Death Penalty for Apostasy from Catholic Faith

[dominikus28]

In 1688 the sejm (Polish parliament) made it an offence punishable by death to apostasize from the Catholic Faith. (I’m sure Poland wasn’t the only one)

I’ve heard critics of ISIS point out how barbaric ISIS is for killing those who leave Islam. Well, the Catholic Church was way ahead of them in that regard.

Piotr Skarga (a famous Polish priest) also supported the death penalty for heretics.

I’d like to know, how we as Catholics, can defend this if it is brought up in conversation. Should we defend it? Or should we acknowledge that it wasn’t a good thing. But if so, then here’s another question: How do we explain that no Saint, or Pope criticized it either?
If we are happy to acknowledge that the majority of Popes, Bishops and even Saints were wrong back then, then how are we to look up to Saints as leading exemplary lives? If the Popes were wrong about that, surely they were wrong about other things too!
And if we admit that back then the Church was wrong, then how can we trust that the Church is right today? Maybe liberals are right and we should tax the Church, and the Church should have no legal privileges.

NOTE: I’m playing devil’s advocate here And I’m not advocating for change in doctrine, but in non-doctrinal issues, like taxing the Church, the Church’s privileged status, etc. Some would say it was a good thing that we had Catholic Monarchies and the like, but you may think that the government should be neutral, and Papal Encyclicals which talk about promoting the Social Kingship of Christ should not be done through government.

I’d appreciate your thoughts.

 

[Sunbreak]

I’m not sure a rationalist website is the best source of information about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and apostasy. (Also check your date - more like 1668 not 1688.) From what I read in other sources, yes apostasy was forbidden for a period of time. It is possible that certain overzealous people could have advocated the death penalty. This was a complicated period of time in Europe - there was a Counter Reformation going on to combat the Protestant Reformation. Poland and whatever territories it held at the time had gone through a tremendous amount of assaults from other countries around it. Having one official religion was one way to unite the people (not uncommon in Europe to do this). By the way, Piotr Skarga was not even alive at the time the Sejm passed the apostasy thing - he died in 1612.

 

[Jon_S_1]

I’m not sure a rationalist website is the best source of information about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and apostasy. (Also check your date - more like 1668 not 1688.) From what I read in other sources, yes apostasy was forbidden for a period of time. It is possible that certain overzealous people could have advocated the death penalty. This was a complicated period of time in Europe - there was a Counter Reformation going on to combat the Protestant Reformation. Poland and whatever territories it held at the time had gone through a tremendous amount of assaults from other countries around it. Having one official religion was one way to unite the people (not uncommon in Europe to do this). By the way, Piotr Skarga was not even alive at the time the Sejm passed the apostasy thing - he died in 1612.

During this time and the rise of Protestantism, heresy was often politically motivated. Lots of Protestants became so purely for political/power gain. I am not totally familiar with the specifics of Poland and their law, but in general during that time, civil authorities often viewed heresy as a form of treason aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government.

 

[Peter_Plato]

In 1688 the sejm (Polish parliament) made it an offence punishable by death to apostasize from the Catholic Faith. (I’m sure Poland wasn’t the only one)

I’ve heard critics of ISIS point out how barbaric ISIS is for killing those who leave Islam. Well, the Catholic Church was way ahead of them in that regard.

The problem with this is that the Polish parliament had no authority to decide on behalf of the Church what ought to happen to apostates. Contrary to your claim that the “Catholic Church was way ahead of…” ISIS in this regard, the Catholic Church was not the body that made that decision, therefore it wasn’t the Catholic Church that was responsible for it.

What individual priests or even bishops decide or are part of a decision that an outside body makes on behalf of the Church, that decision is not binding on anyone within the Church. Only the Magisterium has that authority.

Your last line to be consistent with your argument should, therefore, read: “Well, the Polish parliament was way ahead of them in that regard.”

You haven’t made a case against the Catholic Church, you’ve made a case against the Polish parliament and that is all.

