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GKC
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First time in 1961. Seriously, beginning in 1964. Massively collected him since 1965. And on it goes. And Belloc, Lewis, Williams, Lunn, Knox, Sayers, Tolkien, and so forth.I was wondering, GKC, if you’d read GKC.
Books-R-Me.
GKC
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PRmerger
Guest
:frighten:
(No, no, NO! I’m not one of those! But I’m just sayin’.
I attended a Catholic all girls high school and then a Catholic all-women’s college in the late 80’s, where I fell initially for a lot of feminist ideoogy. I quickly came to my senses, but still have retained a little bit. Also, I’m a mommy of 4 daughters, so I am a bit sensitive to feminine issues. I hate, hate, HATE comments I hear from otherwise fantastic dads to their sons, “You’re acting like a girl!” or comments I hear on the ball field, “You throw like a girl!”
As IF! You WISH you could throw like a girl!)
Wow. Where did that come from? :coolinoff:
Off my soapbox now. I think this rant comes from having too much time on my hands, and if I get off this computer that means I have to clean my house…
I think I’ll just stay here. DH (who’s a teacher and home during the summer) is getting tires for our minivan. DDs spend the night at Grandma’s…so I’m home alone!
I’m glad you listed a female author/theologian! (Don’t know what gender “Williams” and “Lunn” are)
(No, no, NO! I’m not one of those! But I’m just sayin’.
I attended a Catholic all girls high school and then a Catholic all-women’s college in the late 80’s, where I fell initially for a lot of feminist ideoogy. I quickly came to my senses, but still have retained a little bit. Also, I’m a mommy of 4 daughters, so I am a bit sensitive to feminine issues. I hate, hate, HATE comments I hear from otherwise fantastic dads to their sons, “You’re acting like a girl!” or comments I hear on the ball field, “You throw like a girl!”
As IF! You WISH you could throw like a girl!)
Wow. Where did that come from? :coolinoff:
Off my soapbox now. I think this rant comes from having too much time on my hands, and if I get off this computer that means I have to clean my house…
I think I’ll just stay here. DH (who’s a teacher and home during the summer) is getting tires for our minivan. DDs spend the night at Grandma’s…so I’m home alone!
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GKC
Guest
Williams is Charles Williams, novelist, poet, historian and friend of Lewis. Lunn is Arnold Lunn, pioneer competitive skier, mountaineer, RC convert, novelist and way-too-unknown RC apologist. These folks comprise a part of my book collecting.
GKC
GKC
:frighten:
I’m glad you listed a female author/theologian! (Don’t know what gender “Williams” and “Lunn” are)
(No, no, NO! I’m not one of those! But I’m just sayin’.
I attended a Catholic all girls high school and then a Catholic all-women’s college in the late 80’s, where I fell initially for a lot of feminist ideoogy. I quickly came to my senses, but still have retained a little bit. Also, I’m a mommy of 4 daughters, so I am a bit sensitive to feminine issues. I hate, hate, HATE comments I hear from otherwise fantastic dads to their sons, “You’re acting like a girl!” or comments I hear on the ball field, “You throw like a girl!”
As IF! You WISH you could throw like a girl!)
Wow. Where did that come from? :coolinoff:
Off my soapbox now. I think this rant comes from having too much time on my hands, and if I get off this computer that means I have to clean my house…
I think I’ll just stay here. DH (who’s a teacher and home during the summer) is getting tires for our minivan. DDs spend the night at Grandma’s…so I’m home alone!
C
Contarini
Guest
But in this case we have the organs of that authority–Pope, Council, and a Doctor of the Church–teaching what you seem to regard as unorthodoxy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
To compare this with Nancy Pelosi explicitly contradicting what the Pope and bishops say is truly odd.
