The church justifying slavery

[Hans_W]

The problem and reality is that people haven’t moved on, and still attack the Church for things they thought the Church had done. If they really moved on they have already forgiven the Church. And it seems that they’re not willing to. People would use the abuses made by people in the Church to discredit her moral authority, mostly to conform with their suspicion of anything Catholic. They charge against the Church, not because they want to know the truth, but because they don’t like the Church.

Another problem is the one I bolded. Who’s version of history, I might add? Recent research and historical evidence into the history of the Church, including the events and phenomena associated with it (the Crusades and the Inquisition) have shown that the history of the Church most of us are being taught to are based on anti-Catholic biases and don’t necessarily fit with the evidence provided. Proper history includes lots of cross-referencing, interpolation, and context.

Insisting on providing proper references isn’t whitewashing the bad things done by people in the past. Yes, some crusaders did commit atrocities that would be considered as criminal in today’s standards, but how can we be sure if the people who wrote about those atrocities were accurate, considering that they wrote down those atrocities 200 years after the first movement of Crusades? You can’t just blindly accept a historical fact without looking into the historical evidence, especially when a historical fact sounds questionable. That’s just being intellectually lazy. We have to answer these charges by presenting what actually happened while at the same time admitting that mistakes were made. In my opinion the attitude of most Catholic today when it comes to the Church’s history is similar to a person accepting libelous and exaggerated remarks from people about something they’re too lazy to know more about.

“Who’s version of history?” you ask. I always thought that history is supposed to recall the facts, neutrally, unbiased. There is no “theistic history” or “Catholic history”, same as there is no theistic or secular science.

I also bolded a stark contradiction in your post. First you say " … some crusaders did commit atrocities …" and then you question the historical evidence. Then you accuse people of being intellectually lazy. I am not writing a dissertation on the crusades, just stating that atrocities were done.

Now it is claimed that people have done those atrocities. You can’t blame the Church. As pointed out in post #16 these atrocities were condoned, we might say endorsed or even encouraged, perhaps even ordered by the popes. And the pope is the head of the Church. In my layman understanding I would say he represents the Church.

If Galileo would come back today, could we tell him “we almost tortured you, but it wasn’t the Church who insisted that the earth stands still, it was just the people”?

The more recent cases of child abuse by the clergy is a totally different story. Here one could use the argument that it was done by individuals, not the Church (including the moving of guilty priest by bishops).

No, I still stand by my statement that bad things have been done under the umbrella of the Church, slavery, inquisition, crusades, prosecution of Jews, and others I suppose.

That’s now part of history. We have learned from it. We are now wiser and we move on.

 

[ProdigalSun]

“Who’s version of history?” you ask. I always thought that history is supposed to recall the facts, neutrally, unbiased. There is no “theistic history” or “Catholic history”, same as there is no theistic or secular science.

I also bolded a stark contradiction in your post. First you say " … some crusaders did commit atrocities …" and then you question the historical evidence. Then you accuse people of being intellectually lazy. I am not writing a dissertation on the crusades, just stating that atrocities were done.

Now it is claimed that people have done those atrocities. You can’t blame the Church. As pointed out in post #16 these atrocities were condoned, we might say endorsed or even encouraged, perhaps even ordered by the popes. And the pope is the head of the Church. In my layman understanding I would say he represents the Church.

If Galileo would come back today, could we tell him “we almost tortured you, but it wasn’t the Church who insisted that the earth stands still, it was just the people”?

The more recent cases of child abuse by the clergy is a totally different story. Here one could use the argument that it was done by individuals, not the Church (including the moving of guilty priest by bishops).

No, I still stand by my statement that bad things have been done under the umbrella of the Church, slavery, inquisition, crusades, prosecution of Jews, and others I suppose.

That’s now part of history. We have learned from it. We are now wiser and we move on.

Sounds like someone needs to learn history and not just believe the sound bites you hear from the TV.