The Catholic Church and Persecution

[JonNC]

The reason I put the paragraph in quotes is because this is what I was taught as a fundamental Baptist. They’re not my numbers, they are the numbers of the preachers who made the claim. Sorry if I was not clear in the OP.

Gottcha. I guess I didn’t catch that.

If anyone else has a source for these kinds of numbers, that would be interesting, otherwise, as I said, not a Catholic today is accountable for wrongs of the past. I think its fair to say men in the Church can be wrong, and that wrong later corrected, regardless of whether it is Catholic or Lutheran or others.

Jon

 

[Starwarsfan2]

Gottcha. I guess I didn’t catch that.

If anyone else has a source for these kinds of numbers, that would be interesting, otherwise, as I said, not a Catholic today is accountable for wrongs of the past. I think its fair to say men in the Church can be wrong, and that wrong later corrected, regardless of whether it is Catholic or Lutheran or others.

Jon

Yep

 

[GKC]

Gottcha. I guess I didn’t catch that.

If anyone else has a source for these kinds of numbers, that would be interesting, otherwise, as I said, not a Catholic today is accountable for wrongs of the past. I think its fair to say men in the Church can be wrong, and that wrong later corrected, regardless of whether it is Catholic or Lutheran or others.

Jon

Huge numbers like that are not sourceable, from any academic, non-sectarian, historical source. And Sabatini was a novelist.

Once again, as always, for the general subject of the Inquisitions, Peters/INQUISITION, for the Spanish Inquisition in particular, Kamen THE SPANISH INQUISITION. The 3rd ed. is the most complete, of that title. These works are readily available, highly esteemed, and neither the Black Legend, nor a whitewash. But general knowledge of the stuff in them would curtail these sort of threads markedly.

 

[Peter_J]

Thanks to all for your patience and diligence in answering the various questions I have posed. Now I have a resource to use when my former church-mates ask me questions.

I do have one more.
This argument was put forth on many occasions in refuting the Catholic Church:

“During the last 2000 years, the Catholic Church has put to death millions she believed to be heretics. Such as Jews, dissident Catholics, Protestants, anabaptists, Hussites, Lollards, Waldenses, Albigenses and many others who refused to convert. Yet today, the Catholic Church calls people who hold these very same opinions ‘separated brethren’ and teaches it is wrong to persecute on the basis of religious belief.”

How can both of these be correct? If the Catholic Church is an unchanging Church, how is this explained?
Thank you!

That’s not hard to answer. Religious persecution is wrong, whether it’s done by Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, etc etc etc.

Incidentally, I remember how, back when I was in school, “non-Catholics” would often say that Catholics should apologize for this thing or that thing that happened centuries ago – an idea that was routinely blasted by Catholics. Then guess what Pope John Paul II did one year?

 

[boomerang]

Falsely labeling torture? I consider the use of the rack or the strappado to be torture, as anyone would.
historyrundown.com/10-most-cruel-torture-devices-of-all-time/

This may sound sick, but that website made me laugh. Not that it’s funny to be tortured, but that mankind is so bloomin’ inventive when it comes to torture. And the torturers came from all walks of life:

SPANISH DONKEY: This device was allegedly used during the American Civil War by Union soldiers, against their Confederate prisoners, who were forced to sit on the donkey until they passed out.

MOLTEN METAL: In Mongol Empire, the worst criminals were sometimes punished by pouring molten silver to their eyes.

HEAD CRUSHING: In the medieval India and Persia, trained elephants were often used to crush the heads of criminals. This practice continued well into the 19th century.

Puritan witch hunts, Aztec human sacrifice, American Indians torture and scalping, African muti killings and cannabilism, Chinese foot binding, Nazi experiments and gas chambers, the English practice of drawing, hanging and quartering. I could go on and on, unfortunately. It just confirms my opinion that people are basically jerks no matter what religion or ethnicity they are.

 

[Tomdstone]

This may sound sick, but that website made me laugh. Not that it’s funny to be tortured, but that mankind is so bloomin’ inventive when it comes to torture. And the torturers came from all walks of life:

Puritan witch hunts, Aztec human sacrifice, American Indians torture and scalping, African muti killings and cannabilism, Chinese foot binding, Nazi experiments and gas chambers, the English practice of drawing, hanging and quartering. I could go on and on, unfortunately. It just confirms my opinion that people are basically jerks no matter what religion or ethnicity they are.