When St. Louis IX said that the best way for a layman to argue with a Jew (or by extension other critics of Catholic Christianity) was to stick your sword into his body as far as it would go, he wasn’t saying something that went against what appeared at the time to be the teaching of the Church! (And while I know that canonization doesn’t equal infallibility, I do not think that Nancy Pelosi’s chances of canonization are high unless she repents of some of her present views
)It was acting–on the wrong side!
I’m not quite sure what your point is. IV Lateran was enjoining persecution. It wasn’t trying to prevent persecution.
Edwin
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PRmerger
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"First, the issue Lateran IV (1215) addressed was not the “extermination” of heretics in the sense of killing them. Anti-Catholics have been confused by the use of the Latin extermino in the Council’s decree and **have assumed the word means the same as the English verb “exterminate.” It does not. **
For example, the (non-Catholic) Cassell’s Latin Dictionary points out that extermino is derived from ex (from or out of) and terminus (boundary). In English it has come to mean pushing beyond the boundary of life, but it doesn’t have that meaning in Latin. Cassell’s defines extermino as “to drive beyond the boundaries; hence lit[eral meaning], to drive out, expel, banish . . . transf[erred meaning] to put aside, remove.” Cassell’s does not list “kill,” “exterminate,” or any equivalent as a definition." Source. (bold mine)
Yes, to extermino them, IOW.
Firstly, I have never said that this was unorthodox teaching that was presented as orthodoxy.
I have said that I did not ever consider Ex Surge as proclaiming, "It is the will of God that heretics be burned at the stake.’
As Jimmy Akin said, (source already provided): “If the Church condemned the proposition that it is contrary to the will of the Spirit to put heretics to death,** that does not mean that the Church holds that it is the will of the Spirit to do so. **There is the possibility that the application of the death penalty in such circumstances is one that the Spirit willed in one age but does not will today. There is also the possibility that he wills it in the case of some offenses against the faith but not others, or that he wills it in the case of some individuals but not others, or that he neither wills for nor against it.” (bold mine)
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PRmerger
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No. I don’t think it is correct to say “it is now recognized to be unorthodox.”
Not sure what you’re saying here.
Could you please state what, exactly, you think is the “actual orthodox” Catholic position regarding heresy and capital punishment?
Indeed.
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Contarini
Guest
I’ve encountered this argument before. I agree that the word “extermino” does not necessarily mean “kill”–it could mean exile (or, for that matter, it could mean “convince of the error of their ways”–it might even possibly mean “shut up in prison so that they don’t influence others”). That is one of the reasons I included Aquinas’s theological discussion, and why I insisted above that common practice *is *evidence of the Church’s “ordinary” teaching when combined with official statements. In other words, when we look at Aquinas and at the legal code of the 13th century, we see that in fact the way heretics were “exterminated” was by means of capital punishment. Hence, there is overwhelming reason to conclude that this is what the Fathers of IV Lateran assumed and intended. The burden of proof is on you to show that they wanted the civil authorities to change the punishment for heresy from death to something else.
Then it’s not clear what you are saying.
I think that your reluctance here is unfounded in any sound hermeneutical or historical principles and proceeds solely from the fact that the historical evidence is extremely inconvenient for your position.
Perhaps you can point me to the historian (not apologist) who says that Leo didn’t really mean to say that God wanted heretics burned?
You guys don’t torture heretics any more–you torture language and logic instead
.Are you trying to suggest that Pope Leo didn’t mean his readers to believe that it was God’s will to burn heretics, or simply that a Catholic can submit to the authority of Exsurge Domine without thinking that it is God’s will to burn heretics? Because I am addressing solely the former and not the latter. I have shown you several pieces of evidence all indicating that heretics should be executed. You have provided absolutely *no *reason to interpret these documents in any other way. Instead, you provide clever arguments showing that they could logically mean something else. Fine. I’m interested in what they were understood to mean at the time. My point is that Catholics in the early sixteenth century had every reason to think that the Church taught that heretics should be executed, and *no *good reason to think otherwise.
