Historical questions on Church wealth

[CutlerB]

A few days ago, there was a satirical show on TV that has the week’s news as its basis. The Catholic Church is in the news here in Germany constantly at the moment with special regard to her finances. As many will know, the Church is entitled to a tax here, which is paid by Church members only.

As part of that TV show, they often have someone who will head off into a huge rant about a specific topic, yelling and really flying off the handle, staged of course. This time, the Church and the Church tax were the target. During his rant, the man screamed that the Church was not entitled to the tax, since she had “made enough money” from certain phenomena in the past.

Among them, he listed the Inquisition, which supposedly collected one third of the personal belongings of those sentenced to death. Is there any truth to that, and on another note: Was there an Inquisition in Germany? If so, how extensive was it?

Additional items named were forging of documents to obtain lands and wide-spread “sale of indulgences”. These, yelled the man, had all made the Church rich, so that she was indebted to the state rather than the state to her for taking away her lands in the 19th century.

Does anyone have information or resources on these matters?

1. Inquisition taking ⅓ of the sentenced’s possessions
2. Forging documents to illegitimately obtain land, or have contracts signed by people who couldn’t even read them
3. How extensive was the “sale of indulgences”?

 

[JerryZ]

King Henry the VIII confiscated all the churches, convents and land that belonged to the Church in England, Scotland and Wales.

Pretty much the same was done in France after the french revolution.

The Church did not have armies to confiscate any thing, the rulers in those lands had them.
Who do you think did what?

By the way. How did the Church aquire the lands to build convents that served the poor, the sick and the needy in those lands?
I’ll tell you, they were donated by pious people.
The uneducated people had no wealth! What a huge red herring that is.

The Church’s material wealth has always been used to benefit the needy.
Have some unscrupolous people benefited? Surely, bad people always existed and will continue to exist. But on balance I would defend the Church from this attacks. She has been much more positive for our civilization.

–

 

[LegoGE1947]

King Henry the VIII confiscated all the churches, convents and land that belonged to the Church in England, Scotland and Wales.

Pretty much the same was done in France after the french revolution.

The Church did not have armies to confiscate any thing, the rulers in those lands had them.
Who do you think did what?

By the way. How did the Church aquire the lands to build convents that served the poor, the sick and the needy in those lands?
I’ll tell you, they were donated by pious people.
The uneducated people had no wealth! What a huge red herring that is.

The Church’s material wealth has always been used to benefit the needy.
Have some unscrupolous people benefited? Surely, bad people always existed and will continue to exist. But on balance I would defend the Church from this attacks. She has been much more positive for our civilization.

–

Besides, the Church’s real treasures are those souls she has redeemed from the grasp of the Devil:thumbsup:

 

[Avila123]

Reference the question about the inquisition. Have a look at the links below which show a different story to that put about by the Spanish government which was intent on the genocide of one group of heretics. The Pope mobilised the Franciscans and Dominican Orders to save the heretics. The Catholic torture was to be evangelised through loving preachings, once the sinner repented the heinous punishments included the Sacrament of Reconciliation, attending mass and saying prayers. I understand that they hung on to the unrepentant as long as possible because once handed to the government, they would be tortured and killed. Try reading Joanna Bogle’s articles, books or programmes on EWTN (I know she does cookery but she is a knowledgeable historian and journalist).

ewtn.com/library/homelibr/spaninq.txt or ewtn.com/library/answers/inquisit.htm or ewtn.com/library/humanity/fr92402.txt or defendingthebride.com/hs/spanish.html