This is not true, at least not throughout the entire period. Dum Diversas suffices as an example of church approval of the enslavement of “Saracens and other pagans.” This bull of course predates European activity in the Americas, but portraying the church as consistently objecting to brutal treatment seems disingenuous.As a professional historian, I can tell you as a fact that “millions” did not die as a result of the Inquisition. Firstly, the Inquisition never even came to the New World. There was no point to it, since Native Americans were not heretics. In fact, they were given a protected position by many laws enacted by Spain and Portugal. Now… millions DID die as a result of exploitation by the Spanish and Portuguese, who used them as slaves, or who were exposed to new diseases they had no immunity to, but this was ILLEGAL under Spanish law, and this was a SECULAR exploitation that was condemned in the strongest possible terms by the church.
So under what circumstances, in your view, is it justifiable to burn a heretic who had committed no violent or property crime?Like any crime to be punished by death, to determine whether the punishment is morally acceptable, it depends on the nature of the crime and the necessity of the punishment for redressing the disorder introduced by the crime and protecting society. See my post above. For the punishment of heresy with death to be moral, it would depend on the nature of the society in question, the nature of the heresy, how it was propagated, the effects on society, and the necessary means to to arrest those effects. In our time, the circumstances that would justify such a punishment by the state are pretty much non-existent, with the exception of maybe certain individuals who engage in religion-motivated terrorism, like those described in my post above.
Same question from me.Millions? Would you like to source that exaggerated claim?
First, the punishment of any crime is not a matter of private initiative, but rather falls within the power of public authority. It is immoral for private individuals and groups to usurp this right and duty, which properly belongs to public authority. Second, just like with the punishment of any crime, the criteria justifying it cannot be relatively satisfied, but rather would have to be satified according to legal principles in comformity with the objective moral order.Do not those people who engage in terrorism you mention use these same criteria for justifying what they do? Relatively, if to the terrorists these criteria are satisfied, are you saying they act morally?
Who has the power of public authority? Is the moral authority dependent on who the political leader or leaders are? How is the proper authority determined?First, the punishment of any crime is not a matter of private initiative, but rather falls within the power of public authority. It is immoral for private individuals and groups to usurp this right and duty, which properly belongs to public authority. Second, just like with the punishment of any crime, the criteria justifying it cannot be relatively satisfied, but rather would have to be satified according to legal principles in comformity with the objective moral order.
The point of the death penalty is as follows, as summed up succinctly by the Roman Catechism:So under what circumstances, in your view, is it justifiable to burn a heretic who had committed no violent or property crime?
If the heretic had therefore not yet caused the necessary harm to the security of life, he would have to threaten the peace and security of life of the society with a reasonable certainty and all other means of arresting that threat would have to prove insufficient, as Bellarmine notes in my earlier post.The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence.
These are getting into larger questions that are probably outside the purview of this thread and subforum (they would be better for the philosophy subforum). But, suffice it to say for now, that if we cannot answer these questions in a sufficient way, then the resulting principles leave us with anarchy or “might makes right”–in that case, no crime will be punished or punishment wwill be completely arbitrary and tyranical. If those principles are the governing principles, then we will have a society much more barbaric with much more bloodshed than anything medieval Christendom experienced.Who has the power of public authority? Is the moral authority dependent on who the political leader or leaders are? How is the proper authority determined?
What is the objective moral order? Define this. Who determines what the objective moral order is? Does this order vary from time to time and place to place?
The souls are those of the martyrs… The ones killed for the faith.Burning of ‘heretics’ was witch-hunting and a show of might. It was brutal and it assumed the judgement of God. No wonder in revelation Rev:6:9: it says, “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held”.
We’d have to ask ourselves why did any of these torture methods occur 1,000 years ago. Just look at England and all those castles and torture chambers. They were showcasing some of them by holding Summer Olympics events in there., Oh Yes England was well known for torture, Christians and Heretics alike and they brought it into America. Just look at the treatment of the slaves and what the KKK did to anyone who opposed them… They were deemed Christian… Are we to be judged by them as Christians? I hope not… Do we learn from their behavior, I hope so… That’s why we have to learn from the examples of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Saints.If you feel killing someone is necessary, why not use less torturous methods?
I’ll chime in on this one. For one thing they didn’t have chemical means of killing someone without pain. For their technology, you basically had your choice of burning, drowning, or beheading. I think the way they did it was less torturous than slowly roasting them on a spit, or sitting in water or oil as it slowly got up to boiling temperature.If you feel killing someone is necessary, why not use less torturous methods?
I agree with most of what you are saying should people be condemned to hell because of forming their own beliefs? That’s what we are seeing now in our much gentler kinder world. People straying from the truth and possibly losing their souls because of it.Firstoff I believe killing anyone over their difference in beliefs is 100% wrong.
BUT if you consider what a heretic is doing, you may understand why some folks took such drastic action to prevent heresies.
IF someone is subverting the faith and potentially leading some souls or even many souls into ETERNAL damnation, then that is a very serious crime indeed. What could possibly be worse than sending someone to H*** on purpose.
So even though torture and death are very harse punishments, consider the offense and possible consequences of what the offenders were perpetrating.
IF I say missing mass is okay, and I send thousands or hundreds or even one soul to H***, what punishment would you recommend for me ???
Actually there are checks and balances in the church. One, there are consequences for sin. That which abuses power, will suffer as the church had. Two, the church is made up of many many people who have to speak up against it where it is wrong, which they have. Three, councils and reformations such as occurred with the Council of Trent.Catholicism was the faith of all the western world at that time. Catholics were in positions of power and responsible for life and death decisions, keeping the peace, social stability etc…
People are flawed. When things don’t go our way we tend to exert power to force the issue. Catholics had power, they used it. No checks and balances existed to moderate power. So power was abused. Sinful human beings have always killed one another over beliefs. In addition to unchecked power, consider a culture who’s values are not as sensitive as ours, where life was cheap, and you have the opportunity for all sorts of abuses. People in power do evil things. Catholics with secular power do evil things.
There have been some statements made to the effect that it was necessary to kill heretics to save the faith of others. This is Christianity without the cross. God had the power to solve the issue of disbelief once and for with his own force. If he needed power for his kingdom, why would he call on sinful human beings to bring it about? But he did not force himself on us. He could have struck down the high priests and defeated the Roman Army, both of whom persecuted Christ. But gave his only son as a lamb. He did not conquer all earthly resistance as a king of the earth.
Killing in the name of faith has always been immoral and always will be. Determining whether folks who behaved in ignorance in times past are culpable and to what degree, is a little above our pay grade.
Jesus said that his armies were from another place. We are the instruments to His peace, the sad souls that we are we have to try harder to bring His peace to the world.He could have struck down the high priests and defeated the Roman Army, both of whom persecuted Christ. .
Someone highlighted the tortuous methods that people were punished back then. Actually I believe today’s methods are not as tortuous and I believe that capital punishment is going away in a lot of places. I know in Illinois there is a state moratorium on it. I don’t know where we do the firing squad or hanging. Certainly we don’t nail people to the cross or burn them at the stake.I just don’t understand the difference between the executions done back in the “dark ages” verses what we do today. Currently, here in the civilized and enlightened US we still perform state sanctioned death penalty by lethal injection, electric chair, gas chamber, firing squad, and hanging. The name of the crime may be different, but the bottom line is it’s still (or should be) to protect the rest of society. We also have to bear in mind that they did not have prisons to keep thousands of people the way we do today, nor did they have a complex system of making appeals and dragging out the verdict the way we also have today.