If you say “but in fact they were wrong–it turns out that the Church didn’t teach that,” it follows that “the Church” is something divorced from historical reality. It isn’t a visible, historical institution to which one can point at any given moment in history with some confidence that one knows what it is and what it teaches.
Furthermore, I don’t find Akin’s qualifications very comforting. When we say “the Church no longer believes in killing heretics,” that is generally understood to mean “the Church believes that it would be wrong to kill heretics.” If the Church simply believes that it doesn’t have to hand heretics over for execution or advise the civil authorities to forbid heresy on pain of death, then indeed not much has changed. And in fact, in that case, the paranoid fundamentalists were right all along. Rome indeed “never changes,” and hence non-Catholics can never trust you. If circumstances change, you might decide you want to start killing us again.
However, if you are willing to defend this position, then indeed you can claim that the Catholic Church teaches what it has always taught. It remains to be seen whether the Pope and bishops would agree with this interpretation.
Edwin
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GKC
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PRmerger
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After reading the document I would conclude that its implication was that the CC was calling Martin Luther back home with open arms.
It was also a call to all Catholics to oppose theological errors: No one of sound mind is ignorant how destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds these various errors are, how opposed they are to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church who is the mother of all the faithful and teacher of the faith; how destructive they are of the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline, namely obedience. This virtue is the font and origin of all virtues and without it anyone is readily convicted of being unfaithful
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GKC
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No. I meant this guy (this is a good intro to him, by Thomas Howard, whom I also accumulate):
touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-10-033-f
GKC
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Deo_Volente
Guest
Grace & Peace!
Now, again, to be fair, I can understand why the Church would teach what it did. It had much more to do with culture and politics (particularly in light of the Crusades, which closes out the canons of Lateran 4) than with the Gospel. That, in itself, is nothing to recommend it as good, nor does it do anything to excuse it, but it does go some way to put it in context. (Incidentally, that’s the only way I can understand the definition of infallibility coming out of Vatican I–that it was politically and culturally motivated given Italy’s growing nationalism and the seizure of papal lands).
PR, history is a difficult thing. It is not pretty. I’m sure you know this. I’m sure you know that it’s also incumbent upon us to engage with history, to wrestle with it as part of what it means to be human. One of my fears in this conversation, though, is that the general catechizing tendency (which you have decried already, and I’m with you across the board–Roman catechesis, Anglican, what have you) is for people to say, “If you believe what we tell you to believe *now, *you shouldn’t go wrong.” I think there’s a case that can be made for that as a way of understanding faithfulness and that’s fine.
But it’s subtextual tendency is to say, “history didn’t happen. What we said *then, *what we did then doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t affect us. It doesn’t touch us. It has no repercussions. You don’t have to wrestle with it.” But such a statement is problematic in a historical religion, and proves a greater complication in a Church in which infallibility plays a particularly important role. It leads us to say things like, “Just because the Church said x doesn’t mean that it actually meant what it appears to have said, even though history suggests that what it appears to have said is what it was understood to have said at the time. When the Church says x, it could very well mean xprime, or even y.” I think that’s difficult terrain to navigate.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
Indeed. The Church taught the forced expulsion of heretics from any and all Christian lands. Not quite extermination as we understand the term today. But it certainly falls under the rubric of persecution.
Perhaps I have misunderstood you. I have taken your previous posts to indicate that you believe that a teaching that said that heretics should be persecuted represented an unorthodox teaching. And I’ve agreed with you, insofar as I understood that that was what you were saying. Could you set me straight in this regard, then?
Alright. But what about persecution of heretics as articulated in Lateran 4?
Methinks we’re entering some pretty jesuitical territory here, playing a round of “Keeping Mommy Good.” But that’s alright. I understand that this may be a position and a game you’re forced to play.
What I hear you saying is this: “The teaching that it is right to persecute heretics is a teaching that I do not understand to be unorthodox. In other words, I understand it to be perfectly orthodox.”
I was saying that a 12th century peasant who insisted that it was orthodox teaching to treat heretics humanely would probably have been branded a heretic himself (witness Luther).
