Myths
About the Papacy
Part III - The teachings of the
Magisterium and a history of its Fallibility
A Guest Document
by Lee Penn
Contents
A reminder by The M+G+R Foundation:
It is not our objective to harm the Catholic Faith in any way. On the
contrary, our objective is to protect the little Faith
that remains and for this it is necessary, as a first step, that the faithful be
able to
distinguish between the treasure of the Faith and the corrupt
Church Hierarchy that has failed to administer that treasure.
When an institution, and not God, becomes the object of faith, it means
that satan has stepped in and commandeered the institution. This
applies to
all religious institutions, not only to the Roman Catholic Church.
Catholic apologists say:
“When it comes to faith and morals, the
Magisterium is our divine guarantee of freedom from error. There is no
other.” (1)
and
“Through the assistance of the Holy
Spirit, the Church has for two thousand years clearly heard the voice
of the Great Shepherd.” (2)
That’s true in part: Scripture and Sacraments have indeed been handed
down to us, despite the worst efforts of many hierarchs, scribes, and
teachers. But the actual Magisterium of the Catholic Church, as it has
been in history, has included the following teachings, which at the
time had every appearance of being official, authoritative, permanent
teaching:
Support for
Crusades
and religious
warfare
In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to recapture the Holy Land
from the Muslims, saying “I, or rather the Lord, beseech you to publish
this everywhere … Christ commands it. All who die by the way, whether
by land or sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate
remission of sins. This I grant them by the power of God with which I
am invested.” (3) A present-day Catholic
apologist says, “despite their dark moments, the Crusades were
understandable and even necessary.” (4) These
“dark moments” included the massacre of Jews and Muslims when the
Crusaders seized Jerusalem in 1099, and the rape and massacre of
Christians of the Eastern Empire as well as the pillage of
Constantinople in 1204 by a wayward Crusading army – an act of
aggression that made permanent the schism between the Eastern and
Western churches, and fatally weakened the Byzantine Empire.
By 1291, the last Crusader kingdom in the Levant fell. Popes also
called, and gave indulgences for, Crusades against Albigensians in
southern France (1209-1229, called by Innocent III) and Hussites in
Bohemia (1420-1431, called by Martin V), and continued to call for
Crusades against the Turks until the late 1500s. Religious war, when
blessed by the Pope, was part of the “ordinary Magisterium” for at
least 500 years.
Ordinary Papal statecraft, outside of declared Crusades, could have
similarly gruesome results. “Successive popes poured money into
supporting the Catholic side in the French Wars of Religion. … In 1572,
after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France, during which
between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants had been butchered, Gregory XIII
ordered the celebration of a solemn ‘Te Deum’ of thanksgiving.” (5)
Gregory also had a medal struck to commemorate the event, and
commissioned a fresco, The Night of
St. Bartholomew, for the Vatican’s Royal Hall. (6)
In the early years of the Thirty Years’ War in Central Europe (a war in
which Germany lost one-third of its population (7)),
“Paul V and Gregory XV between them would pour more than 2,000,000
florins in subsidies to Catholic armies.” (8)
Such was the ordinary Magisterium, in theory and in practice, for centuries – and this teaching was binding upon
the faithful.
The Catholic Church is no longer in the business of war in the name of
religion. With the decree Dignitatis
Humanae, issued in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council, the
Church disavowed religious coercion. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul
II said, “I myself, on the occasion of the recent tragic war in the
Persian Gulf, repeated the cry: ‘Never again war!’. No, never again
war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill,
throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and
leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the
more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which
provoked the war.” (9) The Pope likewise opposed
the Persian Gulf war that the US started in 2003. Those who promote a
crusade against Islam today are rarely Catholic; they are more likely
to be Evangelical Protestant dispensationalists or extremist Israelis.
The Catholic Magisterium (in this case, on war for the faith), has changed – for the better.
Support for
absolute
government
In the West’s ongoing, centuries-long struggle for representative
government and human liberty, the Church often stood for absolute
government.