During the inquisition time, it was a moral discipline for a righteous practicing Catholic to administer corporal punishment to themselves, or one would willingly accept such a corporal punishment as a discipline, which **you are falsely labeling “torture” **compared to today’s standard.

Can anyone provide a reference which shows that the Inquisition never used the rack and the strappado? Or that the use of the rack and the strappado did not constitute torture?

 

[estesbob]

Can anyone provide a reference which shows that the Inquisition never used the rack and the strappado? Or that the use of the rack and the strappado did not constitute torture?

You are asking people to prove a negative.

 

[Tomdstone]

You are asking people to prove a negative.

The evidence that I have seen is that the rack and the strappado are torture and that they were used by the Inquisition. A poster has implied that I have falsely labelled these as torture. I don’t see the support for his implication. Do you or anyone else?

 

[GKC]

This may sound sick, but that website made me laugh. Not that it’s funny to be tortured, but that mankind is so bloomin’ inventive when it comes to torture. And the torturers came from all walks of life:

Puritan witch hunts, Aztec human sacrifice, American Indians torture and scalping, African muti killings and cannabilism, Chinese foot binding, Nazi experiments and gas chambers, the English practice of drawing, hanging and quartering. I could go on and on, unfortunately. It just confirms my opinion that people are basically jerks no matter what religion or ethnicity they are.

Peters. whose book on the Inquisitions I’ve often recommended, has an informative book, TORTURE, too. Chap. 2, in particular.

 

[estesbob]

The evidence that I have seen is that the rack and the strappado are torture and that they were used by the Inquisition. A poster has implied that I have falsely labelled these as torture. I don’t see the support for his implication. Do you or anyone else?

Then you should post the evidence

 

[estesbob]

It would appear from this the rack was allowed

Most of the torture and executions attributed to the Church during the various inquisitions didn’t occur at all, and historians now concede that Inquisition torture chambers never existed. Torture was indeed used during some Inquisition trials (hardly uncommon for the court system of the time). The Inquisition, though, had strict rules regarding its use that put it far ahead of its time.
Torture was unauthorized until 20 years after the Inquisition began. It was first authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252—not as a mode of punishment, but as a means of discovering truth. It was not to be used to threaten life or cause loss of limb, was to applied only if the accused was uncertain and seemed already convicted by many weighty proofs, and after all other options had been used. When it was used it was not to be used more than once, and for no more than 15 minutes. Unfortunately these rules were sometimes circumvented by creative readings of the rule book. Torture was most cruelly used under the pressure of secular authority (Frederick II, for instance, abused the Inquisition to persecute his personal enemies). So, while torture was used in some cases, the idea of continent-spanning torture and death caused by the Church is simply not the case.
There were no rapes, feet burning, creative torture chambers, iron maidens, etc., and reports show that between 98%-99% of all Inquisition trials did not involve torture at all. Compared to secular courts that decreed the death penalty for damaging shrubs in England, or disembowelment for sheep-stealing in France, the Inquisition was actually far more conservative than the secular Europe of the day.
strangenotions.com/spanish-inquisition/

 

[z_0101]

Plus the crusades , other inquisitions , Catholic slaughter of native Americans in north and South America , plus the many thousands of Reformation Christians killed , Yea that kinda adds up to at least one to two million with the possibility of more but this is a VERY VERY conservative estimate.

I am sorry, Catholic?
Please be careful here.
Read up on the crusades
(from the history channel… link follows)
The trigger for the First Crusade was Emperor Alexius I’s appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. The response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem.

By this point the Muslim advances had taken almost all of the known world and was half way thru what is now known as France and well on their way to what is now known as Germany. - There was a small faction of the Crusaders that broke away from the main cause, and without Papal authorization, committed great atrocities driven by greed and not religious basis.

Then there were the political in the fourth thru sixth crusades that had much to do with who was going to be the Holy Emperor and control of land. One of the best things to happen to the Church was when she lost most of the so called Papal-Estates as it allowed the Church to focus more on the spiritual and less on the secular aspects of the world.

