discussed it was ok to continue mostly unabated, increasing it, and to broaden the scope to include places where the excuse that everyone was involved in slavery at the time is demonstrably untrue.

The Church now is thankfully not the Church then.

 

[GratefulDad]

“Again you’re ignoring the many slaves who were taken away to be beaten and worked sometimes to death. This was all with the full and written approval of the Church. This source of morality failed in a grave way.”
…

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

“Again you’re ignoring the many slaves who were taken away to be beaten and worked sometimes to death. This was all with the full and written approval of the Church. This source of morality failed in a grave way.”
…

Do you have anything to show otherwise?

 

[LookAWayDixieLd]

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."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 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.

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.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. Perhaps a preacher could demonstrate why the Christian God is real, and the necessity of churchgoing and prayer.

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?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.

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

You don’t offer anything new here you are basically just restating what you have said before and continue to use the same assumption and premise that you know everything about everything and can lay your 2000’s sensitivities and assumptions on top of events 600 years ago with absolute perfect knowledge of their circumstances, perfect knowledge of every event surrounding slavery and perfect knowledge of other people’s thought process 600 years ago. It can’t be done perfectly and neither one of us were there at the time.

But isn’t that rather the limitation of the religion of atheism. In some situations the religion wants things to come down to “all things are relative” in other situations the religion of atheism wants judge the entirety of human history with 2017 sensitivities and declare they can make these assumptions and judgement better than anyone else with absolute perfection.

As others have stated above there are such things as:

-The fallen nature of man

-Redemptive Suffering

-Almighty God having a greater good come out of evil

And many other examples.

You should try and think outside the atheist box and realize there is not just the temporal existence but also the supernatural existence in union with the Holy Trinity.
Six hundred years from now what will history say about the 1900’s and 2000’s where the religions of atheism and communism killed more than 100,000,000 human beings in just one century. Worldwide abortions have killed almost 1.5 billion humans since 1980 and still counting.

The Muslims killed 110,000,000 million Africans over several centuries in the slave trade alone the wars they carried out over the centuries would compounded this number.
Future generations will find the 1900’s and 2000’s the most barbaric in human history because of leftist and atheism.

If you really cared about taking action against slavery you can go to any one of the countries where it is prevalent today and help free these poor souls instead of spending so much time over debating events from 600 years ago or 120 years ago. Just look at the almost 45 million slaves you could help during your life time if you moved to one of those countries and organized an abolitionist movement. You could even start your very own underground railroad. Don’t just talk about history, hop on a plane and take action today!

globalslaveryindex.org/findings/

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

You don’t offer anything new here you are basically just restating what you have said before and continue to use the same assumption and premise that you know everything about everything and can lay your 2000’s sensitivities and assumptions on top of events 600 years ago with absolute perfect knowledge of their circumstances, perfect knowledge of every event surrounding slavery and perfect knowledge of other people’s thought process 600 years ago. It can’t be done perfectly and neither one of us were there at the time.

Of course it’s nothing new. What I said originally was absolute correct. It’s devoid of whitewashing. It doesn’t excuse atrocities. It doesn’t blame the victims. There’s no need for new material.

As I pointed out earlier and will point out again, the golden rule from Jesus was centuries old when the Council of Gangra told believers not to convince slaves to escape their masters. It was a millennium and a half old when the question of slavery in the Canary Islands came to a head. You keep using the word “perfect”, but allowing slavery is more than just not perfect. It’s wrong. It’s destructive. It’s evil.

But isn’t that rather the limitation of the religion of atheism. In some situations the religion wants things to come down to “all things are relative” in other situations the religion of atheism wants judge the entirety of human history with 2017 sensitivities and declare they can make these assumptions and judgement better than anyone else with absolute perfection.

First off, the religion of atheism is like the hair color of bald or the job of unemployment. Second, it’s true that not everything in the past can we judge by today’s standards. But slavery, one of the cruelest acts ever perpetrated my man, most certainly does not qualify. It doesn’t take a 21st century morality to look into the eyes of a man, woman, or child; see the unnecessary suffering being placed on them; and question how this can be good. That doesn’t change no matter what time period we are in.

As others have stated above there are such things as:

-The fallen nature of man

While you and I would disagree if whether there was The Fall, I would agree that man often doesn’t do what’s best for his fellow man. But that’s the point. The Church is supposed to be a light.

