Morality of "just slavery"

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In 1866, this was the Church’s teaching on slavery:
In 1866 the Holy Office issued an Instruction in reply to questions from a Vicar Apostolic of the Galla tribe in Ethiopia. This document includes a contemporary theological exposition of morally legitimate slavery and slave-trading:

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. For the sort of ownership which a slave-owner has over a slave is understood as nothing other than the perpetual right of disposing of the work of a slave for one’s own benefit - services which it is right for one human being to provide for another. From this it follows that it is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or donated, provided that in this sale, purchase, exchange or gift, the due conditions are strictly observed which the approved authors likewise describe and explain. Among these conditions the most important ones are that the purchaser should carefully examine whether the slave who is put up for sale has been justly or unjustly deprived of his liberty, and that the vendor should do nothing which might endanger the life, virtue or Catholic faith of the slave who is to be transferred to another’s possession.

Source: http://anthonyflood.com/maxwellslaverycatholicchurch.pdf
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Today, this the Church’s teaching on slavery:
Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”. The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery…” (Veritatis Splendor)
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CCC 2414: The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, … both in the flesh and in the Lord.”
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So, before slavery was accepted in some strict cases, but now it is prohibited in all cases? Even if the Holy Office was not infallible per se, I find it hard to believe that the “just slavery” was not infallibly defined as morally acceptable by the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium, considering how consistent the Church’s acceptance of “just slavery” was during several centuries.

Does anyone have a good answer for all this information? What’s going on with the Church’s teaching on slavery? What does the Church really teach about the subject?
 
What is being translated here as slavery (“just slavery”) isn’s actually slavery as we came to know it in the US. It is basically the concept of indentured servitude, not chattel slavery. Placing oneself in servitude under a contract. (This was actually quite popular in the 1700s and 1800s in the US. It’s how a lot of immigrants got here who could not afford their own passage).

Not lifetime. Not hereditary. Limited in scope and rights.
 
Here’s a good article on the difference between just and unjust slavery, noting how experience has shown the just form to basically be theoretical, rarely if ever found in practice. As such, the word “slavery” has come to only mean the strictly unjust form:

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14039a.htm

Note, CCC 2414, in its definition, includes the elements that make it strictly and always unjust–this is what Veritatis Splendor means by slavery. The Holy Office described what a just arrangement would be (even if only theoretical). The word slavery used to broadly include both. Veritatis Splendor is using the modern, more narrow definition of slavery as defined in CCC 2414 and as the word is commonly understood in our times.
 
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On January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV issued a bull . Sent to Bishop Ferdinand, located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote, this bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Pope stated that after being converted to the faith or promised baptism, many of the inhabitants were taken from their homes and enslaved.
 
Was this a kind of voluntary servitude of oneself or one’s children that was far more common in the past?
 
Dan_Defender said:
On January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV issued a bull . Sent to Bishop Ferdinand, located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote, this bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Pope stated that after being converted to the faith or promised baptism, many of the inhabitants were taken from their homes and enslaved.
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And in 1452 the papal bull Dum diversas allowed the slavery of pagans and saracens.
 
I hope – and have always hoped – that when CAF ends I’ve shown to people that slavery is never good. It’s never right, now or then. The idea that there are different types of slavery (so-called “chattel slavery”) is different than a good slavery is a complete fiction used to excuse atrocities and evil.

In the Holy Office’s note it attempts to justify slavery by saying it is good to work for another. Yet that is achieved morally by offering employment. Do you want to work on my farm? Yes, assuming I make enough to feed my family. Do you want to be taken in shackles and sent to another country to work grueling hours under threat of the whip and have your children and your children’s children endure the same struggle? No, thank you.

It amazes me still how lightning quick one abandons The Golden Rule to defend slavery.
 
Mike_from_NJ said:
I hope – and have always hoped – that when CAF ends I’ve shown to people that slavery is never good. It’s never right, now or then. The idea that there are different types of slavery (so-called “chattel slavery”) is different than a good slavery is a complete fiction used to excuse atrocities and evil.

In the Holy Office’s note it attempts to justify slavery by saying it is good to work for another. Yet that is achieved morally by offering employment. Do you want to work on my farm? Yes, assuming I make enough to feed my family. Do you want to be taken in shackles and sent to another country to work grueling hours under threat of the whip and have your children and your children’s children endure the same struggle? No, thank you.

