I have already posted two evidences of these assertions. Anyways, I’m glad you now see my point, as people certainly DID disagree with me when I said that Popes have supported slavery and Popes have disagreed with each other.
Papal Bull: Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex by Pope Nicholas V. The Third Lateran Council.
You have yet to define “slavery” in the historical contexts that you are referencing, LovePatience.
Let me help.
“Slavery” refers to innocent people who were unjustly captured and reduced to “beasts of burden” due solely to their race. This was the most common form in the U.S. before the Thirteenth Amendment. As used here, “slavery” is the condition of involuntary servitude in which a human being is regarded as no more than the property of another, as being without basic human rights; in other words, as a thing rather than a person. Under this definition, slavery is intrinsically evil, since no person may legitimately be regarded or treated as a mere thing or object. This form of slavery can be called
“chattel slavery.”
However, there are circumstances in which a person can justly be compelled to servitude against his will. Prisoners of war or criminals, for example, can justly lose their circumstantial freedom and be forced into servitude, within certain limits. Moreover, people can also “sell” their labor for a period of time (indentured servitude). These forms of servitude or slavery differ in kind from what we are calling
“chattel slavery” or “racial slavery.” While prisoners of war and criminals can lose their freedom against their will, they do not become mere property of their captors, even when such imprisonment is just. They still possess basic, inalienable human rights and may not justly be subjected to certain forms of punishment - torture, for example. Similarly, indentured servants “sell” their labor, not their inalienable rights, and may not contract to provide services which are immoral. Moreover, they freely agree to exchange their labor for some benefit such as transportation, food, lodging, et cetera. Consequently, their servitude is not involuntary. . Even though repugnant to our modern sensitivity, servitude is not always unjust, such as penal servitude for convicted criminals or servitude freely chosen for personal financial reasons.
These forms are called just-title servitude. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which brought an end to racial slavery in the U.S., does allow for just-title servitude to punish criminals: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Even today we can see prisoners picking up litter along interstates and highways accompanied by armed guards. Also the 1949 Geneva Conventions allow for detaining power to use the labor of war prisoners under very limiting circumstances (Panzer, p. 3). However, such circumstances are very rare today. During biblical times, a man could voluntarily sell himself into slavery in order to pay off his debts (Deut. 15:12-18). But such slaves were to be freed on the seventh year or the Jubilee year (Lev. 25:54).
As to your mention of Gregory IX, I have already addressed the issue of “just-title” servitude: The Church tolerated just-title servitude for a time because it is not wrong in itself, though it can be seriously abused.
The Popes did, however, consistently, and from the very beginning, oppose racial slavery which completely lacks any moral justification and is intrinsically wrong. “Racial slavery,” began in large-scale during the 15th century and was formally condemned by the Popes as early as 1435, fifty-seven years before Columbus discovered America.
As to your mention of Nicholas V, Fr. William Most has written that:
“It is claimed that in 1454 Pope Nicholas V gave permission to Alfonso V of Portugal to enslave Saracens, and other “enemies of Christ.”
First, we have yet to see any documentation for this claim.*** Even if it be so, it is not a doctrinal teaching, but a practical action.*** Such an action could indeed imply a teaching in the mind of the one who acted, but it did not express any teaching. Volume III, of Warren Carroll’s church history chronicles so many serious abuses of Popes in the middle ages. And we all know that Alexander VI had illegitimate children, and even officiated at marriage for them and even appointed an illegitimate son, Caesar, as a Cardinal! None of these abuses amounts to a teaching, but only to a very regrettable action.
Further we note that the alleged document allows slavery for Saracens. We need to remember also what was said above, that slavery is a bit less a penalty than life in a prison. And it may be earned by grave sin. Now the Saracens had been murdering all sorts of persons. Their religion was literally spread by the sword. Their sacred book, the Koran, says (cited from Bernard Palmer, Understanding the Islamic Explosion, Horizon House, 1980, pp. 36-37): “When ye encounter unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them, and bind them in bonds. . . .” They also believed that to fight in such a “Holy War” ensures immediate salvation, going to a sex paradise. Islamic people held Spain and Portugal for centuries, and got control of the area at first precisely by killing the “infidels”.
So since - if indeed the claim is true - Pope Nicholas V granted such an approval, it is evident he must have thought something substantially changed the case. For there was the much earlier prohibition of slavery by Pope John VIII in 873, in which he called it a grave sin. And Pope Paul III not long after 1454 (in 1537) ordered under automatic excommunication that slavery stop."