-Redemptive Suffering

-Almighty God having a greater good come out of evil

That’s not what that means though. The idea of redemptive suffering is that God (allegedly) allows evil to occur to bring about a greater good. What this is with the Church and slavery is the purposeful perpetrating, instigating, and spreading of evil with the approval of the mouthpiece of God. It’s the difference between a tornado knocking down a bridge killing several people and the deliberate blowing up of a bridge killing several people.

If you want to say that good can come out of evil, I might agree in certain instances. If you want to say we should do evil to bring about good, then that’s just wrong.

And many other examples.

Such as? We certainly haven’t had any that make sense.

You should try and think outside the atheist box and realize there is not just the temporal existence but also the supernatural existence in union with the Holy Trinity.

We know from the Bible that God the Father has given instructions on how one is to enslave another. As I mentioned in an earlier post, God the Son’s only mention of slavery was in an analogy how it was ok to beat a slave. Is the Holy Spirit also pro-slavery?

Six hundred years from now what will history say about the 1900’s and 2000’s where the religions of atheism and communism killed more than 100,000,000 human beings in just one century. Worldwide abortions have killed almost 1.5 billion humans since 1980 and still counting.

If I were to shoot someone should I point to various organizations like the Gambino crime family or the Yakuza and judge myself based on how many more people they’ve killed? No, that would be ridiculous. Throw at as many numbers as you want. We have documents from the Church which show a systemic endorsement of slavery, an endorsement that was rescinded centuries later.

And don’t try to lay the evils of communist empires on atheism. While, yes, they were atheist (more accurately cults of personality) it’s not atheism that caused those things to occur. I myself am both an atheist and a capitalist. Whereas with the Church and slavery we have popes making these pronouncements because they believed doing so would increase the ranks of Christians.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The Muslims killed 110,000,000 million Africans over several centuries in the slave trade alone the wars they carried out over the centuries would compounded this number.
Future generations will find the 1900’s and 2000’s the most barbaric in human history because of leftist and atheism.

So it has nothing to do with the advancement of weaponry and travel? Are you saying the Hundred Years War wouldn’t have been much bloodier if the sides had planes, guns, and bombs? Isn’t the fact that the population was much greater in those centuries than previous ones a factor?

If you really cared about taking action against slavery you can go to any one of the countries where it is prevalent today and help free these poor souls instead of spending so much time over debating events from 600 years ago or 120 years ago. Just look at the almost 45 million slaves you could help during your life time if you moved to one of those countries and organized an abolitionist movement. You could even start your very own underground railroad. Don’t just talk about history, hop on a plane and take action today!

globalslaveryindex.org/findings/

What you’ve laid out is that if I don’t leave my home and go to a foreign land I’ve never been to and start a grassroots program to end slavery there then I can’t speak out against slavery. By this reasoning since you are not doing the same then you can not speak out against slavery. Are you pro-slavery?

This questioning why I’m going over the Church’s place in slavery actually touches on two recurring themes I see when discussing religion.

1. When a non-believer points out a discrepancy in Christianity the non-believer is often told that he or she has not studied the matter enough. Then when the non-believer presents a great deal of information on the matter (from the Church itself) suddenly the non-believer is called to task for being too focused on the matter. There seemingly is no point where the non-believer can have the right amount of study on any matters regarding Christianity or the Church.

I’m focused on this particular matter because this is a discussion forum. We are here to discuss things. Obviously my opinion differs from many but a proper discussion allows for multiple viewpoints and doesn’t require everyone in lockstep.

1. Atheists and other non-Christians are often scolded about how they don’t have a proper basis for morality. I always want to ask the question that follows from that preconceived notion: What does a believer do when he or she is confronted with a religious organization or the writings of deity which calls for immorality and evil? Slavery was and is a great issue and the repeated declarative statements that slavery was allowed (so long as it was against non-Christians) is that same troubling issue.

 

[LookAWayDixieLd]

So it has nothing to do with the advancement of weaponry and travel? Are you saying the Hundred Years War wouldn’t have been much bloodier if the sides had planes, guns, and bombs? Isn’t the fact that the population was much greater in those centuries than previous ones a factor?

