What steps has the Church historically taken for abolitionism?

[sidetrack]

Did the Church ever take big steps in abolitionism throughout history or was it silent on the issue?.Did it give into that old thought that black people were descendents of Cush and b/c of Cush’s offense to Noah and Noah saying that Cush’s descendents will serve Shems it was complacent with the thought of black people being slaves?.Was it doing abolitionist stuff in the .U.S. before the Civil war?.A clear example someone in the Church’s being againest slavery is Bartolome de las Casas vouching for the Carib natives (although he did suggest black slvaes as substitues for the native ones a choice he’d regret gravely).

 

[HelenRose]

Here is a link to Wikipedia on this subject.

%between%
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slaveryCatholic_Church_and_slavery

It is real easy to condemn past attitutes without understanding what the world was like at that time.

Slavery had been an universal custom and a custom that still exists in this world and accepted by quite a few cultures.

It was a gradual change of attitude and I will maintain that it was Christian development through out the ages to finally come to the realization the we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

[HelenRose]

The culture of Slavery was an Universal system and one that continues today in some parts of the world.

The Bible does say that slaves should remain obedient to their masters but it also makes clear that masters were to treat their slaves as brothers.

Paul sent Onesimus who was a slave back to Philemon his master. Paul called Onesimus “my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment.” Philemon 1:10.

He told Philemon that Onesimus that: 'no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me" Philemon 1:16.

The church started this journey with Paul and is still on that journey to abolish slavery through out the world.

To change the basic social structure of those times would be like suddenly telling our culture to give up cars. It simply was not possible to make such a radical change of human thought.

 

[KP3243]

The church was the first institution in this country to educate African Americans! Sixty years before Colombus even found the Americas the Church condemned the inslavement of people there are dozens of Papal Bulls that strongly condemn slavery. Saint Paul said a slave should obey their master but strongly stated that the master should be loving and just and use the teachings of Christ when dealing with their slaves. Early Church fathers like Saint John Cryssondom stronglyB condemned slavery. You also have to remember there were not a lot of Catholics in the US until the late 1800s and Catholics were viewed as inferior. It wasn’t until the 1950s Catholics were finally viewed equally. There is still a lot of Catholic bias in this country especially in the South. The Church also encouraged the civil rights movement. It may have cost the only Catholic President his life.

 

[St_Francis]

The system of chattel slavery as existed in the US was very different from the slavery that was around in Bible times.

The Church did indeed condemn chattel slavery when it began, but steps for abolition are the type of thing that laypersons are to undertake.

 

[HelenRose]

The system of chattel slavery as existed in the US was very different from the slavery that was around in Bible times.

The Church did indeed condemn chattel slavery when it began, but steps for abolition are the type of thing that laypersons are to undertake.

You are correct. This is the responsibility of laypersons.

Think of it this way. The Church has condemned abortion (which is a form of slavery - the belief that one owns and can destroy a human’s life at will). There are Catholics and non-Catholic who ignore the will of the Church. There are even priests who will ignore the will of the Church in this matter. Pope’s can decree an action. Popes may try to lessen the evil of the actions of human behavior but people will often ignore the will of the Church.

Slavery is still part of our culture as abortion. It is the responsibility as laypersons to recognize this and do everything in our power to stop it.

 

[poche]

i can’t speak for everybody in the church but i do know that the first resident bishop of new orleans disliked it a lot. in one instance during an audiencia where ‘punishment’ was being meted out to the slaves he stood up and publicly excoriated the governor and everyone else involved with the whole affair.

 

[_Abyssinia]

In the 1st to 2nd century AD Ignatuius and Polycarp freed their slaves

Source: Pages 28,29 Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations, Letter III by Edward C Rogers

2nd century Saint Ovidius emancipated 5000 slaves

In the 3rd century, Bishop of Carthage, Cypran wrote a letter denouncing slavery to a slaveholder

You, man of a day, expect from your slave obedience. Is he less a man than you? By birth he is your equal. He is endowed with the same organs, with the same reasoning soul, called to the same hopes, subject to the same laws of life in this and in the world to come. You subject him to your dominion. If he, as a man, disregard or forget your claim, what miseries you heap upon him. Impious master, pitiless despot! You spare neither blows nor whips, nor privations; you chastise him with hunger and thirst, you load him with chains, you incarcerate him within black walls; miserable man! While you thus maintain your despotism over a man, you are not willing to recognize the Master and Lord of all men

Source

4th century AD, Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, said Church property had to be sold to but slaves and then free them

The Lord will say to us, ‘why are so many unfortunate beings subject to slavery, even death, for want of being redeemed? Men are better worth preserving than metals.’