The fallacy is one of false equivalence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

 

[Peter_Plato]

And if we admit that back then the Church was wrong, then how can we trust that the Church is right today? Maybe liberals are right and we should tax the Church, and the Church should have no legal privileges.

NOTE: I’m playing devil’s advocate here And I’m not advocating for change in doctrine, but in non-doctrinal issues, like taxing the Church, the Church’s privileged status, etc. Some would say it was a good thing that we had Catholic Monarchies and the like, but you may think that the government should be neutral, and Papal Encyclicals which talk about promoting the Social Kingship of Christ should not be done through government.

I’d appreciate your thoughts.

The other issue here is that people in Europe took religious beliefs VERY seriously at the time. Heresies that arose were not merely ideological or benign oddities, the beliefs of heretics led to social and political unrest which could unseat legitimate governments.

Take the Albigensian-Cathar heresy that spread through France a century or two before the Jansenist one that occurred at the time the Polish parliament took the drastic action it did.

Here is what the Albigensian heresy was about:

The dualism of the Albigenses was also the basis of their moral teaching. Man, they taught, is a living contradiction. Hence, the liberation of the soul from its captivity in the body is the true end of our being. To attain this, suicide is commendable; it was customary among them in the form of the endura (starvation). The extinction of bodily life on the largest scale consistent with human existence is also a perfect aim. As generation propagates the slavery of the soul to the body, perpetual chastity should be practiced. **Matrimonial intercourse is unlawful; concubinage, being of a less permanent nature, is preferable to marriage. Abandonment of his wife by the husband, or vice versa, is desirable. Generation was abhorred by the Albigenses even in the animal kingdom. **Consequently, abstention from all animal food, except fish, was enjoined. Their belief in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, the result of their logical rejection of purgatory, furnishes another explanation for the same abstinence. To this practice they added long and rigorous fasts. The necessity of absolute fidelity to the sect was strongly inculcated.
newadvent.org/cathen/01267e.htm

Now, imagine trying to run a civilized country while such beliefs were running rampant and causing citizens to promote suicide and abandonment of family life.

Perhaps it was to counter similar “ideas” that the Polish government took such a hard stand against the heretical beliefs they were attempting to quash – perhaps the beliefs were a threat to civil society in Poland.

 

[Peter_Plato]

After doing a bit more reading, it appears that the source cited in the OP may have overstated its case.

The Catholic Church wasn’t a dominant power in the Commonwealth and even when reformers or heretical groups attempted to sway the populace, it was a much more muted response than in other areas of Europe.

The population of the Commonwealth of Both Nations was never overwhelmingly either Roman Catholic or Polish. The Commonwealth comprised primarily four nations: Lithuanians, Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians (the latter referred usually as the Ruthenians). In 1618, the Commonwealth population of 11,5 millions could be roughly divided into: Poles, 4,5m, Lithuanians, 1,5m, Belorusians (Ruthenians) 2,25m, Ukrainians (the so-called “Volhynians”), 2m, Prussians 0,75m, Livonians 0,5m. This circumstance resulted from Poland’s possession of Ukraine and confederation with Lithuania, in both of which countries ethnic Poles were a distinct minority. To be Polish, in the non-Polish lands of the Commonwealth, was then much less an index of ethnicity than of religion and rank; it was a designation largely reserved for the landed noble class (szlachta), which included Poles but also many members of non-Polish origin who converted to Catholicism in increasing numbers with each following generation. For the non-Polish noble such conversion meant a final step of Polonization that followed the adoption of the Polish language and culture. Poland, as the culturally most advanced part of the Commonwealth, with the royal court, the capital, the largest cities, the second-oldest university in Central Europe (after Prague), and the more liberal and democractic social institutions has proven an irrestable magnet for the non-Polish nobility in the Commonwealth.
As a result, in the eastern territories a Polish (or Polonized) aristocracy dominated a peasantry whose great majority was neither Polish nor Roman Catholic. Moreover, the decades of peace brought huge colonization efforts to Ukraine, heightening the tensions among nobles, Jews, Cossacks (traditionally Orthodox), Polish and Ruthenian peasants. The latter, deprived of their native protectors among the Ruthenian nobility, turned for protection to cossacks that facilitated violence that in the end broke the Commonwealth. The tensions were aggravated by conflicts between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Greek Catholic Church following the Union of Brest, overall discrimination of Orthodox religions by dominant Catholicism, and several Cossack uprisings. In the west and north, many cities had sizable German minorities, often belonging to Reformed churches. The Commonwealth had also one of the largest Jewish diasporas in the world.
Until the Reformation, the szlachta were mostly Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. However, many families quickly adopted the Reformed religion. After the Counter-Reformation, when the Roman Catholic Church regained power in Poland, the szlachta became almost exclusively Roman Catholic, despite the fact that Roman Catholicism was not a majority religion (the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches counted approximately 40% of the population each, while the remaining 20% were Jews and members of various Protestant churches). It should be noted that the Counter-Reformation in Poland, influenced by the Commonwealth tradition of religious tolerance, was based mostly on Jesuit propaganda, and was very peaceful when compared to excesses such as the Thirty Years’ War elsewhere in Europe.
cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/p/Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth.htm