IMHO, not the best series; however, from the history channel ( Crusades ) this has a nice video for those that don’t like to read
In the American British colonies the Catholic church was suppressed for much of the first 100 years, in fact, by law - with punishments that could result in death.
(( Yes, I realize that about thirtyish years after the first settlements (1607) that there was a small group allowed in Maryland; however, once religious freedom was established (almost immediately after the establishment), the Protestants gained control (took only a few years) and repressed the Catholics - quite brutally - it wasn’t until after the Civil War that Catholics really obtained any true rights to practice openly, to build churches and schools in the USA ))

As for the Catholic-Native American hyperbolae, I think this article states it better that I have space to do so here (6K limit, )
(CA) The Church and the Native Americans - The Real Story - By: Margaret Bunson
Catholics are attacked with remarkable regularity for supposed crimes against the native peoples of the New World. Much has been written, for example, about the demolition of the Meso-American cultures such as the Aztecs and the South American Andean civilization of the Incas by the Spanish Conquistadors, the severe oppression of the indigenous peoples, and the devastation delivered upon the Indian tribes across the Americas from displacement, disease, war, and slavery.

In truth, the plight of the Native Americans in North America was the source of great concern to the Church, and missionaries distinguished themselves for their heroic defense of Indian rights. There is no question that European colonialism wrought vast troubles for the tribes and cultures of the New World. But it is unfair to blame the Church for the actions of the European powers—who regularly punished the Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians, and countless priests, nuns, and laypeople for speaking out in defense of the suffering natives. John Tracy Ellis, one of the fathers of American Catholic historiography, wrote: (read more)

Perhaps a short abstract of the role of the Catholic Church in the Americas would be of interest The Catholic Church in the United States of America (CERC)

Oh, and I wont even get started on the inquisitions… my word, the amount of misinformation that is professed by so-called experts in the field…
Take your pick from the Catholic Answers Search:
catholic.com/search/content/inquisitions

I particularly like this one for people just starting on learning about the inquisitions
An Inquisition Primer - By: Robert P. Lockwood
With a follow-up here catholic.com/tracts/the-inquisition

did I cross post here just a tad… sorry, took me awhile to verify that my links were still valid

 

[GKC]

It would appear from this the rack was allowed

Most of the torture and executions attributed to the Church during the various inquisitions didn’t occur at all, and historians now concede that Inquisition torture chambers never existed. Torture was indeed used during some Inquisition trials (hardly uncommon for the court system of the time). The Inquisition, though, had strict rules regarding its use that put it far ahead of its time.
Torture was unauthorized until 20 years after the Inquisition began. It was first authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252—not as a mode of punishment, but as a means of discovering truth. It was not to be used to threaten life or cause loss of limb, was to applied only if the accused was uncertain and seemed already convicted by many weighty proofs, and after all other options had been used. When it was used it was not to be used more than once, and for no more than 15 minutes. Unfortunately these rules were sometimes circumvented by creative readings of the rule book. Torture was most cruelly used under the pressure of secular authority (Frederick II, for instance, abused the Inquisition to persecute his personal enemies). So, while torture was used in some cases, the idea of continent-spanning torture and death caused by the Church is simply not the case.
There were no rapes, feet burning, creative torture chambers, iron maidens, etc., and reports show that between 98%-99% of all Inquisition trials did not involve torture at all. Compared to secular courts that decreed the death penalty for damaging shrubs in England, or disembowelment for sheep-stealing in France, the Inquisition was actually far more conservative than the secular Europe of the day.
strangenotions.com/spanish-inquisition/

Ad Extirpanda, Innocent IV. See PETERS, TORTURE, p. 65.

Do recommend that guy’s books.

 

[Peter_J]

Can anyone provide a reference which shows that the Inquisition never used the rack and the strappado? Or that the use of the rack and the strappado did not constitute torture?

I don’t know. In any case I’ve never heard such a claim.

 

[JustaServant]

Plus the crusades , other inquisitions , Catholic slaughter of native Americans in north and South America , plus the many thousands of Reformation Christians killed , Yea that kinda adds up to at least one to two million with the possibility of more but this is a VERY VERY conservative estimate.

Do you have a source for this incredible claim? If not, could you at least wipe it clean from the location you are pulling it out of.

 

[estesbob]

Unchanging? You don’t think the Catholic church has changed at all in 2000 years??!
Look how much it’s changed just in the last fifty!

.

What doctrines have changed in the last 50 years?