It amazes me still how lightning quick one abandons The Golden Rule to defend slavery.
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I also can’t understand how it would be morally acceptable in some cases to turn a human being into a property. This clearly sounds against the idea that all humans are equal on nature. I would say that turning someone into property is a clear attack on their human dignity.
 
1ke said:
What is being translated here as slavery (“just slavery”) isn’s actually slavery as we came to know it in the US. It is basically the concept of indentured servitude, not chattel slavery. Placing oneself in servitude under a contract. (This was actually quite popular in the 1700s and 1800s in the US. It’s how a lot of immigrants got here who could not afford their own passage).

Not lifetime. Not hereditary. Limited in scope and rights.
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It was pretty obvious to everyone in the past that a slave is someone’s property. There is also no proof that the Church in the past made a difference between owning someone’s work and owning a person as property, condemning the last. The reality is that the Church never condemned the act of owning a human being before the 20th century (or at least before the ending of the 19th century).

Talking about lifetime slavery, the papal bull Dum diversas allowed perpetual slavery to pagans and saracens.
 
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Guilherme1 said:
The reality is that the Church never condemned the act of owning a human being before the 20th century (or at least before the ending of the 19th century).
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That is simply not true. The Church condemned chattel slavery over and over again starting when it began in the early 1400s.
 
1ke said:
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Guilherme1:
The reality is that the Church never condemned the act of owning a human being before the 20th century (or at least before the ending of the 19th century).
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That is simply not true. The Church condemned chattel slavery over and over again starting when it began in the early 1400s.
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I would love to see the document in which the Church condemned slavery. I hope this document also explains why slavery was permitted in official papal documents (such as Dum diversas) and why many members of the clergy (including popes) and religious orders had slaves (and why they received no punishment or reprimand for this).

The Church only had a problem with slavery when the slave was unjustly enslaved. The fact that the person is a property was not the problem per se of slavery.

Centuries of people becoming property and there is not a single document where the Church says that it is immoral to turn someone into property.
 
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Mike_from_NJ said:
I hope – and have always hoped – that when CAF ends I’ve shown to people that slavery is never good. It’s never right, now or then. The idea that there are different types of slavery (so-called “chattel slavery”) is different than a good slavery is a complete fiction used to excuse atrocities and evil.

In the Holy Office’s note it attempts to justify slavery by saying it is good to work for another. Yet that is achieved morally by offering employment. Do you want to work on my farm? Yes, assuming I make enough to feed my family. Do you want to be taken in shackles and sent to another country to work grueling hours under threat of the whip and have your children and your children’s children endure the same struggle? No, thank you.

It amazes me still how lightning quick one abandons The Golden Rule to defend slavery.
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The Church is a living organism. She does not “abandon the golden rule to defend slavery”.
Not sure how you find that conclusion. In times past, the Church addressed the world as it was known, understanding that world with the circumstances and faculties available to it. You don’t seem to want to admit that all human beings without exception live in a cultural context. We are not fundamentalists, interpreting all of history through our own current individual understanding. We look at people of the past as they were, and try to see things with their eyes to gain their meaning.

The Church is living just as Christ is living, and what matters is the living moral teaching.
 
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Careful of web searches! Anthony Flood appears to be a dispensationalist. I saw no hint of Catholicism thus, if true, he likely does not properly distinguish between just slavery and chattel slavery.

Truth to tell, we are all slaves - if not to sin, to the bank. And if not to the bank, then to governmental taxing authorities. As onerous as it sounds, it is all the better reminder that we are mere pilgrims on the earthly portion of our journey.
 
1ke said:
What is being translated here as slavery (“just slavery”) isn’s actually slavery as we came to know it in the US. It is basically the concept of indentured servitude, not chattel slavery.
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No, it’s not. The Spanish and Portuguese and Dutch slavers were not getting their kidnapped slaves to sign indenture papers. Neither were the slaves finally freed in Brazil a couple of decades after the US ended the practice.

1ke, what percentage of enslaved people enslaved by European slavers in the 1800s and 1900s do you say were indentured labourers? And do you have any evidence?
 
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