My thought is that the orthodox position would frown on killing heretics. But capital punishment is only part of the issue. Persecution in general is the larger issue. I would imagine that the orthodox position would frown on the persecution of heretics, too. But it’s clear that in the 12th Century, the Church taught in a valid (to Roman Catholics) Ecumenical Council that persecuting heretics was great, part of the good news of what it means to be Christian. Which means that either the Church was not delivering orthodox teaching, or that orthodoxy is relative. Those are the only conclusions I can draw. I would prefer to believe the former, given the consequences of the latter.
Now, again, to be fair, I can understand why the Church would teach what it did. It had much more to do with culture and politics (particularly in light of the Crusades, which closes out the canons of Lateran 4) than with the Gospel. That, in itself, is nothing to recommend it as good, nor does it do anything to excuse it, but it does go some way to put it in context. (Incidentally, that’s the only way I can understand the definition of infallibility coming out of Vatican I–that it was politically and culturally motivated given Italy’s growing nationalism and the seizure of papal lands).
PR, history is a difficult thing. It is not pretty. I’m sure you know this. I’m sure you know that it’s also incumbent upon us to engage with history, to wrestle with it as part of what it means to be human. One of my fears in this conversation, though, is that the general catechizing tendency (which you have decried already, and I’m with you across the board–Roman catechesis, Anglican, what have you) is for people to say, “If you believe what we tell you to believe *now, *you shouldn’t go wrong.” I think there’s a case that can be made for that as a way of understanding faithfulness and that’s fine.
But it’s subtextual tendency is to say, “history didn’t happen. What we said *then, *what we did then doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t affect us. It doesn’t touch us. It has no repercussions. You don’t have to wrestle with it.” But such a statement is problematic in a historical religion, and proves a greater complication in a Church in which infallibility plays a particularly important role. It leads us to say things like, “Just because the Church said x doesn’t mean that it actually meant what it appears to have said, even though history suggests that what it appears to have said is what it was understood to have said at the time. When the Church says x, it could very well mean xprime, or even y.” I think that’s difficult terrain to navigate.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
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GKC
Guest
Akins wrote a good essay, sort of what we used to call in the AF a good posture in a defensive crouch.After reading the document I would conclude that its implication was that the CC was calling Martin Luther back home with open arms.
It was also a call to all Catholics to oppose theological errors: No one of sound mind is ignorant how destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds these various errors are, how opposed they are to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church who is the mother of all the faithful and teacher of the faith; how destructive they are of the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline, namely obedience. This virtue is the font and origin of all virtues and without it anyone is readily convicted of being unfaithful
But what did it imply with respect to heretics and how they might be treated?
Leo lists 41 errors, #33 being the error that heretics being burned is against the will of the Spirit. Akin supposes a few things that might have meant. How would the error be phrased, to refute it, and make it positively true? One might say that a positive true expression was that that heretics be burned was not against the will of the Holy Spirit. This might mean some such heretics, or all such heretics, or selected such heretics, might be burned, as a reflection of the Holy Spirit’s will. It cannot mean that burning heretics, in all instances, is contrary to the will of the Holy Spirit. That was what was condemned.
What does it imply is the proper, or potentially proper, course for the faithful authorities, and individuals, with respect to heretics and the will of the Holy Spirit, then, in that environment, with respect to those heretics, with respect to the other 40 errors listed?
GKC
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rinnie
Guest
Hey PR, That kind of reminds me of the saying that Women and Men are equal. They asked a women if she agreed with that. And the women said I do not! They asked why, she said why would a women want to down grade herself like that!:frighten:
I’m glad you listed a female author/theologian! (Don’t know what gender “Williams” and “Lunn” are)
(No, no, NO! I’m not one of those! But I’m just sayin’.