What have you to reply? Must we deprive the temples of their ornaments? But the Lord will say—’It is not necessary that the sacred things be clothed in gold

Source

Gregory of Nyssea said in a sermon at Lent

God’s greatest gift to us is the perfect liberty vouchsafed us by Christ’s saving action in time, and since God’s gifts are entirely irrevocable, it lies not even in God’s power to enslave men and women

Source - Atheist Delusions, pages 178, 179, Hart

Chrysostom preached

In Christ Jesus there is no slave. Therefore it is not necessary to have a slave. Buy

them, and after you have taught them some skill by which they can maintain themselves, set them free

Source - John Chrysostom, Commentary on Ephesians, 6:9; and Epistle addressed to the Ephesians, Homily 22:2

He who has immoral relations with the wife of a slave is as culpable as he who has the like relations with the wife of the prince: both are adulterers, for it is not the condition of the parties that makes the crime

Source - John Chrysostom, In I Thessalonians, Homily 5:2; In II Thessalonians, Homily 3:2

Augustine encouraged freeing slaves and that it was a virtue; that treating humans as property forbade Christian law. Many Bishops freed their slaves. Augustine said Christians used their money to recently redeem 120 slaves who were put on to ships by the Galatians and the Christians freed them, and reeemed many kidnapped victims

Source - Slavery and Society at Rome by Keith Bradley

 

[_Abyssinia]

Saint Remigius wrote to King of France, Clovis

Let the gate of your palace be open to all, that every one may have recourse to you for justice. Employ your great revenues in redeeming slaves

Patrick of Ireland wrote a latter to Coritcus, dencouncing ensalavent of massacre and enslaving Irish Christians

15 For Scripture says: Weep with them that weep; and again: If one member be grieved, let all members grieve with it. Hence the Church mourns and laments her sons and daughters whom the sword has not yet slain, but who were removed and carried off to faraway lands, where sin abounds openly, grossly, impudently. There people who were freeborn have been sold, Christians made slaves, and that, too, in the service of the
abominable, wicked, and apostate Picts!..19 Where, then, will Coroticus with his criminals, rebels against Christ, where will they see themselves, they who distribute baptised women as prizes-for a miserable temporal kingdom, which will pass away in a moment? As a cloud or smoke that is dispersed by the wind, so shall the deceitful wicked perish at the presence of the Lord; but the just shall feast with great constancy
with Christ, they shall judge nations, and rule over wicked kings for ever and ever. Amen

Source - Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, pages 15, 19, 3 Patrick

Council of Epaone said there would be 2 years excommunication for killing a slave. Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore gace 7 years excommunication a mistress who killed her slave

Source - Slavery and Social Death, page 192 by Orlando Patterson

For the last 40 years of his life, Bishop of Arles, Caesarius, took away the untesils and silver plates from his Church to buy Christians and set the mfree who had been enslaved in wars. He said

Our Lord celebrated his last supper in mean earthen dishes, not in [silver] plate, and we need not scruple to part with his vessels to ransom those he has redeemed with his life

Patriarch of Alexandra, Johannes Eleemosynarius, who is honoured in the Catholic Church told a slaveholder

Tell me what price can man pay to purchase a man, who was created in the image of God? Hast thou a different soul? Is he not in all things thy equal? There is neither bond nor free; all are one in Christ. We are all equal before Christ. What then is the gold you have paid for a child of God?

Bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great sanctioned the slavery of pagans but said slavery was ‘a great crime,’ ‘a cruel evil,’ that any Bishop in his disoce who permits it should be punished. He encouraged Church money to be used to obtain freedom for slaves and said those who had been freed with this money would not need to pay it back

He said

A good and salutary thing is done when men, whom nature from the beginnng created free, and whom the customs of nations had subjected to the yoke of servitude, are presented again with the freedom in which they were born

