Is slavery in itself okay?

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So, here’s the Catholic Encyclopedia on the matter…

newadvent.org/cathen/14039a.htm

And here’s a quote from the Church…

The Holy Office (now called the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued a statement in 1866 that said:

“Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons… It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given.”

So how is slavery NOT contrary to the natural law? And has the Church wavered on this at all? What exactly is the Church’s teachings on the morality or immorality of slavery? Was this made clear in the early Church?
 
I think the Church’s position on slavery has been to just agree with the status quo of society at the time. Whether the Church thinks it is moral or not is purely a matter of politics.
 
What are people who live from paycheck to paycheck, if not virtual (if not legal) slaves to their jobs?
 
DaveBj said:
What are people who live from paycheck to paycheck, if not virtual (if not legal) slaves to their jobs?
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Well I’m not sure this argument holds anything because if you just have a job you do have the choice of leaving, even if you don’t find it practical. The choice exists. For a slave it wouldn’t.
 
I think the very fact that slavery is centered around a human being being owned as property is contrary to Human dignity. humans cannot be lowered to a status like that of animals and livestock. I think it is simply an issue of how human life should be valued.
 
I always thought that slavery is intrinsically evil the same way that prostitution and impurity are intrinsically evil. Slavery is the extreme of “objectifying people” and it fundamentally denies that human beings have eternal souls. You can put a dollar value on flesh and bone, but how do you put a dollar value on a soul that contains the divine spark of the holy spirit and is capable of ever-lasting life?
 
There’s a pretty good article on the subject here, which gives a number Popes and theologians condemning slavery as contrary to natural law. Sadly it does not cite its sources exactly, but it does seem pretty well researched.
 
Veritatis Splendor, paragraph 80, Pope John Paul II

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor_en.html

“…whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator”
 
The Church’s position on slavery is now good. It was not so good, indeed bad, in the past, and it was rather behind some influenced by the enlightenment and some protestants in coming to see the error of its ways. I don’t have a problem with organisations changing their minds. But the Church ties itself up in knots on this one because it likes to believe it never changes.
 
In regards to the seemingly pro-slavery quote, from the article the OP listed:
Slavery is not to be understood as conferring on one man the same power over another that men have over cattle. Wherefore they erred who in former times refused to include slaves among persons; and believed that however barbarously the master treated his slave he did not violate any right of the slave.** For slavery does not abolish the natural equality of men**: hence by slavery one man is understood to become subject to the dominion of another to the extent that the master has a perpetual right to all those services which one man may justly perform for another; and subject to the condition that the master shall take due care of his slave and treat him humanely (Comp. Instit. Civil., L, vii). - Cardinal Gerdil
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This seems to be a sort of idealized version of slavery that is really more a life long employment contract. The idea seems to be that if a person can sign a contract to do something for a year, than he can do so for his entire life.

HOWEVER, this is nothing like anything that has ever been called slavery, because typically the slave had no choice about it, was treated as subhuman, etc.

Also, I am not sure I agree with the life long contract thing either - a person should be able to leave. It may be that there would be some sort of (fair, which again seems unlikely given the real history of slavery) penalty for breaking the contract early, but I’m not sure how that’d even work.

In short, there might be a system of “slavery” that is acceptable, but if so it would look an awful lot like one person hiring another for a life time and paying him with living necessities rather than money (maybe something like the indentured servant thing that people used to do to cross the atlantic? though I do not know if there were abuses in that system as well, knowing human nature there probably were). There may also need to be a way for a person to break employment, though I’m not sure how that would work.

I’m fairly certain this is nearly impossible to do in practice.
 
Iron_Donkey said:
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In short, there might be a system of “slavery” that is acceptable, I’m fairly certain this is nearly impossible to do in practice.
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It is in the document.This is the position of the Catholic Church.The Pope John Paul II calls it a “disgrace”, “infect human civilization” they “contaminate” ," a negation of the honour due to the Creator".
And he repeatedly apologized for all the disgraces the Catholic Church took part in.And he was the Pope…what a teaching he has left us…
 
UnusVeritas said:
So, here’s the Catholic Encyclopedia on the matter…

newadvent.org/cathen/14039a.htm

And here’s a quote from the Church…

The Holy Office (now called the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued a statement in 1866 that said:

“Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons… It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given.”

So how is slavery NOT contrary to the natural law? And has the Church wavered on this at all? What exactly is the Church’s teachings on the morality or immorality of slavery? Was this made clear in the early Church?
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I would like to see the context of the 1866 statement - I am sure what you quoted is not the entire thing. Do you have the reference for that please?
 
Keeping slaves is fine as long as you don’t beat them so hard that they die right away.
 
In today’s world where we fight for freedom and justice of all people and as Catholics it is absolutely not OK!
 
As an outsider looking at the RCC’s recent history in dealing with slavery I’d have to say they at least thought it was okay.

Individual priests owned slaves as well as orders within the RCC during 1800’s and earlier in the U.S.
 
What people ,did in the past is not relevant to justify slavery - we know its wrong - there is no other answer.
 
PeterGStanley said:
In today’s world where we fight for freedom and justice of all people and as Catholics it is absolutely not OK!
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“Now” as opposed to “then”? So the Church engages in relative morality? This is not encouraging news.
 
Calgar said:
As an outsider looking at the RCC’s recent history in dealing with slavery I’d have to say they at least thought it was okay.

Individual priests owned slaves as well as orders within the RCC during 1800’s and earlier in the U.S.
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Some priests also abused some children, but no one assumes the Church teaches that is ok. A vast majority of priests in the last 30 years have failed to teach what the Church teaches on contraception yet that has no bearing on the Church’s official teaching.
 
I know Catholic ethics are not strictly Kantian, but nevertheless I think a useful way to evaluate whether an action accords with the natural law or not is to imagine its effects if it were universalized. This is because, even in Thomistic ethics, evil is its own undoing, so an act universalized throughout a society would destroy that society.

For instance, contraception. If everyone used contraception all the time, society would perish. Likewise with homosexuality.

I don’t think slavery can be universalized with respect to strictly human society. Slavery requires a master, after all. But it can be universalized when you take into account man’s subordination to God. Would it be good, then, for all mankind to be enslaved to God’s will?

Well, that’s what we’re called to, no? Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, says you can be either a slave to God or a slave to sin. There is no such thing as freedom, ethically speaking. Granted, it’s not the slavery of compulsion, but rather the subordination of the passions to the intellect which perceives God not only as his own highest good but as the highest good, period (in the case of “slavery to God”), or enslavement of the intellect to the passions (in the case of “slavery to sin”).

We can also evaluate it by asking “does it conflict with our duties?” Remember that, in natural law theory, “natural rights” are simply the inverse of our ethical duties. So a child has the right to be cared for by his parents because his parents have the duty to care for him. Does slavery necessarily interfere with natural duties?

The answer here is clearly no, although slavery has often taken pathological forms that do – 19th century America is a good example here. We can easily imagine a form of slavery that can be reconciled with our natural duties: for instance, in which slaves are permitted to keep and raise families, to attend mass, and their right to live and to the goods necessary to sustain those rights are protected. In the case of some obligations (i.e., the duty to obey authority), slavery offers one manner for manifesting that duty. This is the kind of slavery which was generally practiced in Europe around the Middle Ages. We have to remember that slavery persisted in Christian Europe and the Middle East long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and that the percentage of slaves in the population was sometimes into the double digits; nevertheless, this society simultaneously produced large numbers of saints, and also saw fit to basically abolish slavery (though it often replaced it with serfdom).

Long story short, trust in what the Church says. It says it’s bad, therefore it’s bad.
 
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