then why did the Pope approve of the use of torture to extract confessions:
Soon after the Inquisition was instituted, Pope Innocent IV, influenced by the revival of Roman law, issued a decree (in 1252) that called on civil magistrates to have persons accused of heresy tortured to elicit confessions against themselves and others; this was probably the earliest instance of ecclesiastical sanction of this mode of examination.
Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, torture, Copyright © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation
The harsh courts of the inquisition were the secular courts not the religious tribunals, according to the carmelite priest in our tThird order. People wnated to be tried by the church not the politicians who abused their power…
the Catholic encyclopedi has a good artcle on theis and shows that the principal that has guided the church in terms of religious belief has been tat religion cannot be forced on others. And that violence should ne be used to bring about justice;
"Lactantius was yet smarting under the scourge of bloody persecutions, when he wrote this Divine Institutes in A.D. 308. Naturally, therefore, he stood for the most absolute freedom of religion. He writes:
Religion being a matter of the will, it cannot be forced on anyone; in this matter it is better to employ words than blows [verbis melius quam verberibus res agenda est]. Of what use is cruelty? What has the rack to do with piety? Surely there is no connection between truth and violence, between justice and cruelty . . . . It is true that nothing is so important as religion, and one must defend it at any cost [summâ vi] . . . It is true that it must be protected, but by dying for it, not by killing others; by long-suffering, not by violence; by faith, not by crime. If you attempt to defend religion with bloodshed and torture, what you do is not defense, but desecration and insult. For nothing is so intrinsically a matter of free will as religion. (Divine Institutes V:20)
The Christian teachers of the first three centuries insisted, as was natural for them, on complete religious liberty; furthermore, they not only urged the principle that religion could not be forced on others – a principle always adhered to by the Church in her dealings with the unbaptised – but, when comparing the Mosaic Law and the Christian religion, they taught that the latter was content with a spiritual punishment of heretics (i.e. with excommunication), while Judaism necessarily proceeded against its dissidents with torture and death."
newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm
I am more afraid of secular inquistions taking place right now. The leftist political agenda is highly emotional and uses violent language against those who disagree with it. The hate crime of Myers against the Eucharist recently shows how much they hate religion in general and want to rif our society of its influence.
Anyone who has contacts with the educational community knows how much propaganda is used in schools to push certain anti-Christian/Catholic views on young people.
Simply because there was a black aspect to the inquistion which can be associated with a desire at that time to protect orthodoxy does not mean that the secular society we live in cannot and will not turn to the same thing to protect THEIR ORTHODOXY (secular progresive religion) of which abortion is a part.
Your argument is not related to the circumstances of OUR TIMES.
In Christ, maryJohnZ