There don’t seem to be many authoritative sources on the subject on the Internet, which makes the claims of the source cited in the OP very suspect.

 

[Memaw]

The problem with this is that the Polish parliament had no authority to decide on behalf of the Church what ought to happen to apostates. Contrary to your claim that the “Catholic Church was way ahead of…” ISIS in this regard, the Catholic Church was not the body that made that decision, therefore it wasn’t the Catholic Church that was responsible for it.

What individual priests or even bishops decide or are part of a decision that an outside body makes on behalf of the Church, that decision is not binding on anyone within the Church. Only the Magisterium has that authority.

Your last line to be consistent with your argument should, therefore, read: “Well, the Polish parliament was way ahead of them in that regard.”

You haven’t made a case against the Catholic Church, you’ve made a case against the Polish parliament and that is all.

The fallacy is one of false equivalence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

Thank you, we can see what happens when we post something way out of context and, or not keep it in the era it took place. To compare that to Isis, is a very sad conclusion. And VERY unfair. God Bless, Memaw

 

[BobCatholic]

The Church never taught there was a death penalty for apostasy from the faith.

Governments, have. And that does not mean it was done with Church approval.

So if you can tell the difference between the Church and the secular government, then you know the issue is not the same as Islam, which believes there is no difference between the state and Islam under Sharia law.

ISIS = Islam as both religion and state.
Catholic Church = religion, not the state. (one minor exception: Vatican City is the state that has the Holy See in it)

 

[Thorolfr]

The Church never taught there was a death penalty for apostasy from the faith.

But the Church did support the use of torture to get confessions from heretics:

Ad extirpanda (named for its Latin incipit) was a papal bull promulgated on Wednesday, May 15, 1252 by Pope Innocent IV which authorized in limited and defined circumstances the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_extirpanda

 

[Peter_Plato]

But the Church did support the use of torture to get confessions from heretics:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_extirpanda

I did a search for Ad Extirpanda on Papalencyclicals.net and Vatican.va and cannot find the document anywhere. The fact that you resort to a third party to present what the papal bull purportedly states is interesting because – I would think – if you had the official document in sight you would have linked to that. A Google search yields an assorted listing of anti-Catholic, anti-theism sites which have their own agenda but are incestuous in that they link to each other and never to a site that has any credibility.

I’ve never heard that the Church approved torture to get confessions from heretics. My understanding was that during the Inquisition, torture was not permitted to obtain any self-incriminating statements. It was used to determine, in relatively benign ways, if someone was lying, but never to get a confession from the accused. That was specifically NOT permitted.

In fact, standard practice was to have the accused draw up a list of those individuals who may have had some reason for maligning them or were not in good relationship with the accused and those individuals were immediately struck off the list of potential witnesses.