Since our Redeemer, the Creator of all creatures, wished to assume human flesh, so that by the grace of His divinity He might restore us to our pristine liberty, which has been taken away from us so that we are thereby held captive under the yoke of servitude, it is done wisely if those whom nature brought forth as free men in the beginning, and whom the law of nations placed under the yoke of servitude, are returned in freedom to that state of nature in which they were born by the benefits of manumission. So, moved by consideration of this and by feelings of piety, we make you, Montana and Thomas, serfs of the Holy Roman Church, over which with the help of God we rule, free and Roman citizens from this day, and we free all property held by you in serfdom. The statutes of the holy canons and lawful authority permit that the goods of Holy Church may be used for the redemption of captives. And so because we were taught by you, before we reached the age of eighteen, that a certain holy man named Fabius, Bishop of the church of Firman, used eleven pounds of silver from that same church for your redemption and for the redemption of your father Passivus, your brother and co-bishop, a priest at that time, and also of your mother, from the enemy, and on account of this fact you are obsessed by the fear that what was paid will be required of you after a certain interval of time, we wish to see your fear allayed by this command, that you and your heirs suffer no molestation at any time by reason of any demand for this money, nor shall you be harassed by any questioning, for the spirit of charity demands that what pious zeal expends ought not to be imposed as a burden or affliction on the redeemed

 

[_Abyssinia]

Maximus the Confessor wrote

Humankind has brought into being from itself the three greatest, primordial evils, and (to speak simply) the begetters of all vice: ignorance,…self-love and tyranny, each of which are interdependent and established through one another…God [however]…healed humanity when it was sick…[by emptying] himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil.2:7)…[thus fulfilling] the power of love,…in refashioning the human

Source - Maximus the Confessor, Epistle 2, to John the Cubicularius and Race: A Theological Account, pages 343, 369 by J Kameron Carter

Bishop of Noyan, Eligus, used Church money to free many slaves. He said

Religious men from all parts came to him, foreigners also and monks, and in whatever way he could serve he would either give them the money or share the price of the captives; for he had the greatest enthusiasm for this kind of work. Indeed, whenever he understood that a slave was being offered for sale, he hastened with the utmost speed in his mercy and immediately gave the price and freed the captive. Occasionally he redeemed from captivity at the same time as many as twenty, thirty, or even fifty; sometimes even the whole body of slaves up to a hundred souls, coming from various peoples, and of both sexes, he would free as they left the ship; there were Romans, Gauls, and Britons also, and men of Marseilles, but they were chiefly men of Saxony, who at that time in large numbers like flocks were expelled from their own lands and scattered in different countries

Source - Monumenta Germaniae Historiae, Scriptores (Hanover, 1902), Tome IV, p. 677; reprinted in Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History, (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965), pages 292, 293, editor Bruno Krusch

650 AD - Council of Châlon-sur-Saône forbade sales of slaves outside Frankish kingdom

663 AD 4th Council of Toledo permitted free slaves to take holy orders; required slaves freed by Church to stay Christians; forbade Jews to keep Christian slaves and that all Christian slaves had to be freed from Jewish slave owners

733AD, Pope Gregory ll forbade Christians to be sold to pagans, that it should be punished as equal to homocide

1. Among other crimes committed in those parts you have mentioned this, that certain of the faithful sell their slaves to the pagans for sacrifices. Which thing, brother, we think should be corrected, and we do not think you should allow it to proceed further; for it is a disgrace and an impiety. To those therefore who have done these things you should mete out the same punishment as for homicide

Source

755 AD - Archbishop of Mainz, Lullo, wrote to Pope about a priest who sold Church serfs in to slavery

But let your Holiness judge what is right and just about these things and not only of

these but of all which he did perversely during his life and which are here made clear. For he took the goods and serfs of the church committed to his care, Faegenolph our serf, and his two sons Raegenolph and Amanolph, and his wife Leobthruthe, and her daughter Amalthruthe, and he took them to Saxony and exchanged them there against a horse belonging to a man named Huelp. But Willefrid sent Raegenolph beyond the sea with Enred and gave him together with his mother into slaver

Theodorus Studitan said

Not to employ those beings, created in the image of God, as slaves

 

[_Abyssinia]

Archbishop of Lyons, Agobard, opposed slavery in Frankish Empire

Abbot Smaragda of Saint-Mihiel wrote to Charlemagne

Most merciful king, forbid that there should be any slave in your kingdom. Soon, no one doubted that slavery in itself was against divine law

Source -Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages (University of California Press: Berkeley), page 11 by Marc Bloch

876 AD - German Council of Worms said masters who without knowledge of judges’ on an offence legally punished by death who killed their slaves should be given penance for 2 years or excommunicated

