Slavery and the Catholic Church

[oldcatholicguy]

The fact is that the sack of Constantinople went on for three days. “Four thousand Christians were killed. More than 50,000 others, virtually the entire surviving population, were seized, and all but the few who could pay large ransoms were enslaved.” *The Glory of Christendom *in A History of Christendom, Vol. 3, Dr Warren H Carroll, Christendom Press, 1993, p 568].

The nonsense of calling serfdom and servitude “slavery” is also debunked by Dr Rodney Stark who refers to those historians who claim that “nothing happened other than a linguistic shift in which the word ‘slave’ was replaced by the word ‘serf’ ”, as “playing word games. Serfs were not chattels; they had had rights and a substantial degree of discretion. They married who they wished, and their families were not subject to sale or dispersal. They paid rent and thus controlled their own time and the pace of their work…sets of mutual obligations were the fundamental nature of feudalism.

In the seventh century, “Clovis II, king of the Franks, married his British slave Bathilda (who) used her position to mount a campaign against the slave trade and to redeem those in slavery.” She was declared a saint by the Church.

“Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the Church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews).

“The theological conclusion that slavery is sinful has been unique to Christianity (although several early Jewish sects also rejected slavery.”
The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 27, 28, 30].

U.S. Economist, Stanford University professor, and Hoover Institute Senior Fellow, African Thomas Sowell, in Black Rednecks & White Liberals, in an essay titled The Real History of Slavery, declares:
“Slavery is almost as old as humanity, and as widespread as the globe. The Islamic world was notorious for its slave trade. Slavs were notoriously slaves. In fact the word “slave” comes from slav. Arabs and North Africans enslaved Europeans, Europeans enslaved other Europeans, Africans enslaved other Africans. Everyone enslaved someone. It was all the rage. While slavery was common to all civilizations, as well as to peoples considered uncivilized, only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history — Western civilization…”

“The reason? The teaching of the Catholic Church from the beginning came to be believed widely as true.”

-The sack of Constantinople has what to do with the Church having a mixed response to slavery? Are you implying that the Church’s stance on slavery is somehow based on external threats to it?
-Mr. Sowell’s remarks have what to do with the Church having a mixed response to slavery?
-Dr. Stark- Ah, so as long as someone has rights and aren’t chattel they aren’t slaves. Well I guess that means that the Church has never held that POWs and criminals can be turned into slaves, or it has held that it is moral for POWs and criminals to lose all their rights once they become slaves. Dr. Stark is only correct if we narrowly define the term “slavery” as “chattel slavery.”
-You do understand that your citation of Clovis II supports the view that the Church had a mixed response to slavery right? Balthild was born free, sold into slavery as a child, sold to one of Clovis’s subordinates and given to him as a gift. Now, if as you contend the Church didn’t have a mixed response to slavery, what is the King of a very Catholic kingdom, one of his high level subordinates, and the very Catholic subjects themselves doing buying and selling a girl and using her as a “gift”?
-None of your above actually addresses the statement that the Church had a mixed response to slavery, or that some Popes supported it.
-None of your above addresses my comments about slavery in Anglo-Saxon England in which there existed individuals in slavery outside your three assumed to be correct for the sake of argument categories of POW, criminal, or indentured servant.

 

[Abu]

Real Catholics realise that Christ, who never condemned slavery, left it to His followers to discover gradually that slavery as an institution was inconsistent with following Him. God gave us brains to use, and His Church that cannot teach error, but designed His Church to discover many things by the ordinary human process of discussion, research, trial and error, so gradually the slave was transformed into a serf, with freedom to dispose of his property, and from thence to the freedom from all feudal obligations.

This has been clearly identified.

Even the homomaniac Andrew Sullivan said: “This is not to say that the Church always condoned slavery. Several popes condemned it outright, some eloquently; and the Church has much to be proud of in its record on this.”
sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2003_08_01_dish_archive.html

In* Development or Reversal?*, the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in First Things, October 2005 – debunks the often preconceived conclusions over slavery and the Church.

“Slavery was practiced by almost every known society until modern times. Throughout the biblical era, Noonan shows, slavery was taken as a given, although the Israelites practiced rather mild forms of slavery and did not permanently enslave their compatriots. Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution. Nor did the writers of the New Testament. Peter and Paul exhort slaves to be obedient to their masters. Paul urges Philemon to treat his converted slave Onesimus as a brother in Christ. While discreetly suggesting that he manumit Onesimus, he does not say that Philemon is morally obliged to free Onesimus and any other slaves he may have had.

“Serfdom did not involve the humiliation and brutality people today ordinarily associate with slavery. Moral theologians recognized that slaves, unlike mere chattels, had certain rights even against their masters, who no longer had over them the power of life and death, as had been the case in pagan antiquity.

