Was the Church wrong on slavery for 1700 years?

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Question: What do you say to the charge that the Church had it wrong for centuries regarding the issue of slavery?

Why I ask: I am currently debating a “progressive” Catholic about women’s ordination. We have gone around and around with the standard arguments pro and con. I said that, in the end, I trust the Church. I trust the Church that gave me, for example, the Christological definitions at the Council of Nicea with regards to Jesus’ nature… and so I trust that same council which includes a canon that states women are not to be ordained. I said if the Church was wrong for 2,000 years about something so important as who can receive Holy Orders… then you have to begin to doubt that it is the true Church.

He said that Jesus condoned slavery, and thus was subject to the cultural norms of the time… but that the Church then continued that incorrect stance for 1700 years (again, due to the dominant culture). Thus, the Church was wrong on that important issue (of human dignity) for centuries until they finally woke up to the “sign of the times.” So, is the Church now being called to wake up to the new reality that women are called to be priests (because for centuries theologians saw women as subhuman, etc.). What do I say to that charge about slavery? Was it because slavery as an institution was not ALWAYS in ALL CASES everywhere inhumane?..
I have searched the archives for this question, but only found a brief discussion on:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=125769&highlight=slavery
 
By the way,… it would propbably be a good idea to keep any replies focussed on the question of the Church’s stance on slavery. There are plenty of threads on women’s ordinations elsewhere. Any Church historians out there?
 
AngelicDoctor said:
Question: What do you say to the charge that the Church had it wrong for centuries regarding the issue of slavery?
y
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Basically the Church NEVER said slavery was acceptable-they just said it was a fact of life and laid out guidlines for the humane treatment of slaves. I also dont know where she got the idea the Church supported slavery for 1,700 years The Pope was the first European leader to Condemn the african slave trade and he did it some 90 years BEFORE Columbus’s famous Voyage.
 
I don’t think the Church was wrong on the doctrinal issue: owning slaves is not always a sin (although enslaving innocent people is always a sin). For instance, if you inherited slaves in the 19th-century South and had no legal way of freeing them, and no opportunity to get them across the border, the moral thing to do would be to continue in legal ownership of them but to treat them with dignity and respect and free them whenever opportunity offered (and of course to work for a change in the laws and social structures that supported slavery). Much as I respect the Northern abolitionists and honor my spiritual ancestors’ role in abolitionism, I think that gradual, compensated emancipation would have been far preferable to what actually happened. Look at Brazil: it’s true that slavery wasn’t abolished there till about 20 years after the United States, but it’s also true that they managed to do it without killing half a million people in a bloody civil war.

Rodney Stark (not a Catholic) has written some valuable (if exaggerated) commentary on the Catholic Church’s stance on slavery. Stark points to repeated Catholic condemnations of the slave trade, and to the fact that generally the slave codes in Catholic countries were more humane and more respectful of the slaves’ dignity than those in Protestant countries. He also points to Catholic opposition to racism and openness to intermarriage. He does overstate things, but he makes some good points.

I think the point where the Church can be severely criticized is in the practical application of its teachings. The Inquisition condemned the slave trade, but the Papacy never put the Portuguese and other Catholic slave-trading countries under inderdict. Granted, the slave trade flourished at a time when the Church had little practical pull with Catholic countries, being dependent on them for support. But the Church could have put its authority on the line and faced the consequences, and it ought to have done so. The Church also ought to have insisted as a matter of dogma that all children are born free, so that slavery could not possibly last more than one generation (I suppose you could argue that this would simply have led slaveowners to commit infanticide, but that’s no excuse and only underlines the wickedness of slavery in the first place.) And there are a bunch of other ways in which the Church could have done a lot more than it did.

In other words, I think the Church’s official position as I understand it erred not in what it said but in what it did not say. It needed to be sharpened and extended from a vague bias toward freedom to a clear and unequivocal condemnation of slavery as a social institution (except perhaps as a form of punishment lasting only for the lifetime of the criminal).

