How would this hypothetical affect one's view of Catholic history?

[DCNBILL]

I’m guessing your bishop is pretty old fashioned. By any chance, did he grow up in the 1450s?

I am pretty sure he is not that old!

 

[Duane1966]

To be clear: I’m not denying that governments saw heresy as a threat. I’m saying that in a formal legal sense heresy and treason were quite separate crimes.

If you or I were raised and educated in that time period, would we have known there was a difference?

If all execution is inhumane, does it not follow that all execution is against the will of the Spirit?
And since this obviously implies that burning heretics at the stake is against the will of the Spirit, doesn’t it follow that Leo was clearly wrong?

Approach it from the opposite way. If capital punishment is NOT against the will of the Spirit, then NO form of execution is inhumane (one can argue that one form is more inhumane than others, but it is subjective). It is up to each society to then determine the boundaries of execution.

You seem to be suggesting that he condemned a proposition he knew to be true, because he was afraid of the political fallout.

I am suggesting that he felt capital punishment was not against the will of the Spirit, and even if he personally may have felt burning was inhumane, one can easily argue that all forms are inhumane. If he says yes burning does go against the will, then why burning, but not hanging, firing squads, gas…?

Or else you are suggesting that the Holy Spirit wants inhumane things to happen if governments are unwilling to accept Church opposition to them.

Nope.

I am not sure that Luther supported burning witches, but he did support executing them for sure.

August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon witches who spoil milk, eggs, and butter in farm yards. Dr. Luther said: "I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them

(Table-Talk, translated by William Hazlitt, 1857, DLXXVII; seealternate URL; yetanother URL; also variant byPreserved Smith)

And the reason would be that he believed that they were deliberately making a deal with Satan to harm people.

How do we know a heretic has not done the same thing to lead us astray?

St. Augustine expressly states that “whoever draws away anyone from the universal Church to any sect, is a murderer and a Child of Satan” - Ad Petilian, 2, 13.

Heretics, on the other hand, are often very sincere and pious people who simply interpret Scripture wrongly and whose consciences won’t let them submit to the Church.

If I follow these, (and I will grant that many are sincere) people, who you admit interpret Scripture wrong, is my soul in jeopardy?

They should be reasoned with, not killed.

I agree. But can you say if you had grown up in that timeframe you would be against the killing of heretics? Because most of the reformers had no problem with killing heretics.

Leo was clearly wrong.

Leo was right.

Your own view that all execution is inhumane logically implies that he was wrong, because inhumane acts are never the will of the Spirit. (I am not arguing that any form of execution is humane. I simply refuse to be drawn into that debate one way or the other because I don’t think it’s germane here.)

But I think that is what Leo (guided by the Holy Spirit) saw. Luther saw only the narrow scope of heretics, Leo saw that it actually applied to capital punishment. If Leo says, yes burning of heretics is inhumane, why cannot a murderer protest that to be hung is not just as inhumane? (I read an account years ago where the hangee kicked for hours on end before dying. It is my understanding that it was not that uncommon. I will try to find it.)

By the way, I never meant to give the impression that I thought capital punishment is wrong, and I can see where my statements could leave someone with that impression. My bad. I am saying that no form of execution is more humane than others.

 

[Reuben_J]

I am saying that no form of execution is more humane than others.

Exactly, and we don’t know either, none of them came back to tell their story. Look like it does not matter to them. They would undergo their judgment for what they had done, not the way they died.

 

[Contarini]

If you or I were raised and educated in that time period, would we have known there was a difference?

Approach it from the opposite way. If capital punishment is NOT against the will of the Spirit, then NO form of execution is inhumane

No, that does not follow. You keep asserting this as if it were obvious. To me it’s the very reverse of obvious.

(one can argue that one form is more inhumane than others, but it is subjective).

It’s “subjective” in the sense that we are talking about the infliction of pain and suffering, which is subjective. But no one wants to experience pain and suffering. Any form of execution that inflicts more pain and suffering than necessary is therefore inhumane. Any form of execution that is chosen precisely in order to inflict pain and suffering is clearly inhumane.

Again, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that all capital punishment is inhumane.

It is up to each society to then determine the boundaries of execution.

That’s just nonsense. Torturing people to death is clearly inhumane, and any society that does it today is condemned by the Church.

The sixteenth-century Church did not do this–but indeed explicitly approved of one form of torturous execution and condemned Luther for condemning it.

I am suggesting that he felt capital punishment was not against the will of the Spirit, and even if he personally may have felt burning was inhumane, one can easily argue that all forms are inhumane. If he says yes burning does go against the will, then why burning, but not hanging, firing squads, gas…?

You keep asking that rhetorical question. I have answered it several times. You just brush the answer aside.