Innocent III (1198-1216) had excommunicated King John of England in
1209 for refusing to accept the Pope’s choice as Archbishop of
Canterbury. After the King submitted to the Pope, giving his realm to
the Pope as a fief, the Pope supported John’s full royal power.
Innocent III declared the Magna
Carta void because the barons had forced the king to accept
limitation of his powers, without the consent of the Pope (who was now
King John’s feudal lord). The Pope opposed a charter that said that no
one – not even the King – was above the law. For centuries, Popes acted
in the same spirit.
For almost 100 years after the French Revolution of 1789, Popes stood
firmly for a restoration of the Old Regime, the alliance of Throne and
Altar. Leo XII (1823-1829) “reinstated the feudal aristocracy, with
privileged positions, in the Papal States;” “Jews were once again
confined to ghettos and their property confiscated;” he enforced “a
harsh police state,” with press censorship, capital punishment, and
secret police. (10) Gregory XVI (1831-1846) held
onto the Papal states with the aid of French and Austrian bayonets, and
condemned liberalism in the encyclical Mirari Vos. In 1832, the Pope
issued the statement Superori Anno, denouncing
the 1830 Polish revolution against the Tsar (who was then actively
persecuting Catholics). Gregory rejected “those who under cover of
religion have set themselves against the legitimate power of princes,”
and warned bishops to resist “impostors and propagators of new ideas.” (11)
Pius IX (1846-1878) began his reign as a reformer, but reverted to his
predecessors’ attitudes after his narrow escape from a revolutionary
siege in 1848. In the 1864 Syllabus
of Errors, Pius condemned the idea that “The Roman Pontiff can,
and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress,
liberalism and modern civilization.” (12) Pius
held onto the Papal states only with foreign troops; once the French
garrison withdrew from Rome in 1870, the last of “Peter’s Patrimony”
fell into the hands of the new Italian kingdom. Pius excommunicated the
leaders of the Italian unification movement, and ordered Catholics not
to participate in the political affairs of the new state.. Papal policy
and papal teachings – at the level of encyclicals, which were issued
for the whole Church – were consistent in their opposition to political
liberalism of any kind.
The 19th Century Italian insurgents, seemingly, deserved a sentence of
excommunication by Pius IX. However, the Catholics among the Nazi
leaders (including Hitler, who was born Catholic), were never
excommunicated by the two Popes who ruled from 1933 to 1945. Nor did
Pius XII ever condemn the Nazis’ aggression against Catholic Poland. (13)
Not until June 1945 – with Hitler dead and the Third Reich defeated –
did the Pope say that Nazism was “a satanic spectre … the cult of
violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human
liberty and dignity.” (14)
With the Papacy of Leo XIII (1878-1903), a policy change began. In the
1881 encyclical Diuturnum Illud, Leo
said that “the right to rule is from God,” but “that those who may be
placed over the State may in certain cases be chosen by the will and
decision of the multitude, without opposition to or impugning Catholic
doctrine.” (15) Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) said
in the 1963 encyclical Pacem in
Terris that
“The fact that authority comes from God
does not mean that men have no power to choose those who are to rule
the State, or to decide upon the type of government they want, and
determine the procedure and limitations of rulers in the exercise of
their authority. Hence the above teaching is consonant with any
genuinely democratic form of government. … A natural consequence of
men’s dignity is unquestionably their right to take an active part in
government.” (16)
This perspective, which supports constitutional government, civil
liberty, and human rights, has been part of Church teaching only since Vatican II.
Again, the Church’s Magisterium changed – for the better, after
centuries of standing against representative and limited government.
Tacit Endorsement
of
Slavery
A history of the Church’s stance on slavery – written in 2005 for Crisis, a conservative, Republican
party-oriented Catholic magazine – shows that the Church has had a
mixed record, at best, in dealing with this ancient and brutal human
institution.