When the people who make the “slavery argument” against Catholicism can point to a single Catholic *doctrinal *statement that says slavery is ordained by God and should be part of a just social order, then I’ll accept that they have a valid point. All they have is some indefensible and wicked actions by the Church hierarchy (and far more failures to act) tacitly endorsing a vile social system. That’s bad enough, but it doesn’t make the point they want to make, which is that the Chruch’s official, dogmatic teaching has changed. As far as I can see, it did not change (in the sense of diametrically contradicting itself, which is the kind of “change” Catholics deny). It developed in the direction of a complete condemnation rather than qualified disapproval.

Edwin
 
I agree with the forum thread that there were many types of slavery. Indentured slaves worked off their debts and were freed. Some were similar to apprentices. They worked for their master and learned the trade or simply worked off the debt they owed him or owed someone else. America had indentured servants. Owners would pay for their cost of travel to America and they would have to work 4 to 7 years to pay it back.

Even factory owners in the nineteen and early twentieth century had factory workers live in their mill houses and buy their food and supplies from the mill stores. Very little money exchanged hands.

Chattel slavery in the Christian community was limited but became more prevalent during the 16th century when the Portugese, Spanish and English got involved in the African trade to the Americas. Pope Paul III condemned slavery of the American Indians in 1535.
 
Thanks, the article from New Advent 1910 is excellent. It explains the whole history of serfs. I am looking into getting the book “The Popes and Slavery”.
From Advent article…
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. In 1871 a writer had the temerity to assert that the Papacy had not its mind to condemn slavery" (Ernest Havet, “Le christianisme et ses origines”, I, p. xxi). He forgot that, in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be “a great crime” (magnum scelus); that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; that Urban VIII forbade it in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741; that Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade and Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, in the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the “supreme villainy” (summum nefas) of the slave traders. Everyone knows of the beautiful letter which Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed to the Brazilian bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery – a letter to which the bishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church.
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Not to take away anything from the serious nature of this subject but I wonder if the “Smurfs” name has any relationship to the serfs.:o
 
Hey everyone, thanks for far for taking the time to write these thorough explanations and to dig up some links for me. Now I have to do some more research!

The guy I am conversing with (funny how you assumed it was a woman just because he is a “feminist”) is going to say that the Church was unenlightened about the nature of women (quoting Aquinas and the Fathers), and so was wrong that they should not be admitted to holy orders. I am trying to argue that who can receive holy orders is really a doctrinal issue of supreme importance… and that Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium could not just be wrong about something so important for 2,000 years.

If anyone continues to find more things on the Church and slavery, please post it. This forum is a great resource.

PS: Re: Smurfs and serfs… have you ever heard the joke that the Smurfs were all about communism?
iamlost.com/features/smurfs/commies.shtml
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs_and_communism
Pax
 
AngelicDoctor said:
By the way,… it would propbably be a good idea to keep any replies focussed on the question of the Church’s stance on slavery. There are plenty of threads on women’s ordinations elsewhere. Any Church historians out there?
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Christ died as a slave for our sins. We are all slaves to some degree; some have or had larger crosses to bear. The Bible relates the history of man and the time it took for God’s plan to bring Love to all through the death of his only son. Today we still do not hear his word and are subjects and slaves to sins.
 
Chattel slavery has always been condemned (this is what is meant nowadays by simply the word “slavery,” but historially the word “slavery” hada much more broad meaning including other forms of involuntary servitude). This is treating people like animals and selling them, breeding them, etc. Pope Paul III in the 1500s called such folks who perpretrated such kinds of slavery as satellites of Satan.

That beign said, other forms of involuntary servitude were and still are allowed (even by the US Constitution). This would be like prison labor. I would assume the Angelic Doctor would know this:D as St. Thomas Aquinas in one of his works (I forget which one) discusses how salvery is unnatural and disordered unless it is a punishment for other disordered behavior.

Likewise, even in the OT, the kind of “slaves” the Jews had were more like servants, who worked for food, clothing, and shelter, rather than money, but other than that were free to marry, have kids, and be human beings. However, the Egyptians held the Jews in the bad kind of slavery–chattel slavery.
 