Burning at the stake inflicts a degree of pain that is clearly not necessary simply in order to kill the person. It was chosen for crimes where simply killing the person was deemed both insufficiently retributive and an insufficient symbolic representation of the horror of what the person had done. It also was sometimes chosen in part out of a twisted kind of charity, because the person might repent at the last minute in the flames and be saved.

For all these reasons, it is plainly not the case that to condemn burning is to condemn other kinds of execution. More humane methods were frequently substituted for burning as an act of mercy (particularly in cases where the person repented at the last minute but was still deemed worthy of death because of repeated offenses or because of the harm he had done others through his heresy or whatever). That is very clear evidence that everyone recognized at the time that burning was not just “another form of execution.” You have no case here. You just keep repeating the same illogical claim over and over.

Furthermore, the far more significant point is the crime for which people were being executed. It would have been quite possible for the Church to say, “we respect your right to execute those who have committed crimes against the temporal order, but we oppose the execution of heretics.” Again, you keep asserting that no such distinction could be drawn, but you’re clearly wrong–sixteenth-century people knew quite well how to distinguish between heresy and other crimes such as treason.

August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon witches who spoil milk, eggs, and butter in farm yards. Dr. Luther said: "I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them

Fair enough. So he did want to burn them.

How do we know a heretic has not done the same thing to lead us astray?

I am explaining Luther’s rationale.

And it isn’t enough to say “how do we know”–to execute heretics, we would have to know for a fact that they had deliberately chosen error in order to harm people.

Since we don’t know that, and since the nature of the harm heresy does is spiritual, only spiritual responses are appropriate. And of course I don’t favor civil punishments for witchcraft either, because of the difficulty/impossibility of proving that a crime has been committed by witchcraft.

St. Augustine expressly states that “whoever draws away anyone from the universal Church to any sect, is a murderer and a Child of Satan” - Ad Petilian, 2, 13.

Yes, that is the kind of logic that led to the execution of heretics, even though Augustine favored non-lethal punishments.

If I follow these, (and I will grant that many are sincere) people, who you admit interpret Scripture wrong, is my soul in jeopardy?

Not if you act in good faith, except in the sense that you will wind up practicing a truncated version of the Christian faith which will leave you more open to spiritual danger than if you had the whole richness of the Faith available to you.

 

[Contarini]

I agree.

Then you agree that Leo was wrong, and you just don’t want to say so because of the unfortunate corner you’ve painted yourself into through your mistaken belief that ED is infallible.

But can you say if you had grown up in that timeframe you would be against the killing of heretics?

I have no idea what I would have thought if I had been formed by wholly different influences.

But there were people–including the early Luther (and really Luther throughout his life, but that gets us back into the heresy vs. sedition question and I don’t want to argue that here) and Erasmus and later Sebastian Castellio–who were. I might very well, given my temperament and interests, have been a follower of Erasmus, and as such I might very well have been against the killing of heretics.

But that’s really irrelevant. It’s interesting what relativists you and other conservative Catholics become on this issue. You want to talk about everything except the question of what is eternally true

Leo was wrong. It is against the will of the Spirit to burn heretics. If no one had thought this in the sixteenth century, it would not have been necessary to condemn the proposition. but even if no one had, it still would have been true.

Because most of the reformers had no problem with killing heretics.

This may be a fair statement, if the heresy was serious enough (like Servetus). But again, not really relevant.

Isn’t Church authority supposed to deliver people from “the degrading slavery of being children of their times”? Clearly it didn’t in this instance.

Leo was right.

The Holy Spirit is A-OK with burning people alive because they sincerely believe something contrary to what the Church teaches?

But I think that is what Leo (guided by the Holy Spirit) saw. Luther saw only the narrow scope of heretics, Leo saw that it actually applied to capital punishment.

But it didn’t.

If Leo says, yes burning of heretics is inhumane, why cannot a murderer protest that to be hung is not just as inhumane?

Actually, Luther didn’t say anything about “inhumane.” That’s my argument, not his. You have shown that Luther didn’t have a problem with burning. So it would seem that being “inhumane” wasn’t his issue here (though of course he might have changed his mind).

And while hanging can cause great suffering if done poorly (or sometimes done cruelly on purpose), it can also break a person’s neck immediately. Again, there is no room for doubt that burning at the stake was chosen deliberately in preference to methods that had the potential to be relatively more humane.

By the way, I never meant to give the impression that I thought capital punishment is wrong, and I can see where my statements could leave someone with that impression. My bad. I am saying that no form of execution is more humane than others.

Well, that’s an absurd argument. Some forms of execution cause more pain than others and kill the person much more slowly and gradually. It’s a quibble to say “well, all the ‘humane’ methods may cause a lot of pain or act slowly.” Of course pretty much any method can be administered cruelly, whether on purpose or accidentally.