There may have been a few abuses, but the sole aim of the Inquisition was to get at the truth. Torturing merely to obtain a coerced confession was not in line with its reason for existing. There would be nothing to be gained in obtaining a forced and, therefore, tainted confession.

Now, if you have some credible scholarly source that has a version of the official document available, do present that. Until then, we have no reason to accept your claim.

 

[Genesis315]

Generally, we see the death penalty for heresy in situations where the heresy causes enough violence and danger to the society to warrant it.

Archbishop Hughes, in a 19th century debate with a Presbyterian minister on religious freedom, explained an example of this from the medieval period:
Archbishop John Hughes:

Let any man apply the doctrines of the Albigenses, simply on two points, viz. the tenet that the devil was the creator of the visible world ; and that, in order to avoid co-operation with the devil in continuing his work, the faithful should take measures by which the human race should come to an end ; and then say whether those errors were merely speculative. They were, on the contrary, pregnant with destruction to society. Was it persecution, or rather, was it not self-preservation, to arrest those errors? We shall see presently, however, that these men, like the Calvinists in France at a later period, took up the sword of sedition, and wielded it against the government under which they lived. We shall see, that long before the canon of Lateran was passed, their course was marked with plunder, rapine, bloodshed. And if so, it follows that their crimes against society springing from their doctrines, constitute the true reason of the severity of the enactment against them.

Their existence was known from the year 1022. If, then, the extermination of heretics had been a doctrine of the Catholic Church, why were they not exterminated from the first? If it was not a doctrine of the church in 1022, it was not a doctrine in 1215; for the gentleman himself admits and proclaims that our doctrines never change. Why then did not the Catholics exterminate them at once ? Is it that they were not able ? No : for at first the heresy had but few supporters. But why were they afterwards persecuted ? The reason is, that in the interval they had proceeded to sustain and propagate their infernal principles, by violence. They had placed themselves under the patronage of factious and rebellious barons, and had fought in pitched battles against their sovereigns. In the former controversy, the gentleman garbled the twenty-seventh canon of the third Council of Lateran, to show that these poor heretics were condemned to awful penalties, for nothing at all but protesting against the errors of the Church of Rome. This he did by quoting the beginning and conclusion of the canon, and, without indicating any omission, suppressing the crimes of these proto-martyrs of Calvinism. It was proved, by the very document from which he quoted, that these lambs of the Albigensian fold were “exercising such cruelty on the Christians, (ie. the Catholics) that they paid no respect to churches or monastaries, spared neither virgins nor widows, neither old nor young, neither sex nor age, but after the manner of pagans destroyed and desolated every thing.”

St. Thomas More, who lived during a time when heretics were put to death (and even participated in such things as a state official) explained it this way:
St. Thomas More:

If the heretics had never started with the violence, then even if they had used all the ways they had ways they could to lure the people by preaching, even if they had thereby done what Luther does now and Mohammed did before – bring into vogue opinions pleasing to the people, giving them licence for licentiousness – yet if they had left violence alone, good Christian people would perhaps all the way up to this day have used less violence towards them than they do now. And yet heresy well deserves to be punished as severely as any other sin, since there is no sin that more offends God. However, as long as they refrained from violence, there was little violence done to them. And certainly though God is able against all persecution to preserve and increase his faith among the people, as he did in the beginning, for all the persecution inflicted by the pagans and the Jews, that is still no reason to expect Christian princes to allow the Catholic Christian people to be oppressed by Turks or by heretics worse than Turks.​