Author T. David Curp says:
“Theology worked hand-in-hand with
Christendom’s strategic imperatives to expand slavery among Christians
at the dawn of the modern era, and even led the papacy to grant
religious approval to slave-taking. … The papacy endorsed
Portuguese—and eventually Spanish—slave-taking out of cruel necessity.
Popes Eugenius IV and a later successor, Sixtus IV, both condemned
Portuguese raids in the Canary Islands in the mid–15th century in
places where Christians already lived. But these condemnations came
within the broader context of papal support for a Portuguese crusade in
Africa that did include slave-taking. Eugenius IV and his immediate
successor issued a series of bulls, including
Illius Qui (1442),
Dum Diversus (1452), and
Romanus Pontificus (1455), that
recognized the rights of the monarchs of Portugal and eventually Spain
to engage in a wide-ranging slave trade in the Mediterranean and
Africa—first under the guise of crusading, and then as a part of
regular commerce. As Pope Nicholas authorized the Portuguese in
Romanus Pontificus:
‘We [therefore] weighing all and
singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had
formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and
ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso—to invade, search out,
capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens, and other enemies of Christ
wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities,
dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever
held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual
slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the
kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions,
and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit….’
The occasional papal pronouncements against slavery earlier in the 15th
century and later in the 16th century sought to regulate particular
abuses, but they did not deny Spain and Portugal the right to engage in
the trade itself. All of these bulls were issued just prior to and
after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. … The Ottomans’ advance
on Europe, in addition to its general destructiveness, also saw Muslims
taking thousands of Christian slaves each year through piracy,
conquest, and the
devshirme tithe.
As a result, the pontiffs of the day were in no position to refuse
Portugal and Spain—two of the few great Christian powers enthusiastic
about crusading—the opportunity to develop their economic power in
whatever way they saw fit. Far from being an innocent bystander, or
merely silently complicit, the papacy fully participated in the
expansion of the European slave trade.”
(17)
Curp defends this stance taken by the Church – and several Popes:
“This was not a product of greed, but
of a thoroughly rational and tangible fear of the consequences of not
using every available means to defend a rapidly contracting
16th-century Christendom. Divorced from the context of a Europe under a
tightening Ottoman siege, papal engagement with the slave trade would
appear to confirm the worst prejudices of secular critics. Placed
within its historical environment, however, what we confront is the lay
faithful and their shepherds accepting a real evil—slavery—to avoid
their own subjugation to militant Islam.” (18)
Such a utilitarian defense, accepting an evil so that greater good may
come of it, is a standard argument in secular politics. However, this
approach is foreign to the message of the Gospels.
Later Popes – most notably, Gregory XVI, in his 1839 statement In Supremo – did condemn the slave
trade. The “Vicar of Christ” came late to this understanding; the
“heretical” Quakers and Evangelical Protestants in Great Britain had
agitated for the abolition of slavery from 1750 onward. After Brazil abolished slavery in
1889, Leo XIII issued the encyclical Catholicae
Ecclesiae (1890), saying: “the Church from the beginning sought
to completely eliminate slavery, whose wretched yoke has oppressed many
people. … This zeal of the Church for liberating the slaves has not
languished with the passage of time; on the contrary, the more it bore
fruit, the more eagerly it glowed. … We could not repudiate such a
laudable inheritance. For this reason, We have taken every occasion to
openly condemn this gloomy plague of slavery.” (19)
Finally, Vatican II issued a condemnation of slavery, torture, and
other death-dealing social evils, in the 1965 decree Gaudium et Spes:
“Furthermore, whatever is opposed to
life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia
or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the
human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind,
attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity,
such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment,
deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children;
as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as
mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all
these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison
human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than
those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor
to the Creator.” (20)
Regarding slavery, torture, and coercion of conscience, the Magisterium
got it right this time. Better late than never!
Requiring
membership
in the Roman
Catholic Church for salvation
Before Vatican II, the formal teaching of the Church about the way to
salvation was clear, and repeated with the highest level of authority
for centuries: only those who are members of the Roman Catholic Church
(and accept the authority of the Roman Pontiff) could be saved.