“For St. Thomas, slaves (* servi* ) had the right to food, sleep, marriage, and the rearing of their children. Provision had also to be made for them to fulfill their religious duties, and they were to be treated with benevolence.

“John Paul II in 1992: Speaking at the infamous “House of Slaves” on the Island of Gorée in Senegal, from which innumerable slaves had been exported, he declared: ‘It is fitting to confess in all truth and humility this sin of man against man, this sin of man against God.’ The pope is here speaking of the slave trade, which had repeatedly been condemned. Far from changing the doctrine, John Paul is explicitly reaffirming the position of Pope Pius II, whom he quotes as having declared in 1492 that the slave trade was an enormous crime, magnum scelus.

“The reader should be warned, however, that Noonan manipulates the evidence to make it seem to favor his own preconceived conclusions. For some reason, he is intent on finding discontinuity”but he fails to establish that the Church has reversed her teaching in any of the four areas he examines.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., holds the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham University.
firstthings.com/article/2005/10/development-or-reversal

 

[oldcatholicguy]

Real Catholics realise that Christ, who never condemned slavery, left it to His followers to discover gradually that slavery as an institution was inconsistent with following Him. God gave us brains to use, and His Church that cannot teach error, but designed His Church to discover many things by the ordinary human process of discussion, research, trial and error, so gradually the slave was transformed into a serf, with freedom to dispose of his property, and from thence to the freedom from all feudal obligations.

This has been clearly identified.

Even the homomaniac Andrew Sullivan said: “This is not to say that the Church always condoned slavery. Several popes condemned it outright, some eloquently; and the Church has much to be proud of in its record on this.”
sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2003_08_01_dish_archive.html

In* Development or Reversal?*, the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in First Things, October 2005 – debunks the often preconceived conclusions over slavery and the Church.

“Slavery was practiced by almost every known society until modern times. Throughout the biblical era, Noonan shows, slavery was taken as a given, although the Israelites practiced rather mild forms of slavery and did not permanently enslave their compatriots. Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution. Nor did the writers of the New Testament. Peter and Paul exhort slaves to be obedient to their masters. Paul urges Philemon to treat his converted slave Onesimus as a brother in Christ. While discreetly suggesting that he manumit Onesimus, he does not say that Philemon is morally obliged to free Onesimus and any other slaves he may have had.

“Serfdom did not involve the humiliation and brutality people today ordinarily associate with slavery. Moral theologians recognized that slaves, unlike mere chattels, had certain rights even against their masters, who no longer had over them the power of life and death, as had been the case in pagan antiquity.

“For St. Thomas, slaves (* servi* ) had the right to food, sleep, marriage, and the rearing of their children. Provision had also to be made for them to fulfill their religious duties, and they were to be treated with benevolence.

“John Paul II in 1992: Speaking at the infamous “House of Slaves” on the Island of Gorée in Senegal, from which innumerable slaves had been exported, he declared: ‘It is fitting to confess in all truth and humility this sin of man against man, this sin of man against God.’ The pope is here speaking of the slave trade, which had repeatedly been condemned. Far from changing the doctrine, John Paul is explicitly reaffirming the position of Pope Pius II, whom he quotes as having declared in 1492 that the slave trade was an enormous crime, magnum scelus.

“The reader should be warned, however, that Noonan manipulates the evidence to make it seem to favor his own preconceived conclusions. For some reason, he is intent on finding discontinuity”but he fails to establish that the Church has reversed her teaching in any of the four areas he examines.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., holds the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham University.
firstthings.com/article/2005/10/development-or-reversal

Please explain your comment- “Real Catholics realise that Christ, who never condemned slavery, left it to His followers to discover gradually that slavery as an institution was inconsistent with following Him.” Particularly the “Real Catholics” part. I’m very interested in knowing what you mean by “Real Catholics” versus what one must assume you also recognize as “fake Catholics.”

 

[Abu]

What is referred to in other translations as “slaves” is more correctly rendered as “servants,” as the Douay Bible has it. When we 21st century people think of slaves and slavery, what comes to mind right away is the horrible atrocities committed by white men against blacks in the United States mostly during the 1800’s. But this is not the kind of slavery we read about in the Sacred Scriptures. God asked the Israelites to treat their servants well. Also, as pointed out in Leviticus 22: 10-11, the servants or slaves had some privileges which even some Israelites did not.