For here you shall understand that it is not the clergy who endeavour to have them punished by death. It may well be, since we are all human beings and not angels, that some of them may sometimes have too hot a head, or an injudicious zeal, or perhaps, an irascible and cruel heart, by which they may offend God in the very same deed by which they would otherwise gain great merit. But certainly what the Church law on this calls for is good, reasonable, compassionate, and charitable, and in no way desirous of the death of anyone. For after a first offense the culprit can recant, repudiate by oath all heresies, do such penance for his offense as the bishop assigns him, and in that way be graciously taken back into the favour and graces of Christ’s Church. But if afterward he is caught committing the same crime again, then he is put out of the Christian flock by excommunication. And because, his being such, his mingling with Christians would be dangerous, the Church shuns him and the clergy give notice of this to the secular authorities – not exhorting the king, or anyone else either, to kill or punish him, but in the presence of the civil representative, the ecclesiastical official not delivers him but leaves him to the secular authorities, and forsakes him as one excommunicated and removed from the Christian flock.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Generally, we see the death penalty for heresy in situations where the heresy causes enough violence and danger to the society to warrant it.

That runs counter to the quote you gave from Thomas More which says the mere act of heresy (absent any true or anticipated violence) is worthy of punishment.

Regarding the alleged threats of violence, nation-states have laws against violence without the need of extra laws outlawing heresy.

Also the idea that harming people for having different viewpoints on religion would upset the apple cart of a society who have a single viewpoint is ridiculous. It’s the rationalization of tyranny. There are plenty of societies both past and present which used that as an excuse to stamp out free thought.

 

[Peter_Plato]

That runs counter to the quote you gave from Thomas More which says the mere act of heresy (absent any true or anticipated violence) is worthy of punishment.

Regarding the alleged threats of violence, nation-states have laws against violence without the need of extra laws outlawing heresy.

Also the idea that harming people for having different viewpoints on religion would upset the apple cart of a society who have a single viewpoint is ridiculous. It’s the rationalization of tyranny. There are plenty of societies both past and present which used that as an excuse to stamp out free thought.

Sure, and a prime example is how the modern PC left is seeking to impose a non-binary view of gender on society by stamping out all free thought on the subject. It isn’t merely the religious who are prone to excess, it is humans generally.

The point stands, however, that there can be viewpoints that threaten the existence of law and order and the society itself – I am not speaking of binary gender theory here because that has been around for thousands of years and served to build strong civil societies.

Now if promoting nihilism, confusion and moral relativism is your schtick then spreading gender dysphoria throughout society will surely accomplish that. I would suppose that when society loses whatever tenuous grip it had on reality any heresy is as good as any other to sow the seeds of social and cultural destruction.

Speaking of which – there we have another modern dogma which refuses to accept the heresy which it claims is merely a phobia of one kind or another: social and cultural diversity. Despite that cultures and societies are, in fact, being threatened and on the verge of destruction, the regnant ideologues hold fast to their belief that any view but creating a diverse cultural landscape is a heresy which ought to be lawfully persecuted. Thus you have academics, politicians and well-known figures in society being persecuted and threatened for disagreeing with the received ideology of diversity, as absurd as that is.

 

[Genesis315]

That runs counter to the quote you gave from Thomas More which says the mere act of heresy (absent any true or anticipated violence) is worthy of punishment.

Punishment does not mean execution. All sins are worthy of punishment and heresy is a great sin against faith (the Church, for example, retains the right to punish its members with both spiritual and temporal measures (see Canon Law 1311-1312)). That doesn’t mean the state should punish all sins all the time or that all sins are due the death penalty.

Regarding the alleged threats of violence, nation-states have laws against violence without the need of extra laws outlawing heresy.

Heresy in those days was comparable to treason which is why it was often punished the same. It was violence with an especially disruptive character.

Also the idea that harming people for having different viewpoints on religion would upset the apple cart of a society who have a single viewpoint is ridiculous. It’s the rationalization of tyranny. There are plenty of societies both past and present which used that as an excuse to stamp out free thought.

Ideas don’t exist only in the abstract. No one was punished for private thoughts. But bad ideas can have very bad effects on society when spread publically. That’s why the Catholic Church, who believes in the qualitative difference between truth and error, has never and still does not teach an unlimited right to free speech or the press or to religious freedom. For example, St. John XXIII in Pacem in Terris 12 says freedom of speech and the press is only valid “within the limits of the moral order and the common good.” The CCC says the same with regard to religious freedom (see CCC 2109). Public authority has the right and duty to limit religious freedom when it threatens the common good. Obviously, for the death penalty to apply, the threat would need to be proportional (cf CCC 2267).

