Pope asks mercy, pardon for ways Christians have harmed one another

[Don_Ruggero]

“murder”? You accusing the Church of murder is unconscionable.

Peace be with you,

Your personal opinion has been overtaken by the judgment of the Pope, which has been repeatedly pronounced. The theological community and the historians, who responded to the Church’s call to examine dispassionately the issues, delivered their findings to the Pope, which informed the actions that he took.

Here is what Pope Saint John Paul II wrote, with emphases added by me.

*LETTER OF JOHN PAUL II
TO CARDINAL ROGER ETCHEGARAY
ON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION
OF THE VOLUME “L’INQUISIZIONE”

To my Venerable Brother Cardinal Roger Etchegaray,
former President of the Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000

1. I receive with deep appreciation the volume containing the Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Inquisition, organized at the Vatican from 29-31 October 1998 by the Historical-Theological Commission for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.

This Symposium answered the desire I expressed in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennium Adveniente: “…it is appropriate that… the Church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal” (n. 33).

In public opinion, **the image of the Inquisition is as it were the symbol of such counter-witness and scandal. **How faithful to reality is this image? Before asking for forgiveness it is necessary to have exact knowledge of the facts and to put shortcomings with regard to what the Gospel requires in the context where they are effectively found. This is the reason why the Committee has consulted historians whose scientific competence is universally recognized.

/…/

1. This discernment is possible precisely because with the passage of time the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, perceives with ever clearer awareness what she needs in order to conform to her Bridegroom. Thus, the Second Vatican Council was able to formulate the “golden rule” that directs the defence of the truth, which is the task proper to the mission of the Magisterium. “Truth can impose itself on the mind of man only in virtue of its own truth…, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power” (Dignitatis Humanae, n. 1. This assertion is quoted in Tertio Millennium Adveniente, cf. n. 35).

The institution of the Inquisition has been abolished. As I had an opportunity to say to the participants in the Symposium, the children of the Church cannot but return with a spirit of repentance to “the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of the truth” (Address to the International Symposium on the Inquisition Organized by the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, 31 October 1998, n. 4; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, [ORE], 11 November 1998, p. 3).

This spirit of repentance, it is clear, entails a firm determination to seek in the future ways to bear witness to the truth that are in keeping with the Gospel.

1. On 12 March 2000, on the occasion of the liturgical celebration that marked the Day of Pardon, forgiveness was asked for errors committed in the service of the truth by recourse to methods not in keeping with the Gospel. The Church must carry out this service in imitation of her Lord, meek and humble of heart. The prayer I addressed to God on that occasion contains the reasons for a request for forgiveness that can also be applied to the tragedies associated with the Inquisition, as well as to the injuries to memory that result from it.

"Lord, God of all men and women,
in certain periods of history
Christians have at times given in to [forms of] intolerance and have not been faithful
to the great commandment of love,
sullying in this way the
face of the Church,
your Spouse.

Have mercy on your sinful children
and accept our resolve
to seek and promote truth in
the gentleness of charity,
in the firm knowledge that truth
can prevail only in virtue of truth itself.
We ask this through Christ Our Lord"
(Prayer for Forgiveness, Day of Pardon, 12 March, II; ORE, 22 March 2000, p. 4).

The beautiful volume containing the Proceedings of the Symposium is written in the spirit of this request for forgiveness. As I thank all the participants, I invoke the divine Blessing upon them.

From the Vatican, 15 June 2004

JOHN PAUL II*

 

[ringil]

Thanks for the reference Father! Seems pretty clear.

 

[Sword_Brethren]

Your personal opinion has been overtaken by the judgment of the Pope, which has been repeatedly pronounced. The theological community and the historians, who responded to the Church’s call to examine dispassionately the issues, delivered their findings to the Pope, which informed the actions that he took.

Here is what Pope Saint John Paul II wrote, with emphases added by me.

*LETTER OF JOHN PAUL II
TO CARDINAL ROGER ETCHEGARAY
ON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION
OF THE VOLUME “L’INQUISIZIONE”

To my Venerable Brother Cardinal Roger Etchegaray,
former President of the Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000

1. I receive with deep appreciation the volume containing the Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Inquisition, organized at the Vatican from 29-31 October 1998 by the Historical-Theological Commission for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.

This Symposium answered the desire I expressed in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennium Adveniente: “…it is appropriate that… the Church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal” (n. 33).