Pope John VIII ( to the princes of Sardinia) said in 837 AD

There is one thing about which we should give you a paternal admonition, and unless you emend, you incur a great sin, and for this reason, you will not increase gain, as you hope, but guilt . . . . many in your area, being taken captive by pagans, are sold and are bought by your people and held under the yoke of slavery. It is evident that it is religious duty and holy, as becomes Christians, that when your people have bought them from the Greeks themselves, for the love of Christ they set them free, and receive gain not from men, but from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Hence we exhort you and in fatherly love command that when you redeem some captives from them, for the salvation of your soul, you let them go free

1120 AD - In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Council of Nablus forbade sexual relations between female slaves who were Muslims and their crusaders in the Holy land who were Muslims. If a man raped someone else’s slaves he would be exiled from the kingdom and castrated. If he raped his own slave he would be castrated

1171 AD - Christian synod at Amargh in Ireland ordered all English slaves to be freed and condemned Irish trade of English slaves

Read more on slavery here where I got a lot of this info from

The enslavement of the Canary Islanders by the Spanish was condemned by Pope Eugene IV (1431-1437). He threatened the enslavers with excommunication

Slavery in the Canary Islands was also condemned by Pope Pius II (1458-1464). Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) issued a proclamation reiterating the same position

Pope Paul III (1534-1549) denounced colonial slavery in the New World.

When Europeans began enslaving Africans as a cheap source of labor, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was asked about the morality of enslaving innocent blacks (Response of the Congregation of the Holy Office, 230, March 20, 1686). The practice was rejected, as was trading such slaves. Slaveholders, the Holy Office declared, were obliged to emancipate and even compensate blacks unjustly enslaved

Papal condemnation of slavery persisted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 bull, In Supremo, for instance, reiterated papal opposition to enslaving “Indians, blacks, or other such people” and forbade “any ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse.” In 1888 and again in 1890, Pope Leo XIII forcefully condemned slavery and sought its elimination where it persisted in parts of South America and Africa

catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0006.html

 

[hannajomar]

This is an interesting book of the first black American priest, Fr. Augustine Tolton. According to this author, the priests he encountered were against slavery and segregation, but often just kept quiet about it because they did not want to cause public outcry and offend rich donors. When they saw that he seemed to have a priestly vocation, they were shy to put him in an American seminary. So they sent him to seminary in Rome instead of causing the uproar of placing a black former slave in the same seminary as white men. I’m probably not getting this exactly right, but I highly recommend this book. My basic impression was that they were against it, but were not so zealous about speaking against it as they could have been.
amazon.com/From-Slave-Priest-Biography-Augustine/dp/158617097X

 

[poche]

This is an interesting book of the first black American priest, Fr. Augustine Tolton. According to this author, the priests he encountered were against slavery and segregation, but often just kept quiet about it because they did not want to cause public outcry and offend rich donors. When they saw that he seemed to have a priestly vocation, they were shy to put him in an American seminary. So they sent him to seminary in Rome instead of causing the uproar of placing a black former slave in the same seminary as white men. I’m probably not getting this exactly right, but I highly recommend this book. My basic impression was that they were against it, but were not so zealous about speaking against it as they could have been.
amazon.com/From-Slave-Priest-Biography-Augustine/dp/158617097X

Actually the first black priest, who eventually went on to become the 2nd bishop of Portland, was James Augustine Healy. He was born a slve in Georgia and was ordained to the priesthood in 1854. That is 25 years before Fr Tolton.

 

[hannajomar]

Actually the first black priest, who eventually went on to become the 2nd bishop of Portland, was James Augustine Healy. He was born a slve in Georgia and was ordained to the priesthood in 1854. That is 25 years before Fr Tolton.

I stand corrected. However, Tolton was the first dark-skinned African-American priest. According to wikipedia, “James Augustine Healy (April 6, 1830 – August 5, 1900) was the first African-American Roman Catholic priest and the first African-American Roman Catholic bishop in the United States. He identified and was accepted as a white Irish American, as he was of majority white ancestry; when he was ordained in 1854, his mixed-race ancestry was not widely known outside his mentors in the Catholic Church. (Augustus Tolton, a former slave who was publicly known to be black when ordained in 1886, is therefore sometimes credited as the first black Catholic priest in the U.S.) Healy was one of nine mixed-race siblings of the Catholic Healy family of Georgia who survived to adulthood and achieved many “firsts” in United States history.” This further supports my point that while the Church had no problem embracing African-Americans, it often fell short of publicly speaking out for them and publicly showing them equal treatment.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Augustine_Healy - photo of Bishop Healy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_Tolton - photo of Fr. Augustine Tolton