In, *Development or Reversal?, *the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in First Things, October 2005 wrote:
“Doctrinal development follows a different course in social ethics than in the realm of revelation. The formulation of revealed truth develops through the discernment of new truths that are formally implicit in the apostolic deposit. Such truths, once proclaimed by the Church as divinely revealed, are dogmas and must be held by all as matters of divine and Catholic faith. Social teaching, on the other hand, consists of behavioral norms for social conduct in conformity with the gospel. While the principles remain constant, the proximate norms are not free from contingency because society itself is in flux. Specific regulations rarely have the universal and permanent character that belongs to dogma. Development in social teaching is not simply a matter of articulating what was always implicitly taught but a way of applying the teaching to new social situations.”
See: firstthings.com/article/2005/10/development-or-reversal

Christ, who never condemned slavery, left it to His followers to discover gradually that slavery as an institution was inconsistent with following Him. So real Catholics believe what the Church teaches and endeavour to live that teaching, but should seek to know what may be further clarified by research and discussion, and what may be refuted. So what denotes real slavery and how that has or has not been imposed, versus serfdom and servitude (penal, indentured and of those captured in a just war) can be clarified.

 

[Saint_Cunigunde]

As has already been somewhat pointed out, the key difference is in two different institutions of slavery, 1) chattel slavery, where the human dignity of the slave is denied(through a claim of ownership, degradation of human worth, etc.); and 2) other forms of slavery, where the human dignity of the slave is not denied, which is all that really matters. Otherwise, why would it be condemned. If the human dignity of the slave is not denied, then there is no reason why we shouldn’t have slavery today, even.

And no, slavery itself does not deny the human dignity of the slave. That’s the whole point.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I know I’m going to get slammed as some sort of hater who just wants to say bad things about the Church saying but…Historically, the Catholic Church has been a major player in the slave trade, Augustine himself claimed it was instituted by God and many other Synods and councils over history came to the same conclusion. Have a read of this liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/Church&slavery.html . It lists several proclamations from Popes and groups of Bishops who continued to promote Slavery, right up till the end of the Papal States (another reason Italy invaded and took over Rome)

St. Augustine, himself of part African descent, interviewed survivors of the African slave and produced the first documentary description of how Galatian slave-traders operated, and wrote with obvious pleasure and pride of how the members of his flock conducted a direct-action mission, stormed slave-trading boats in port and the slaver’s drop houses, and rescued kidnapped Africans. It is likely that St. Augustine participated in these raids but was too humble to describe his own participation. Members of his congregation used the legal system and their own funds to ransom those who had been taken.

Doesn’t sound like a man who supported slavery.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Many saints condemned slavery - St. Patrick, St. Bathilde, St. Anskar, St. Wulfstan, St. Anselm. St Thomas Aquinas described slavery as a sin and in opposition to Natural Law, as all rational creatures are entitled to justice, “thus removing any possible justification for slavery based on race or religion,” and declared “one man is not by nature ordained to another as an end.” His position was upheld by a series of popes. Pope Paul III pronounced slavery a sin in 1537, and clearly stated it was satanic in origin, and clearly did not differentiate between the enslavement of Christians or any others.

[Satan,] the enemy of the human race, who always opposes all good men so that the race may perish, has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving word of God from being preached to the nations. He has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians of the West and the South who have come to our notice in these times be reduced to our service like brute animals, under the pretext that they are lacking in the Catholic faith. And they reduce them to slavery, treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use with brute animals. Therefore, We…noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men…by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples—event hough they are outside the faith…should not be deprived of their liberty or their other possessions…and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void."

His second bull excommunicated anyone who practiced slavery.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Even the Inquisition denounced the American institution of slavery, and again, did not differentiate between Christian and animist:

In 1861, As an example of the Magisterium’s authentic traditional teaching in this matter as reflected in the American experience, look at the Church’s response to Bishop Auguste Marie Martin of Louisiana in 1861. Bishop Martin issued a pastoral letter to his diocese “on the occasion of the War of Southern Independence,” in which he argued that slavery was “the manifest will of God” that Catholics should condone “snatching from the barbarity of their ferocious customs thousands of children of Canaan,” who were the descendents of those cursed by Noah. (This was the same argument used by many Protestant slave-owners in justifying the institution of slavery.) Bishop Martin wrote that it was a obligatory that Catholics condemn abolitionists because they “upset the will of Providence” and God’s “merciful plans for unrighteous actions.” Father Napoleon Joseph Perchr, coadjutor of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, gave his imprimatur for the pastoral letter to be published in the local Catholic newspaper.

The Vatican was not happy, to say the least, and the Roman Congregation of the Index, charged with censoring ideas which were unacceptable to Catholic Doctrine, and which spoke with the direct authority of the Pope (at that time, Pius IX) reproved Bishop Martin:

It’s worth quoting at some length: P. Fr. Vincenzo M. Gatti, O.P., wrote that he had read Bishop Martin’s letter “in order to fulfill the task entrusted to me by the Most Reverend Secretary [of State for the Vatican, Cardinal Barnabo].”

“Bishop Martin deals with slavery as existing in the Southern Confederate States to which Lousiana, where this diocese is situated, belongs. Among other things he affirms what I quote in full, so that you may judge its meanining, its exactness, and its erroneousness.”