Hopefully someone can answer this. Was the chattel slavery from the fifteenth century on that the Portugese, Spanish, French and English perpetuated condoned by those governments ? Which trading companies ran it? Did the governments receive tax revenue from it?
 
I looked up the Dutch West Indies Trading company and found alot of information on the slave trade. I wasn’t sure if the slave trade was similar to the pirate industry or not; whether it was accepted or frowned on.

This quote seem to sums it up…

“Recently (2006), Southwark Bishop Thomas Butler, at the Anglican Church’s General Synod stated “The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country’s industrial development”.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_trade
 
Contarini said:
I don’t think the Church was wrong on the doctrinal issue: owning slaves is not always a sin (although enslaving innocent people is always a sin). For instance, if you inherited slaves in the 19th-century South and had no legal way of freeing them, and no opportunity to get them across the border, the moral thing to do would be to continue in legal ownership of them but to treat them with dignity and respect and free them whenever opportunity offered (and of course to work for a change in the laws and social structures that supported slavery). Much as I respect the Northern abolitionists and honor my spiritual ancestors’ role in abolitionism, I think that gradual, compensated emancipation would have been far preferable to what actually happened. Look at Brazil: it’s true that slavery wasn’t abolished there till about 20 years after the United States, but it’s also true that they managed to do it without killing half a million people in a bloody civil war.

Rodney Stark (not a Catholic) has written some valuable (if exaggerated) commentary on the Catholic Church’s stance on slavery. Stark points to repeated Catholic condemnations of the slave trade, and to the fact that generally the slave codes in Catholic countries were more humane and more respectful of the slaves’ dignity than those in Protestant countries. He also points to Catholic opposition to racism and openness to intermarriage. He does overstate things, but he makes some good points.

I think the point where the Church can be severely criticized is in the practical application of its teachings. The Inquisition condemned the slave trade, but the Papacy never put the Portuguese and other Catholic slave-trading countries under inderdict. Granted, the slave trade flourished at a time when the Church had little practical pull with Catholic countries, being dependent on them for support. But the Church could have put its authority on the line and faced the consequences, and it ought to have done so. The Church also ought to have insisted as a matter of dogma that all children are born free, so that slavery could not possibly last more than one generation (I suppose you could argue that this would simply have led slaveowners to commit infanticide, but that’s no excuse and only underlines the wickedness of slavery in the first place.) And there are a bunch of other ways in which the Church could have done a lot more than it did.

In other words, I think the Church’s official position as I understand it erred not in what it said but in what it did not say. It needed to be sharpened and extended from a vague bias toward freedom to a clear and unequivocal condemnation of slavery as a social institution (except perhaps as a form of punishment lasting only for the lifetime of the criminal).

When the people who make the “slavery argument” against Catholicism can point to a single Catholic *doctrinal *statement that says slavery is ordained by God and should be part of a just social order, then I’ll accept that they have a valid point. All they have is some indefensible and wicked actions by the Church hierarchy (and far more failures to act) tacitly endorsing a vile social system. That’s bad enough, but it doesn’t make the point they want to make, which is that the Chruch’s official, dogmatic teaching has changed. As far as I can see, it did not change (in the sense of diametrically contradicting itself, which is the kind of “change” Catholics deny). It developed in the direction of a complete condemnation rather than qualified disapproval.

Edwin
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I like to know how having slaves is not a sin?
 
He said that Jesus condoned slavery, and thus was subject to the cultural norms of the time…
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Jesus taught using examples from His time. In fact most of His teachings reflected some tangible reality of the world rhather than use absract language.

E.g. He taught that ‘if a man wants to be great, he must be slave of all’. But that does not prove He condoned slavery. That is purely an illustration that 'one must practice humility and be a servant to others, not their master.

It is absolutely nonsensical to say the Lord condoned slavery. That is the complete opposite to what He taught. He, the Son of God should lower Himself below the Angels, take on a human [animal] nature and ‘become one like us’ is irreconcileable with supporting slavery. If He did, He would never have taken on human nature. He would have lorded it over nature as God, which He is 100% justified as God to do
 
Jesus condoned slavery
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Jesus taught using examples from His time. In fact most of His teachings reflected some tangible reality of the world rhather than use absract language.