Also, it should be noted that the common good must take into account man’s spiritual end and well being (see Pacem in Terris 57-59) and religious error and heresy certainly can affect this.

EDIT: just realized you are an atheist. Obviously, to you, care for the spiritual aspect of man makes no sense, since you only believe in “half” the person and deny his supernatural end. But we believe there is an objective truth about man and it is forgetting this that truly leads to tyranny as the CCC explains:

2244 Every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct. Most societies have formed their institutions in the recognition of a certain preeminence of man over things. Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognized man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer. The Church invites political authorities to measure their judgments and decisions against this inspired truth about God and man:

Societies not recognizing this vision or rejecting it in the name of their independence from God are brought to seek their criteria and goal in themselves or to borrow them from some ideology. Since they do not admit that one can defend an objective criterion of good and evil, they arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny, as history shows.51

 

[e_c]

Ite ad Thomam.

newadvent.org/summa/3011.htm#article3

Thoughts?

 

[Padres1969]

Ite ad Thomam.

newadvent.org/summa/3011.htm#article3

Thoughts?

This brings up a question for me, what does the Catholic Church consider worse then? Heresy or Apostasy? I mean the RCC as I understand it views Apostasy as a complete repudiation of the Christian faith while Heresy by comparison is only the denial of some truth which must be believed as part of the Catholic faith.

 

[BornInMarch]

I’d like to know, how we as Catholics, can defend this if it is brought up in conversation. Should we defend it? Or should we acknowledge that it wasn’t a good thing. But if so, then here’s another question: How do we explain that no Saint, or Pope criticized it either?

We should acknowledge that the church strayed from it’s message of love and mercy in the past.

I hate when people see historical figures massacring and raping people and defend it with “It was a different time”. Humanity’s Basic Nature is the same now as it was then; if our nature is to find that reprehensible then we shouldn’t excuse past atrocities or refrain from condemning the Genghis Khans of the world just because they were born before December 18, 1865.

Additionally, it ignores the truth that not everybody was cruel or vile in the past. Indeed, there were people from all points of history who not only met but even exceeded modern ethical standards. There were generals who not only refrained from sacking cities but also punished their own soldiers for such behavior. There were philosophers who declared murder of the innocents to be immoral even when those innocents are enemy civilians. To defend Robespierre’s mass-executions with “that was normal back then” is to reject John Locke’s treatises on how we shouldn’t infringe on the lives or liberties of our fellow man (John Locke even called those who do infringe on them “enemies of humankind”). To defend Boudicca’s massacre of Claulodunum is to reject Socrates and his belief that it would be better to suffer an injustice than to commit one.

So yes, we should acknowledge our Church’s mistakes while at the same time reflecting on the things it did right. St. Nicholas

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Punishment does not mean execution. All sins are worthy of punishment and heresy is a great sin against faith (the Church, for example, retains the right to punish its members with both spiritual and temporal measures (see Canon Law 1311-1312)). That doesn’t mean the state should punish all sins all the time or that all sins are due the death penalty.

Heresy in those days was comparable to treason which is why it was often punished the same. It was violence with an especially disruptive character.

Don’t try to slip in that heresy equals violence. It simply doesn’t. One can state that a church (yours or any others) without it being a violent act. The idea that one must stamp out a single follower or a group of followers for not being in lockstep with the prevailing church of the area is not moral and can not be justified. If one goes against a religion violently then fight against its violence and not its heresy from the perspective of the dominant religion.

Ideas don’t exist only in the abstract. No one was punished for private thoughts.

