Killing a heretic

[JohnStrachan]

I can’t believe that the killing of heretics was actually condoned by the church. I mean how absurd. What justification could the church ever have for putting someone to death?

 

[Fauken]

If I remember (and am accurately representing) St. Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts on the matter, only Arch-heretics warranted death, due to the numerous spiritual deaths caused by their spreading and promoting of heresy. Of course, his thoughts aren’t always that of the Church.

 

[JohnStrachan]

What would have been the biblical basis for burning a heretic? Certainly not Jesus. If He felt it appropriate He would have allowed the woman caught in adultery to be stoned. Has the church every apologized for burning heretics? Is there a Papal Bull endorsing such behaviour?

 

[Francis]

What would have been the biblical basis for burning a heretic?

Exodus 32:19 As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.

21 Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” 22 And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are bent on evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

25 When Moses saw that the people were running wild (for Aaron had let them run wild, to the derision of their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. 27 He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.’” 28 The sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand of the people fell on that day. 29 Moses said, “Today you have ordained yourselvesfor the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, and so have brought a blessing on yourselves this day.”

30 On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, if you will only forgive their sin—but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.” 33 But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; see, my angel shall go in front of you. Nevertheless, when the day comes for punishment, I will punish them for their sin.”

35 Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf—the one that Aaron made.

Certainly not Jesus.

Matthew 18:6 “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!

 

[JerryZ]

This questions always comes around.
Few considerations.
The Church kills no one. Never has and never will.

It is the purview of the civil government to apply the laws. Always has and will always be until Jesus comes.

So when one says “condoned by the Church” is a bit of a stretch.
The civil governments do ask the Church for permission to execute a person. They judge it and execute the sentence.
It is well documented that in the time of the inquisition many people who were accused by the government of heresy would appeal to the tribunal of the inquisition because they had a better chance of having a fair hearing.
And that brings the point that many times the “heretic” label was used to get rid of political adversaries.

 

[Francis]

If He felt it appropriate He would have allowed the woman caught in adultery to be stoned.

Jesus is merciful till your last breath ,but he is also Just ,Divine Justice ,accountable for our sins will be required by him.

Has the church every apologized for burning heretics? Is there a Papal Bull endorsing such behaviour?

Yes it did .
Pope Asks Pardon For Sins Of Church
In an unprecedented plea, Pope John Paul II today asked divine forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church over the last 2,000 years against Jews, other Christian faiths, women, the poor and various ethnic and racial groups.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...57c64d6/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c600a00a663d

 

[JohnStrachan]

The Church kills no one. Never has and never will.

So who killed the heretics? The civilian government? Under whose authority? Why would a civilian government care if someone held a position contrary to the church?

 

[JohnStrachan]

Thank you for this. No surprise it was St. John Paul 2 who did this. Awesome man!!!

 

[JerryZ]

Whose authority? If the state of Texas executes a criminal under whose authority they do so?
And Heretic for us now sound only religious but one should be wary that it might mean doing activities subverting the state.

 

[Rhubarb]

Religion as an excuse for tribalism? The Franks put plenty of people to the sword for worshipping the wrong gods. And spread Christianity by the sword.

People are flawed creatures. They’ll make up excuses to do all sorts of terrible things. Especially if they get something from it.

 

[phil19034]

I can’t believe that the killing of heretics was actually condoned by the church. I mean how absurd. What justification could the church ever have for putting someone to death?

The killing of all heretics was NOT condoned by the Church and was NOT carried out by the Church.

But the Death Penilty was condoned.

When Heretics were killed, it was because their particular heresy was bad for the state.

Some were so crazy bad, that they really were a menance to society.

For example: when you have a heresy that prompts mass ritual suicide because the body is viewed as evil, then you really have a nightmare on your hands.

Other times you had heresies that caused people to commit treasonous acts. This was the main problem during the Protestant revolt - regardless of whether the monarch and/or local noble was a Catholic or Protestant. There were too many political plots to over thrown the local rulers in order to institute a change in religion.

So the Church didn’t condone the killing of heretics. And frankly, every time a heretics was executed (esp during the Spanish Inquisition) faithful priests took the position that they personally failed in their job to save them.