This is really a side issue, since the question of executing heretics vs. other criminals is the main one–certainly was the main one for Luther. But I don’t back down from the claim that burning at the stake is always wrong, because it is always possible to execute a person more humanely (although of course simply selecting another method doesn’t guarantee that it will be administered humanely).

And it now appears that you justify inhumane behavior. your position is just looking worse and worse.

Edwin

 

[Peter_J]

Then you agree that Leo was wrong, and you just don’t want to say so because of the unfortunate corner you’ve painted yourself into through your mistaken belief that ED is infallible.

I have no idea what I would have thought if I had been formed by wholly different influences.

But there were people–including the early Luther (and really Luther throughout his life, but that gets us back into the heresy vs. sedition question and I don’t want to argue that here) and Erasmus and later Sebastian Castellio–who were. I might very well, given my temperament and interests, have been a follower of Erasmus, and as such I might very well have been against the killing of heretics.

But that’s really irrelevant. It’s interesting what relativists you and other conservative Catholics become on this issue. You want to talk about everything except the question of what is eternally true

Leo was wrong. It is against the will of the Spirit to burn heretics. If no one had thought this in the sixteenth century, it would not have been necessary to condemn the proposition. but even if no one had, it still would have been true.

This may be a fair statement, if the heresy was serious enough (like Servetus). But again, not really relevant.

Isn’t Church authority supposed to deliver people from “the degrading slavery of being children of their times”? Clearly it didn’t in this instance.

The Holy Spirit is A-OK with burning people alive because they sincerely believe something contrary to what the Church teaches?

But it didn’t.

Actually, Luther didn’t say anything about “inhumane.” That’s my argument, not his. You have shown that Luther didn’t have a problem with burning. So it would seem that being “inhumane” wasn’t his issue here (though of course he might have changed his mind).

And while hanging can cause great suffering if done poorly (or sometimes done cruelly on purpose), it can also break a person’s neck immediately. Again, there is no room for doubt that burning at the stake was chosen deliberately in preference to methods that had the potential to be relatively more humane.

Well, that’s an absurd argument. Some forms of execution cause more pain than others and kill the person much more slowly and gradually. It’s a quibble to say “well, all the ‘humane’ methods may cause a lot of pain or act slowly.” Of course pretty much any method can be administered cruelly, whether on purpose or accidentally.

This is really a side issue, since the question of executing heretics vs. other criminals is the main one–certainly was the main one for Luther. But I don’t back down from the claim that burning at the stake is always wrong, because it is always possible to execute a person more humanely (although of course simply selecting another method doesn’t guarantee that it will be administered humanely).

And it now appears that you justify inhumane behavior. your position is just looking worse and worse.

Edwin

Not to get off topic, but I have to wonder where the line is between conversing and obsessing.

 

[Duane1966]

No, that does not follow. You keep asserting this as if it were obvious. To me it’s the very reverse of obvious.

But to me it is obvious.

It’s “subjective” in the sense that we are talking about the infliction of pain and suffering, which is subjective. But no one wants to experience pain and suffering. Any form of execution that inflicts more pain and suffering than necessary is therefore inhumane. Any form of execution that is chosen precisely in order to inflict pain and suffering is clearly inhumane.

Can you tell me that any form of execution does not cause pain and suffering? I have read too many articles saying the opposite.

That’s just nonsense. Torturing people to death is clearly inhumane, and any society that does it today is condemned by the Church.

My mistake, instead of boundaries I should have said form. One society may feel burning is inhumane, others will feel hanging is inhumane, but not firing squad.

The sixteenth-century Church did not do this–but indeed explicitly approved of one form of torturous execution and condemned Luther for condemning it.

Again, the sixteenth-century Church is simply stating that execution is not against the will of the Spirit. To call this one form of execution against the will, calls into question all forms of execution, as again all forms can be viewed as cruel and inhumane.

Luther would have been on much higher moral ground if he had said the killing of heretics, not just burning, went against the will of the Spirit. The fact that he didn’t must make one wonder why?

Burning at the stake inflicts a degree of pain that is clearly not necessary simply in order to kill the person.

How much pain is necessary to kill a person?

For all these reasons, it is plainly not the case that to condemn burning is to condemn other kinds of execution. More humane methods were frequently substituted for burning as an act of mercy (particularly in cases where the person repented at the last minute but was still deemed worthy of death because of repeated offenses or because of the harm he had done others through his heresy or whatever). That is very clear evidence that everyone recognized at the time that burning was not just “another form of execution.” You have no case here. You just keep repeating the same illogical claim over and over.

Do you think people went home thinking: “Boy I don’t mind if they hang me, but I sure don’t want to be burned.”?