This questioning why I’m going over the Church’s place in slavery actually touches on two recurring themes I see when discussing religion.

1. When a non-believer points out a discrepancy in Christianity the non-believer is often told that he or she has not studied the matter enough. Then when the non-believer presents a great deal of information on the matter (from the Church itself) suddenly the non-believer is called to task for being too focused on the matter. There seemingly is no point where the non-believer can have the right amount of study on any matters regarding Christianity or the Church.
2. Slavery was and is a great issue and the repeated declarative statements that slavery was allowed (so long as it was against non-Christians) is that same troubling issue.

Again, 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.

Your so called discrepancy is an assumption. Again you are assuming you know everything about everything. This is just an intellectual echo chamber for atheist and leftist. You are only looking at this through your 2017 lenses. The statement says “all and each person” under the penalty of excommunication.

The Church did not have a police force or army to enforce these words and obviously there have been some people who did not have true Faith in the Holy Trinity and a solid understanding of what eternity is that did bad things.

This is what the Church has taught for 2000 years. The church has never taught that the slave owners and profiting from slaves is a virtue. The Church has always taught and believed this but here is the earliest document we have today where it is written down.

Fr Phil Wolfe sermon:
The Four Sins that Cry to Heaven (America Has Failed Four for Four)
According to the Holy Spirit speaking through the Holy Scriptures, there are four sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance.

From the Douay Catholic Catechism of 1649

CHAPTER XX – The sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance

Q. 925. HOW many such sins are there?
A. Four.

Q. 926. What is the first of them?
A. Wilful murder, which is a voluntary and unjust taking away another’s life.

Q. 927. How show you the depravity of this sin?
A. Out of Gen. iv. 10. Where it is said to Cain “What hast thou done? the voice of the blood of thy brother crieth to me from the earth: now, therefore shalt thou be cursed upon the earth.” And Matt. xxvi 52, “All that take the sword, shall perish with the sword.”

Q. 928. What is the second?
A. The sin of Sodom, or carnal sin against nature, which is a voluntary shedding of the seed of nature, out of the due use of marriage, or lust with a different sex.

Q. 929. What is the scripture proof of this?
A. Out of Gen. xix. 13. where we read of the Sodomites, and their sin. “We will destroy this place because the cry of them hath increased before our Lord, who hath sent us to destroy them,” (and they were burnt with fire from heaven.)

Q. 930. What is the third?
A. Oppressing of the poor, which is a cruel, tyrannical, and unjust dealing with inferiors.

Q. 931. What other proof have you of that?
A. Out of Exod. xxii. 21. “Ye shall not hurt the widow and the fatherless: If you do hurt them, they will cry unto me, and I will hear them cry, and my fury shall take indignation, and I will strike thee with the sword.” And out of Isa. x. 1, 2. “Wo to them that make unjust laws, that they might oppress the poor in judgment, and do violence to the cause of the humble of my people.”

Q. 932. What is the fourth?
A. To defraud working men of their wages, which is to lessen, or detain it from them.

Q. 933. What proof have you of it?
A. Out of Eccl. xxxiv. 37. “He that sheddeth blood and he that defraudeth the hired man, are brethren,” and out of James v. 4. “Behold the hire of the workmen that have reaped your fields, which is defrauded by you, crieth, and their cry hath entered into the ears of the Lord God of Sabbath.”

What would the report card of the United States look like? It looks like we are failing four out four. And it’s not that we are simply committing these sins, we are approving of these sins and mandating these sins.

The US is the primary exporter of abortion to the world, not to mention the crimes in this regard within our own borders. That innocent bloodshed if there ever were.

The sin of Sodom includes not only sodomy, but also contraception in the “voluntary shedding of the seed of nature.”

The third is the oppressing of the poor, orphan, and widow, and the fourth is defrauding laborers. The USA has its own poverty problem. The inflation of currency defrauds laborers – especially the retired who depend on lifesavings which are gradually devalued. And we could also speak of the exportation of jobs oversees and the slave labor arrangements in China that make our Walmart purchases all the cheaper.

Only one of these four sins is required to call to Heaven for “vengeance.” Yet we have all four crying against us in the Heavenly court. We’ll need a lot more than comic book Avengers this summer to escape the vengeance of the just and loving God who vindicates the murdered, abused, and afflicted.