* Under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216),
the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) said, “One indeed is the universal
Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (21)
* In his bull Unam Sanctam (1302),
Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) said, “We declare, say, define, and
proclaim to every human creature that they by necessity for salvation
are entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (22)
* Under Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447), the Council of Florence decreed in
1442 that it “firmly believes, professes and proclaims that those not
living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and
heretics and schismatics, cannot become participants in eternal life,
but will depart “into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the
devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the
same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the
ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are
the Sacraments of the Church are of benefit for salvation … and that no
one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood
for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the
bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.” (23)
This rigorous view, which defined those not visibly in union with the
Catholic Church as damned, began to soften under Pius IX. In his 1863
encyclical Quanto conficiamur
moerore, the Pope said, “they who labor in invincible ignorance
of our most holy religion and who, zealously keeping the natural law
and its precepts engraved in the hearts of all by God, and being ready
to obey God, live an honest and upright life, can … attain eternal
life.” (24)
The Second Vatican Council was yet more generous in its view of the
possibility of salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church. Although
the Council said, “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic
Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain
in it, could not be saved,” (25) it also said:
“The Church recognizes that in many
ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the
name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety
or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. …
They also share with us in prayer and other spiritual benefits.
Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in
the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby
He is operative among them with His sanctifying power.” (26)
and
“Finally, those who have not yet
received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God.
In the first place we must recall the people to whom the testament and
the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the
flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to
God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He
issues. But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge
the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the
Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with
us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge
mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images
seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath
and all things, and as [the] Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those
also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not
know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and
moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to
them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence
deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on
their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and
with His grace strive to live a good life.” (27)
In other words, there is no automatic damnation for the “pagans, but
also Jews and heretics and schismatics” whom the Council of Florence
had cast into the eternal fire.
In this instance, the Council returned to the perspective of Christ,
who had said “when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to
myself.” (John 12:32).. Centuries of “ordinary Magisterium” – including
Conciliar and Papal decrees – that assumed (28)
the perdition of non-Catholics were thus overturned. Deo Gratias!
Use of torture
and
capital punishment
to combat heresy
Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) established the first Inquisition in 1231,
with the constitution Excommunicamus.
In 1252, Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254) issued the bull Ad Extirpanda, allowing the use of
torture to extract confessions. These tribunals, often run by
Franciscans and Dominicans, sought out heretics and other offenders
against faith and morals. Church-imposed penalties could range from
public penance to life imprisonment; those to be executed were handed
over to the secular authorities. Such “rendition” of convicted heretics
was accompanied by a ritual plea for mercy – but woe betide the local
official who did not kill the heretic; he might find himself facing the
Inquisitors. (29)
The Roman Inquisition acted under Papal authority; its courts operated
until the Papal states fell to Italian insurgents in the mid-1800s. The
Spanish Inquisition was under royal control, but was established in
1478 with Papal approval. It was Torquemada, the Church-appointed head
of the Inquisition, who suggested to the government that the Jews and
Muslims should be expelled from Spain if they did not convert to
Christianity. (30) The Spanish Inquisition
issued its last death sentence for heresy in 1824, and the institution
was ended in 1834. (31) (Its last victim, a
schoolteacher, was hanged for substituting “Praise be to God” for “Ave
Maria” in school prayers.) (32) The liberal
nationalists of the 1800s, inspired by the French Revolution, ended a
system of organized injustice that professed Christians had kept in
operation for six hundred years.
Church apologists reply that “papal infallibility falls strictly into
the province of teaching doctrine, while the Inquisition was concerned
with discipline. … The Inquisition was merely a legal entity that acted
in the name of the pope” to enquire into the guilt of suspected
heretics. (33) Nevertheless, Papal approval of
tribunals that “disciplined” heretics with torture and death was also a
Papal statement about faith and morals: that it was just and right to treat religious
enemies in this fashion.