The truth is always far more complex than it seems.

 

[otjm]

For starters, when that was occurring, life was a tad bit different than it is now; the issue of heresy was often more than just a theological spat or a difference of opinion; it could rapidly turn into violence. Rightly, wrongly, or otherwise, society was not as civilized as it is now, and in order to keep the peace, stringent measures were used.

What you are doing is looking at, say, 10th century issues with 21st century eyes. And not all heretics were put to death.

Gradually society changed and the death penalty was restricted more to serious crimes having been committed, and not to rejection of theological doctrine. Now we find the Ckurch stating that the death penalty is not admissible at all. So there has been a progression of our understanding of morality.

 

[Rob2]

I can’t believe that the killing of heretics was actually condoned by the church.

I find it hard to believe .

But we have to admit that Catholics have done evil things and not brush this stuff under the carpet or try to justify it by silly reasoning .

Evil is evil whatever guise it is clothed in .

 

[thistle]

I can’t believe that the killing of heretics was actually condoned by the church. I mean how absurd. What justification could the church ever have for putting someone to death?

The Church did not put heretics to death. Do your research.

 

[Genesis315]

To be fair to those in the past, their experience showed heresy to have devastating effects on society (see what the Protestant reformation led to in its immediate aftermath, for example). It had the potential to destroy the very things that united a society in peace. Like any justice system, there were no doubt injustices too. But overall those practices did not spring from blind bigotry or malice.

Bishop von Kettler in the 19th century explains here why such penalties may have been justified during certain past circumstances, but why they are clearly not in contemporary circumstances:

http://opuscula.blogspot.com/2008/07/religious-freedom-part-iii.html

more to come…

 

[Genesis315]

Archbishop Hughes of New York, in his 19th century debate with a Protestant minister explained why certain instances of the Church advocating the death penalty for heretics could have been justified and was not at odds with the Catholic doctrine of religious liberty:

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.”

 

[Genesis315]

Finally, here is a passage from St. Thomas More:
Dialogue Concerning Heresies

“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.”

…
“We read that in the time of Saint Augustine, the great theologian of the Church, the heretics in Africa called the Donatists resorted to force and violence, robbing, beating, torturing and killing those whom they seized from the true Christian flock, as the Lutherans have done in Germany. For putting a stop to which , that holy man St Augustine, who had for a long time with great patience borne and endured their malice, only writing and preaching in refutation of their errors, and not only had done them no temporal harm but also had hindered and opposed others would have done it, did yet at last, for the peace of good people, both permit and exhort Count Boniface and others to supress them with force and threaten them with corporeal punishment.

“… 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. …

Anyway, I hope my posts at least show the perspective and side of the story of those in the past who believed these things justified.

 

[niceatheist]

Gets pretty muddy in the Papal States, no?

 

[Isearch]

Don’t forget that pope Leo X condemned the view that burning a heretic “is against the will of the Spirit” in his bull ‘Exurge Domine’; listing Luther’s supposed errors. As to how this fits with papal infallibility, I honestly don’t know (especially when the modern Roman Catholic Church is against executions for heresy).

 

[Genesis315]

The propositions in Exsurge Domine are condemned with the following censures: “either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds.” Form that list, the infallibility of the Church would only apply to those condemned as heretical. Unfortunately, the Pope did not say which censure applies to which propositions. Theologians would have to sort them out. I doubt that one would be considered a revealed truth, unless perhaps with respect to certain Old Testament directives from God.

In any event, a condemned error like this must be taken in the sense of its author, in this case Luther. Luther, at the time, denied the civil power any authority to punish heresy, even if it were harmful to the common good (the Catholic Church still teaches that false religious activity can be suppressed by public authority if harmful to the common good–see CCC 2109). Of course, he would quickly change his mind when he had to deal with violent religious uprisings.

So it would be wrong to say it is always and everywhere per se contrary to God’s will for someone to be executed by public authority for heresy–if the threat to the security of society were great enough, it could be justified (as Luther quickly learned). By condemning an absolute, that does not therefore mean the Church is affirming the opposite absolute–the Church was not affirming that all heretics must always and everywhere be administered the death penalty.