In public opinion, **the image of the Inquisition is as it were the symbol of such counter-witness and scandal. ***How faithful to reality is this image? Before asking for forgiveness it is necessary to have exact knowledge of the facts and to put shortcomings with regard to what the Gospel requires in the context where they are effectively found. This is the reason why the Committee has consulted historians whose scientific competence is universally recognized.

/…/

1. This discernment is possible precisely because with the passage of time the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, perceives with ever clearer awareness what she needs in order to conform to her Bridegroom. Thus, the Second Vatican Council was able to formulate the “golden rule” that directs the defence of the truth, which is the task proper to the mission of the Magisterium. “Truth can impose itself on the mind of man only in virtue of its own truth…, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power” (Dignitatis Humanae, n. 1. This assertion is quoted in Tertio Millennium Adveniente, cf. n. 35).

The institution of the Inquisition has been abolished. As I had an opportunity to say to the participants in the Symposium, the children of the Church cannot but return with a spirit of repentance to “the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of the truth” (Address to the International Symposium on the Inquisition Organized by the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, 31 October 1998, n. 4; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, [ORE], 11 November 1998, p. 3).

This spirit of repentance, it is clear, entails a firm determination to seek in the future ways to bear witness to the truth that are in keeping with the Gospel.

1. On 12 March 2000, on the occasion of the liturgical celebration that marked the Day of Pardon, forgiveness was asked for errors committed in the service of the truth by recourse to methods not in keeping with the Gospel. The Church must carry out this service in imitation of her Lord, meek and humble of heart. The prayer I addressed to God on that occasion contains the reasons for a request for forgiveness that can also be applied to the tragedies associated with the Inquisition, as well as to the injuries to memory that result from it.

"Lord, God of all men and women,
in certain periods of history
Christians have at times given in to [forms of] intolerance and have not been faithful
to the great commandment of love,
sullying in this way the
face of the Church,
your Spouse.

Have mercy on your sinful children
and accept our resolve
to seek and promote truth in
the gentleness of charity,
in the firm knowledge that truth
can prevail only in virtue of truth itself.
We ask this through Christ Our Lord"
(Prayer for Forgiveness, Day of Pardon, 12 March, II; ORE, 22 March 2000, p. 4).

The beautiful volume containing the Proceedings of the Symposium is written in the spirit of this request for forgiveness. As I thank all the participants, I invoke the divine Blessing upon them.

From the Vatican, 15 June 2004

JOHN PAUL II

“Your personal opinion has been overtaken by the judgment of the Pope”, okay but I still have my opinion. Maybe you can help me understand, something. How does a Catholic decide which Pope is right? Pope Sixtus IV who established the Spanish Inquisition or Pope John Paul II who wrote the letter above. Who does the Holy Ghost guide?
So it would have been better to let heresies like the Albigensian Heresy and other heresies just to conquer Europe and destroy Christian Unity?

Peace be with you,

 

[Sword_Brethren]

Also, Pope Urban II granting a plenary indulgence to bypass purgatory for those Christians who volunteered to fight in the Crusade, was nothing Jesus would have advocated.

How could you decide that? You are more Catholic than Pope Urban II was?

 

[Sword_Brethren]

Ugh. . … there’s a post. . . .

“Ugh” So you are saying that it would have been better if the Holy Spanish Inquisition would never been establish and to have heresy rip Spanish Society up like it did to the rest of Europe. Spain should have gone through it’s own war of religion, like the War of Religion in France, the Netherlands and the Thirty Years War that tore Europe apart and killed many?

 

[Sword_Brethren]

Pope’s don’t lose their free will upon their election to the papacy.

They can and have committed evil at times.

Yes, I understand that.

 

[Sword_Brethren]

I am saying that the inquisitions and crusades both utilized torture and murder. Given the statements of several Popes and other Catholic officials, I feel like I am on pretty strong ground here.

Are you saying that torture and murder are OK if someone high enough in the Church hierarchy orders it?

Lets start out with the Holy Crusades first. The stacking of Constantinople was a hijacking of the 4th Crusades against the Pope wishes so I would not call that holy. Yes there were crimes committed by some Crusaders but you are calling all the Crusades murder? I know official Church teaching is that “human life may be lawfully taken… in a just war.” Which the Crusades were.
Are you saying that Catholics should just have let Muslims take over ,through unjust war, all of north Africa, the Holy Land, Asia Minor and all of Europe?