Some Catholics still hold
this opinion. Dr. Warren Carroll, the Catholic historian, founder of
Christendom College and speaker for Mother Angelica’s EWTN, wrote that
Hitler and Stalin “would not have been free to gain power in a time
which would have taken them at their word and knew the cost and
consequences of their hatred of Christianity, which many of those
condemned by the Inquisition also nourished. Tomás de Torquemada would
have known how to deal – and to deal early – with Hitler and Stalin.” (34)
The Catholic Church now regrets these policies. The 1994 Catechism said, “In times past,
cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to
maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the
Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions
of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the
Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade
clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these
cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in
conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the
contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is
necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and
their tormentors.” (35) As apologies go, it’s a
start – even if the statement of regret is mixed with excuses for the
conduct of Church authorities.
Violation of free
will
- Censorship
Beyond all this, there’s the matter of the Index of Forbidden Books,
established in 1557 by Paul IV (1555-1559), last revised in 1948 and
(fortunately) abolished in 1966 by Paul VI. While the Index was in
force, Catholics were forbidden on pain of mortal sin to sell, own, or
read the books on the list unless they got permission from their
bishop. Violators could be excommunicated.
What’s noteworthy about the Index is what was included, and what was
excluded. English language books on the banned list included the
Anglican Book of Common Prayer (banned
in 1714), John Milton’s Paradise
Lost, philosophical books by John Locke, Jeremy Bentham,
Bernard de Mandeville, and John Stuart Mill, and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by
Edward Gibbon. (36) However, two of the deadliest books of the
20th century, Hitler’s Mein
Kampf and the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were not on the list of books that
were forbidden to Catholic readers.
Witch-hunting -
Institutionalized
Murder
The hunt for witches was an equal-opportunity obsession in the period
from 1450 to 1650; Catholics and Protestants alike used Inquisitional
methods to hunt down and destroy them.
In any case, the Popes of the time stoked the frenzy.
* Pope John XXII (1316-1334) issued the
bull Super Illius Specula in
1326, (37) “specifically authorizing the
inquisition to proceed against all sorcerers, since they adored demons
and had made ‘a pact with hell.’” (38)
* A German inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, persuaded Innocent VIII to
issue the bull Summis Desiderantes
Affectibus in 1484, which gave full Papal support for
repression of witches by the Inquisition. (39)
In 1486, Institoris published the Malleus
Maleficarum (The Hammer
Against the Witches), with Papal approval and with the 1484 bull
as a preface. (40) A Christian historian of
witchcraft reports, “The Malleus was reprinted in fourteen editions by
1520. Well-organized, impassioned, and enjoying papal approval, the Malleus became one of the most
influential of all early printed books.” (41)
The death toll from the European witch craze was about 30,000 to 50,000
over several centuries, including Catholic and Protestant regions. (42)
The frenzy died down only after the end of the religious wars in 1648,
and with the spread of scientific rationalism.
Institutionalized
Anti-semitism and
ethnic cleansing
Conflict between Christians and Jews goes back to the earliest days of
the Church; the Temple authorities arrested Peter and John soon after
Pentecost for healing the sick and preaching the Resurrection in the
Temple (Acts 3:4-4:3).
After the Church gained governmental power, and was able retaliate, it
did so – thus directly opposing what Jesus commanded – “Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). Some of the
Church Fathers, including St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Ephraim the
Syrian, St. Jerome, and St. John Chrysostom, wrote anti-Jewish
polemics. (43) The Frankish Synod of Clermont
(535) forbade Jews from holding public office; the synod of Toledo
(681) ordered the burning of Jewish books; the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215) forced Jews to wear distinctive badges on their clothing. (44)
Under Pope Paul IV (1555-1559), “the Jews of Rome were herded into
ghettos, forced to sell their property to Christians, and made to wear
yellow headgear; copies of the Talmud were searched out and burned.” (45)
Saints, synods, councils, and popes were in agreement: Jews were to be,
at best, second-class citizens of Christendom. In some instances, Popes
and other Church authorities spoke against pogroms – but civil equality
for Jews was not considered until the 19th Century, as a response to
the French Revolution.