I attended a Catholic all girls high school and then a Catholic all-women’s college in the late 80’s, where I fell initially for a lot of feminist ideoogy. I quickly came to my senses, but still have retained a little bit. Also, I’m a mommy of 4 daughters, so I am a bit sensitive to feminine issues. I hate, hate, HATE comments I hear from otherwise fantastic dads to their sons, “You’re acting like a girl!” or comments I hear on the ball field, “You throw like a girl!”
As IF! You WISH you could throw like a girl!)
Wow. Where did that come from? :coolinoff:
Off my soapbox now. I think this rant comes from having too much time on my hands, and if I get off this computer that means I have to clean my house…
I think I’ll just stay here. DH (who’s a teacher and home during the summer) is getting tires for our minivan. DDs spend the night at Grandma’s…so I’m home alone!
Just kidding!!
Oh Girl 4 daughters. God be with you! I have one and that did me in
So hey hope you enjoyed that time alone. I know that we very seldem get it.
R
rinnie
Guest
On Exsurge Domine, I agree that the burden of proof lies in this matter Jimmy said. And as he said Canon Law provides that NO DOCTRINES is UNDERSTOOD to be INFALLIBLY defined unless it is CLEARLY Established as such.
I would like to define it myself, but for what its worth who cares. But may I?
Is it the will of the Spirit to put heretics ot death? I say yes. Now let me answer this in a Catholic view which I know Edwin you will not agree but its my call.
To put heretics to death would be to excommunicate them from the CC. Okay now how is that putting them to death. Simple, You are cutting them off from the Living Church Christ and cutting them off food. The bread of eternal life. Without the bread from heaven you will starve the soul. What is worse death of the Soul or death of the body?
I would like to define it myself, but for what its worth who cares. But may I?
Is it the will of the Spirit to put heretics ot death? I say yes. Now let me answer this in a Catholic view which I know Edwin you will not agree but its my call.
To put heretics to death would be to excommunicate them from the CC. Okay now how is that putting them to death. Simple, You are cutting them off from the Living Church Christ and cutting them off food. The bread of eternal life. Without the bread from heaven you will starve the soul. What is worse death of the Soul or death of the body?
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PRmerger
Guest
So I’ve been out of town for a few days and have been thinking about your questions during that time. I admit that I have struggled with a response to the documents which assert that heretics ought to be expulsed.
I find in this discussion a parallel to dialogues I’ve had with atheists who point out the OT passages in which God commands, essentially, genocide. While Christians have made many attempts to provide apologia for this, each argument presented seems a bit, well, lame. See Jimmy Akin: “Hard Sayings of the OT”.
Similarly, I can see why non-Catholics are not convinced by the arguments of Catholics that the CC did not promote the persecution of heretics.
In the end, I suppose when confronted with the history of the church’s persecution of heretics I have to resign myself, like I do when confronted with OT verses of a destructive God, to this: there are some “hard sayings of the CC”.
J
josie_L
Guest
I know that in praxis the Church has consigned some heretics to the flames, yet it has never taught as you say that “it is good to burn heretics at the stake.” I would think that Luther’s comment is more a denunciation of the practice (although he himself incited violence) rather than a denunciation of a teaching held by the Church. In fact, I’m in the process of reading a book called “The Spanish Inquisition” by Henry Kamen that cites a bull issued on the 18 of April 1482 by Sixtus IV which castigated the excesses of the Inquisition, and which the Historian Henry Charles Lea stated was extraodinary because “for the first time heresy was declared to be, like any other crime, entitled to a fair trial and simple justice” (as quoted in Kamen’s book).
T
tomarin
Guest
This strikes me as more than a little disingenuous. Jan Hus was burnt at the stake during the Council of Constance, and I find it hard to believe that part of the motivation wasn’t to make an example of him, and I have no reason to believe that there wasn’t a solid consensus among the church hierarchy that this was “a good thing” to do. Doesn’t taking an act like that constitute a form of teaching – saying this is what happens to people who teach heresy publicly? If it doesn’t then how do we regard it? Just a bit of light entertainment?
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