Furthermore, the far more significant point is the crime for which people were being executed. It would have been quite possible for the Church to say, “we respect your right to execute those who have committed crimes against the temporal order, but we oppose the execution of heretics.” Again, you keep asserting that no such distinction could be drawn, but you’re clearly wrong–sixteenth-century people knew quite well how to distinguish between heresy and other crimes such as treason.

Can you provide me with links to how civil authorities and commoners viewed heresy back then?

 

[Duane1966]

Then you agree that Leo was wrong, and you just don’t want to say so because of the unfortunate corner you’ve painted yourself into through your mistaken belief that ED is infallible.

Can you show me where I stated Exsurge Domine is infallible?

But that’s really irrelevant. It’s interesting what relativists you and other conservative Catholics become on this issue. You want to talk about everything except the question of what is eternally true

Isn’t eternal truth what we have been going back and forth about?

Leo was wrong. It is against the will of the Spirit to burn heretics.

Again, Leo was right.

If no one had thought this in the sixteenth century, it would not have been necessary to condemn the proposition. but even if no one had, it still would have been true.

But is the proposition worded in such a way that it calls into question a bigger issue? I contend that it does.

The Holy Spirit is A-OK with burning people alive because they sincerely believe something contrary to what the Church teaches?

The Holy Spirit is A-OK with hanging people alive because they sincerely believe something contrary to what the Church teaches? Again one must wonder why Luther worded it that way?

But it didn’t.

But it does.

Well, that’s an absurd argument. Some forms of execution cause more pain than others and kill the person much more slowly and gradually. It’s a quibble to say “well, all the ‘humane’ methods may cause a lot of pain or act slowly.” Of course pretty much any method can be administered cruelly, whether on purpose or accidentally.

Is it better to die slow and little pain, not as slow but more pain, fast and great pain, not as fast but less pain?

This is really a side issue, since the question of executing heretics vs. other criminals is the main one–certainly was the main one for Luther.

Again, if it is the main issue with Luther, why does he only say burning?

But I don’t back down from the claim that burning at the stake is always wrong, because it is always possible to execute a person more humanely (although of course simply selecting another method doesn’t guarantee that it will be administered humanely).

Again, subjective.

And it now appears that you justify inhumane behavior. your position is just looking worse and worse.

I just don’t believe there is a HUMANE way to take a life.

 

[annem]

Contarini

But that’s really irrelevant. It’s interesting what relativists you and other conservative Catholics become on this issue. You want to talk about everything except the question of what is eternally true

Hi, Contarini. What is eternally true is God. And his church and the world itself will grow in truth through time, closer to what God wants.

Slavery was a very great wrong. The realization came slowly and was worked out with great difficulty because, alas, humans are blockheads. Not to mention cesspits of sin.

God bless Annem

 

[Duane1966]

Is Luther stating that capital punishment is against the will of the Spirit, or just the killing of heretics? And if it is the killing of heretics, why does he only mention burning?

 

[Contarini]

But to me it is obvious.

Can you tell me that any form of execution does not cause pain and suffering?

Of course I can’t. Nor does my argument require it.

Can you tell me that they call cause an equal amount?

Again, the sixteenth-century Church is simply stating that execution is not against the will of the Spirit.

Nope. You have to do a lot of gymnastics to make that the sole or primary meaning. You have presented no actual evidence that this is what Leo meant or what anyone at the time thought he would have meant.

To call this one form of execution against the will, calls into question all forms of execution, as again all forms can be viewed as cruel and inhumane.

And you just haven’t provided any actual evidence for this assertion.

Luther would have been on much higher moral ground if he had said the killing of heretics, not just burning, went against the will of the Spirit. The fact that he didn’t must make one wonder why?

Because burning was the conventional punishment for heresy. No explanation is necessary if you understand the common terminology of the period.

How much pain is necessary to kill a person?

None. But as you note, some degree of pain is usually involved.

Do you think people went home thinking: “Boy I don’t mind if they hang me, but I sure don’t want to be burned.”?

Again, that’s a straw man–of course no one wanted to be hung either. But yes, people did worry specifically about burning and other particularly horrific punishments, and it was fairly common to kill the person first by some other method as an act of mercy and then perform the more horrific procedure on the corpse (whether burning or disemboweling or whatever).

Can you provide me with links to how civil authorities and commoners viewed heresy back then?

I would recommend, instead of links, that you go to a good library and read the chapter called “The Willingness to Kill” in Brad Gregory’s Salvation at Stake. Also Malcolm Lambert’s Medieval Heresies.

Edwin

 

[AbideWithMe]

I just don’t believe there is a HUMANE way to take a life.

While I’ve sat by the beds of dying relatives as a companion till God gave them their last breath on this earth, I have also sadly stood by two good old horses and two good old dogs which I’ve deliberately—as their caretaker making the call myself as to the right time—had euthanized over the years as a mercy to them. By your reckoning, I guess I could have just burned them alive?