E.g. He taught that ‘if a man wants to be great, he must be slave of all’. But that does not prove He condoned slavery. That is purely an illustration that 'one must practice humility and be a servant to others, not their master.

It is absolutely nonsensical to say the Lord condoned slavery. That is the complete opposite to what He taught. He, the Son of God should lower Himself below the Angels, take on a human [animal] nature and ‘become one like us’ is irreconcileable with supporting slavery. If He did, He would never have taken on human nature. He would have lorded it over nature as God, which He as God, would be 100% justified to do
 
AngelicDoctor said:
Question: What do you say to the charge that the Church had it wrong for centuries regarding the issue of slavery?
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Your moral view that slavery is unacceptable is simply the product of the economic and political circumstances you happen to be in.

Only in some societies is it realistic for people to choose the type of work that they do, or move between employers. The United States is currently very lucky in that respect. However not all societies will for all time be like the United States today. In Britain much was once made of the sacred “right to strike”. Now you almost never hear that said. Our fierce political stuggles, twenty years later, turn out to have been about nothing.
 
Sixtus said:
It is absolutely nonsensical to say the Lord condoned slavery. That is the complete opposite to what He taught.
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Sixtus, thanks for this take on the Gospels. What about if one said that St. Paul taught that slavery was morally permissible. (I am no historian, so I do not know what the conditions or forms of slavery were at that time)…
 
Malcolm_McLean said:
Your moral view that slavery is unacceptable is simply the product of the economic and political circumstances you happen to be in.
quote]

I guess that the people who bring up the issue of slavery mean, primarily, the brutal, dehumanizing and exploitative forms of slavery. … .the kind that, regardless of economic and political circumstances, would be a violation of human dignity.
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Sixtus said:
Jesus taught using examples from His time. In fact most of His teachings reflected some tangible reality of the world rhather than use absract language.

E.g. He taught that ‘if a man wants to be great, he must be slave of all’. But that does not prove He condoned slavery. That is purely an illustration that 'one must practice humility and be a servant to others, not their master.

It is absolutely nonsensical to say the Lord condoned slavery. That is the complete opposite to what He taught. He, the Son of God should lower Himself below the Angels, take on a human [animal] nature and ‘become one like us’ is irreconcileable with supporting slavery. If He did, He would never have taken on human nature. He would have lorded it over nature as God, which He as God, would be 100% justified to do
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correct me if I am wrong but I thought Jesus said “servant” not slave.
 
childofmary1143 said:
I like to know how having slaves is not a sin?
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I gave an example in my post. How would a person in the circumstances I described avoid committing a sin? I do not accept the view that we can possibly be put in a situation where every possible action is sinful. If you couldn’t free your slaves (because the law prevented you, for instance), then the only way to avoid owning them would be to sell them to someone else, which would be far worse. (That being said, I think the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1846 did exactly the right thing in not allowing a slaveowner to become a bishop, even though he pled exactly these excuses and their refusal caused a schism–they were quite right to send a message of uncompromising opposition to slavery–has the MEC in the South maintained a policy of only allowing non-slaveowners to hold office in the Church, that might over time have had some impact on the broader society.)

Slavery is a social evil and is a sinful institution, but individual slaveowners were only sinning if their actions were either violating the human dignity of the people who are legally their slaves, or were serving to perpetuate the institution of slavery. That means that in practice there may have been no slaveowners in history who didn’t commit sin in so doing. But I thought I could hypothetically imagine a circumstance in which it might not be sin.

As others have said, it also depends on the form of “slavery” we are talking about.

The main reason I said what I did is that not only did the Church not say historically that slaveowning was always sinful, but the New Testament doesn’t either. I’m trying to account for this in a manner that doesn’t excuse slavery as an institution but also doesn’t claim that Our Lord and the Apostles (to quote one 19th-century abolitionist) failed in their duty. However, I may have been wrong. I was certainly not in any way condoning slavery as an institution.

Edwin
 
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