After quoting the pastoral letter in full, he continues:

“Now against these statements I set Pope Gregory’s words which I quote in full, since they sum up and put into force again all that his predecessors the Sovereign Pontiffs have taught on this matter.”

He then quotes the full text of In Supremo Apostalatus,

Fr. Gatti observes that God in no way approves of slavery, as Bishop Martin suggested:

OBSERVATION: Here I make two remarks:

1. The Bishop attributes to God what is an execrable violence of men, since he affirms that God “for centuries has been snatching from the barbarity of their ferocious customs thousands of childen of the race of Canaan.” By these words he seems to approve of the slave trade of Negroes and to accept it in principle. Had he stated that God derives good for these unfortunate people, or at least for some of them, from this iniquity and this violation of the natural and ecclesiastical law, no objection could be made against it. But we see no intention of saying this. On the contrary, it appears to be just the opposite from what follows.
2. The Bishop supposes that there exists a natural difference between the Negroes, whom he calls the children of Canaan, and the Whites, when he says that the latter are the privileged ones of the great human family and the former are still now lying under the curse of Noah. And he makes it the latter’s duty to be the Negroes’ sheperds, fathers, and masters…we also must observe that both the ancient and the modern supporters of the theory of slavery advanced as one of the reasons for its acceptability the fact that the Negroes have been subjected to others by the curse of Noah. But those who oppose this theory, besides denying its validity, at least after the Christian era when the curse would not be valid any longer, deny the fact itself, i.e., that the Negroes descend from Canaan.

(cont.)

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Father Gatti then uses the Bible to show the tribes of Africa were not the cursed descendents of Canaan. Afterwards, he notes in regards to Bishop Martin’s claim that the slaves benefit from their conversion to Christianity:

OBSERVATION: The Bishop calls the Negroes poor children, while they are not such. As I stressed above, Noah did not curse Canaan…but even if they were cursed by Noah, they are not cursed any longer after the coming of Jesus Christ when, as the Apostle says, there is no distinction between Jew and gentile, between freeman and slave, between man and woman, since we are all sons of the same divine Father. In contrast, Bishop Martin seems to consider the opposite teaching to be the teaching of the Gospel. Did Jesus Christ say: “Go snatch them by force from their native country, drag them to your countries, and convert them?” No, He did not. But He sad: “Go throughout the world; teach all the people…and preach the Gospel to every man.” And did He say: “In exchange for the spiritual good that you will do, exploit them as instruments for your material interests?” No, He did not, but rather he said: “Freely give what you have freely received.” As we know from history, the Negroes are sold by the chiefs who put them on the market after snatching them by force from their native land. These unfortunates are brought by slave traders who take advantage of them as their own property. The aim of teaching the Christian Faith, even if it exists, which very often it does not, is a trifling matter and it does not justify the iniquity which they commit in this trade."

The philanthropists of the last and of this century are not mistaken when they criticize and condemn the slave trade of the Negroes and their subjection to ill treatment and to slavery, since they agree with the Catholic doctrine in this respect; yet at least some of them err if they extend this principle too far and if they mistake slavery deriving from a just title, and which does not harm other people’s rights, for slavery originating in violence and in violation of the natural law. The slavery of the Negroes belongs precisely to this latter kind of slavery; against this Sovereign Pontiffs have risen up very often and have reproved and condemned it. The bishop deals with this kind of slavery and defends it!

Father Gatti attacked Bishop Martin’s arguments that slaves’ “original degradation” justifies their slavery. Father Gatti notes that both blacks and whites can be learned and virtuous people with the proper education and Catholic education:

From this treatment one can easily infer that the Bishop favors the enemies of the Catholic Church who accuse her of approving slavery, which is the origin of the vile trade and of the brutal treatment of the Negroes from Africa. It makes the Church unjustly odious; it promotes the mistake of those who believe that the slave trade of the Negroes is lawful and who try to avoid condemnation of the Sovereign Pontiffs with every kind of cavil [argument].

Such a mistake is condemned by the natural law, by the Gospel, by the Pontifical Constitution, and is reproved with the common sense of the Christian peoples, though self-interest and corruption reduce it to silence in some of them, This mistake favors the preservation of slavery in the Southern states in opposition to the will of the Sovereign Pontiffs who, as is clear from the words I have quoted above, have condemned not only the slave trade but slavery itself: “to reduce to slavery, to retain in slavery.” And they have condemned also those who favor it, or those who teach it to be lawful, or lend counsel, succor, favor, and co-operation to those acting, under no matter what pretext or excuse, or who proclaim and teach this way of acting is allowable or co-operate in any manner whatever with the practices indicated."(Emphasis in the original.)

The Church’s official position on slavery in the American south was unambiguous.

It should be noted that after being rebuked by Rome, a chastened Bishop Martin reformed and begin an apostolic mission to care for freed slaves.

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