To the Holy Inquisition, the use of torture I don’t believe was good but I think it is hard to judge an age so different than our own. But the idea of an Inquisition to protect the Holy Faith was good in my opinion and the Church held that view for 500 years before St.John Paul II letter.

peace be with you

 

[JimR-OCDS]

How could you decide that? You are more Catholic than Pope Urban II was?

Your question should be, “how could He decide that?”

Jim

 

[ProVobis]

How does a Catholic decide which Pope is right?

Tough to answer this. But maybe it’s more than one Pope who is involved in authoritative decisions. I ran across this excerpt from ewtn:

Authoritative. Finally, the Church teaches things which are neither proposed as formally revealed or definitively proposed. This is the category of authoritative teaching. Anything in the Catechism or a pope’s writings and addresses that is not “of divine and catholic faith” if clearly meant to take a position, without deciding it by proposing it as revealed or as definitive, is authoritively taught. It should receive “religious obedience of intellect and will,” as opposed to the assent of faith. Such obedience is an act of justice. It shows the respect Catholics owe the Pope, and it humbly acknowledges that by charism and grace of vocation the Pope is more likely to be right than those who disagree with him. As Vatican II noted, the weight to be given such teaching is “according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression.” Thus, more weight would have to be given to something taught many times by successive popes than to something taught once by one pope.

ewtn.com/v/experts/showmessage.asp?number=564105

 

[eamonnroma]

Pope Francis has asked for forgiveness for the behaviour of Catholics against other Christians.

“As Bishop of Rome and Pastor of the Catholic Church, I want to beg for mercy and forgiveness for un-Gospel-like behaviour on the part of Catholics against Christians of other churches,” the Pope said at a prayer service concluding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“We ask most of all for forgiveness for the sin of our divisions, which are an open wound on the body of Christ. “At the same time, I ask all my Catholic brothers and sisters to forgive if, today or in the past, they were hurt by other Christians,” he said. “We cannot erase what happened, but we do not want to allow the burden of past faults to continue to poison our relationships.”

The full article can be seen here:

magazine.catholicherald.co.uk/#!edition/uk.co.catholicherald.magazine.issue.ch20160205/article/page-98152

 

[LongingSoul]

Wonderful stuff!

 

[MaryT777]

And this “speaking out” also included calling the Pope the antichrist and the vicar of the devil (and that was before he was excommunicated). I’m not sure that there were indeed many within the Church who agreed with him on that one.

Pope Leo X was extremely tolerant and patient with Martin Luther, but in the end how can a Catholic priest who publicly declares the pope to be the antichrist and the vicar of the devil be allowed to remain within the Church?

Yes, this is what I struggle with as well. The confessional Lutherans still hold to the teachings of the Concord book, which does include the Pope (is or is in the seat or the AntiChrist) They aren’t even participating in the Reformation Commemoration.

Mary.

 

[cheezey]

ROME (CNS) — After walking across the threshold of the Holy Door with an Orthodox metropolitan and an Anglican archbishop, Pope Francis invoked God’s mercy upon divided Christians and apologized for times that Catholics may have hurt members of other denominations.

“As bishop of Rome and pastor of the Catholic Church, I want to beg for mercy and forgiveness for un-Gospel-like behavior on the part of Catholics against Christians of other churches,” the pope said Jan. 25 at a prayer service concluding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“We ask most of all for forgiveness for the sin of our divisions, which are an open wound on the body of Christ,” Pope Francis said.

cnstopstories.com/2016/01/25/pope-asks-mercy-pardon-for-ways-christians-have-harmed-one-another/

Jim

The Pope’s presence at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls every January 25th is one of the most special of papal events each year. It was of course on this day and in that place, in 1959, just after his election, that Pope Saint John XXIII informed the world that he was convoking the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

Pope Francis…

(Note the fabulous year…)

 

[Mark121359]

But the modern Church kindly as she is is tolerant of varying degrees of sedavacantism and seda-not-to-my-liking-ism. We have a new quasi schismatic that continually discredits the Pope and goes his own way while still calling himself ‘Catholic’. .

Maybe I’m just dense, but who is this new “quasi schismatic” that continually discredits the Pope that you speak of?

Peace, Mark