So one could allegedly determine what is the correct interpretation of The Bible, but the merest utterance of anything running counter to Catholic dogma or doctrine was worthy of “punishment”? As you noted above heresy is a great sin worthy of punishment. Yet punishment is dealt to those who do wrong. Heresy is not a wrong but a difference of opinion since each religious group has different notions as to which ideas are heretical.

But bad ideas can have very bad effects on society when spread publically.

For thos who are believers but might have a difference of opinion on some aspect of the faith, they likely believed they were spreading a good idea to counter a bad one that had already been spread.

That’s why the Catholic Church, who believes in the qualitative difference between truth and error, has never and still does not teach an unlimited right to free speech or the press or to religious freedom.

I am quite thankful that churches do not have the ability to set limits on speech and religious freedom in at least the first world countries.

For example, St. John XXIII in Pacem in Terris 12 says freedom of speech and the press is only valid “within the limits of the moral order and the common good.” The CCC says the same with regard to religious freedom (see CCC 2109). Public authority has the right and duty to limit religious freedom when it threatens the common good.

I’m not sure what your average person who differed with the Church was doing to threaten common good. Is it just for having “bad ideas”? Has the Catholic Church not had bad ideas?

Obviously, for the death penalty to apply, the threat would need to be proportional (cf CCC 2267).

Heresy should hold no punishment. I’m not impressed if you’re suggesting that not all acts of heresy lead to the death penalty, as if one should be “punished” less for going slightly off the beaten path in their religious thinking.

Also, it should be noted that the common good must take into account man’s spiritual end and well being (see Pacem in Terris 57-59) and religious error and heresy certainly can affect this.

EDIT: just realized you are an atheist. Obviously, to you, care for the spiritual aspect of man makes no sense, since you only believe in “half” the person and deny his supernatural end. But we believe there is an objective truth about man and it is forgetting this that truly leads to tyranny as the CCC explains:

While I myself don’t believe in the spiritual aspect of man, I am not one to try and prevent any man from engaging in that aspect of himself, provided it does not harm others. What is interesting is that compared to those supporting the actions of those who did harm or killed those who were considered heretical at that time, I, as an atheist, show far more care for man’s spiritual aspect than they do.freedom.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The point stands, however, that there can be viewpoints that threaten the existence of law and order and the society itself – I am not speaking of binary gender theory here because that has been around for thousands of years and served to build strong civil societies.

Slavery and forced marriages were also served to build strong civil societies. We somehow pushed through

Now if promoting nihilism, confusion and moral relativism is your schtick then spreading gender dysphoria throughout society will surely accomplish that. I would suppose that when society loses whatever tenuous grip it had on reality any heresy is as good as any other to sow the seeds of social and cultural destruction.

Or maybe changes in society won’t lead to social and cultural destruction but merely changes. We’ve had societal changes in the past, some good some not so good. I’m not convinced by your suggestion that letting people dress in a gender of their choice will lead to the end of western civilization, just as not burning heretics didn’t cause society to collapse.

Speaking of which – there we have another modern dogma which refuses to accept the heresy which it claims is merely a phobia of one kind or another: social and cultural diversity. Despite that cultures and societies are, in fact, being threatened and on the verge of destruction, the regnant ideologues hold fast to their belief that any view but creating a diverse cultural landscape is a heresy which ought to be lawfully persecuted. Thus you have academics, politicians and well-known figures in society being persecuted and threatened for disagreeing with the received ideology of diversity, as absurd as that is.

They’re not being tortured (which you’ve defended elsewhere in this thread). Let’s not equate derision for offering up certain opinions with the threat of death and violence for disagreeing with the Church.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Slavery and forced marriages were also served to build strong civil societies. We somehow pushed through

Well, actually, slavery and forced marriages helped to forge economic alliances and ensconce some individuals or classes of individuals in positions of power, but that is hardly the definition of “strong civil societies.”

In fact, the case could be made that reliance on slavery or forced marriages to scaffold the lifestyles of the elite in any particular society is inherently destructive of creating a “civil” society since it undermines the possibility of civility from the get-go.