 

[Starwarsfan2]

I am sorry, Catholic?
Please be careful here.
Read up on the crusades
(from the history channel… link follows)
The trigger for the First Crusade was Emperor Alexius I’s appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. The response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem.

By this point the Muslim advances had taken almost all of the known world and was half way thru what is now known as France and well on their way to what is now known as Germany. - There was a small faction of the Crusaders that broke away from the main cause, and without Papal authorization, committed great atrocities driven by greed and not religious basis.

Then there were the political in the fourth thru sixth crusades that had much to do with who was going to be the Holy Emperor and control of land. One of the best things to happen to the Church was when she lost most of the so called Papal-Estates as it allowed the Church to focus more on the spiritual and less on the secular aspects of the world.

IMHO, not the best series; however, from the history channel ( Crusades ) this has a nice video for those that don’t like to read
In the American British colonies the Catholic church was suppressed for much of the first 100 years, in fact, by law - with punishments that could result in death.
(( Yes, I realize that about thirtyish years after the first settlements (1607) that there was a small group allowed in Maryland; however, once religious freedom was established (almost immediately after the establishment), the Protestants gained control (took only a few years) and repressed the Catholics - quite brutally - it wasn’t until after the Civil War that Catholics really obtained any true rights to practice openly, to build churches and schools in the USA ))

As for the Catholic-Native American hyperbolae, I think this article states it better that I have space to do so here (6K limit, )
(CA) The Church and the Native Americans - The Real Story - By: Margaret Bunson
Catholics are attacked with remarkable regularity for supposed crimes against the native peoples of the New World. Much has been written, for example, about the demolition of the Meso-American cultures such as the Aztecs and the South American Andean civilization of the Incas by the Spanish Conquistadors, the severe oppression of the indigenous peoples, and the devastation delivered upon the Indian tribes across the Americas from displacement, disease, war, and slavery.

In truth, the plight of the Native Americans in North America was the source of great concern to the Church, and missionaries distinguished themselves for their heroic defense of Indian rights. There is no question that European colonialism wrought vast troubles for the tribes and cultures of the New World. But it is unfair to blame the Church for the actions of the European powers—who regularly punished the Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians, and countless priests, nuns, and laypeople for speaking out in defense of the suffering natives. John Tracy Ellis, one of the fathers of American Catholic historiography, wrote: (read more)

Perhaps a short abstract of the role of the Catholic Church in the Americas would be of interest The Catholic Church in the United States of America (CERC)

Oh, and I wont even get started on the inquisitions… my word, the amount of misinformation that is professed by so-called experts in the field…
Take your pick from the Catholic Answers Search:
catholic.com/search/content/inquisitions

I particularly like this one for people just starting on learning about the inquisitions
An Inquisition Primer - By: Robert P. Lockwood
With a follow-up here catholic.com/tracts/the-inquisition

did I cross post here just a tad… sorry, took me awhile to verify that my links were still valid

Didn’t mean to say North America , only meant to say south and Central America note on the crusaders though, there was no " splinter group "( I have read up on the crusaders , and although atrocious were committed, Christians we’re also helping Jews and Muslims survive the crusades , funny how secularists don’t mention that part of the time period )

Keep the faith , Starwars

 

[Seekerjn316]

Are you just as concerned about other religions allegedly having the state in their pocket, or do they get free passes?

As a matter of fact I am, but we aren’t discussing other faith communities…Anabaptists, Pieitists, Quakers, Moravians, Huguenots, all faced ersecution not only from Catholic controlled governments, but from Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican controlled governments…even a few executions of minority faiths here in the good Ole USA CONTROLLED by those religious communities in Co troll of certain colonies.

If I was on one of their boards and they made similar claims of “innicence”, I’d bring up their communities participation.

 

[Tomdstone]

What doctrines have changed in the last 50 years?

For 1900 years it was taught that the Blood was shed for many. Then all of a sudden it was changed. Now, however,after 50 years or so, it is changed back to what it was before.

 

[estesbob]

For 1900 years it was taught that the Blood was shed for many. Then all of a sudden it was changed. Now, however,after 50 years or so, it is changed back to what it was before.

A translation error is hardly a change in doctrine. In the official Latin verbiage of the mass the phrase was always “Pro multis”. There was a period when the English translation incorrectly translated this as "for all "instead of “for many” But that obviously does not constitute a change in doctrine.