This habit of oppression reached its climax in the Spain of their
Catholic majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella. (46)
(A century earlier, anti-Semitic riots regularly followed preaching by
St. Vincent Ferrer, (47) a Dominican who
considered himself to be the angel of the Last Judgment. (48))
In 1492, immediately after the last Muslim territory in Spain had been
conquered, the government gave Jews a choice: convert to Christianity
or go into exile. About 130,000 Jews were thus banished. (49)
The remainder, known to the authorities as “New Christians” or conversos, were always suspected
by the Inquisition of secretly practicing the Jewish faith; 13,000 were
killed in the first 12 years of the Inquisition’s existence. (50)
In 1499, the government gave Muslims the same choice: conversion or
exile. These converts, the moriscos,
also were targets for Inquisitors hunting for secret practice of
their old religion.
With religious persecution and ethnic cleansing came institutionalized
racism. In 1449, “Purity of Blood” (in Spanish, limpieza de sangre) laws had been
passed to define who was an “old Christian,” and who was a suspect “new
Christian” – or a descendant therefrom. Those without the requisite
“pure” ancestry were excluded from universities and from public office.
(Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) had condemned the 1449 “purity” laws, but
his teaching did not prevail.) (51) The last of
the “Purity of Blood” laws were not repealed until 1865.
How does the Church stand on these matters now?
On the one hand, Vatican II places the Catholic Church firmly against
religious coercion (Dignitatis Humanae)
and anti-Semitism (Lumen Gentium).
The same Council, in Gaudium et
Spes, denounced genocide, “torments inflicted on body and mind,
attempts to coerce the will itself,” and deportation as “infamies
indeed” and “supreme dishonor to the Creator.” (52)
Thus, the Church has, after nearly 2,000 years, spoken with its highest
level of authority to renounce the prejudices and practices that were
used for centuries to oppress Jews in Christian lands.
On the other hand … since 1974, there has been a cause for the
canonization of Queen Isabella, the authoress of the aforementioned
judicial murders and ethnic cleansing. Her defenders praise her faith,
morality, and charity, and say that “no scandal ever stained her
person.” (53) At the web site that promotes
Isabel’s canonization, the founder of the Miles Jesu “new ecclesial
movement,” a defender of her cause says, “The Catholic Spanish
Inquisition, just in terms of the numbers of people executed, is
nothing but a kitty-cat, or even just a little mouse, in comparison
with the killing monster of Communism.” (54)
Violation of
free
will - Opposition to
religious freedom
In his 1832 encyclical Mirari Vos, Pope
Gregory XVI said that the “shameful font of indifferentism gives rise
to that erroneous and absurd proposition that liberty of conscience must be
maintained for everyone.” (55) In his 1864
encyclical Quanta Cura, Pope
Pius IX quoted his predecessor’s 1832 ruling, and added that those who
preach “liberty of conscience and worship” are preaching “liberty of perdition.” (56)
Vatican Council II reversed this teaching, thanks be to God.
The 1965 decree Dignitatis Humanae said,
“This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to
religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune
from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any
human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a
manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly,
whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. The
council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its
foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is
known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself. This right
of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the
constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become
a civil right.” (57)
In summary …
The above-listed teachings, which were once part of the Magisterium,
are – as we now understand – errors in faith and morals. (Had we been
attentive to the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ other teachings, we
would have understood this all along.) At the highest level of
authority, its Popes and its Councils, the Roman Catholic Church has
erred – and has persisted in certain errors for centuries. It is
manifestly false to claim, as Gregory VII did in his Dictatus Papae issued in 1075,
that “the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all
eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.” (58)
Apologists defend the notion of an infallible Papacy by saying that
Popes are not protected from sin in their private lives, in their
erroneous opinions that were not given as Church teaching, and in their
disciplinary decisions. As one apologist says, “Papal infallibility,
once again, involves only the formal teaching office of the papacy. It
has nothing to do with how popes govern the affairs of the Church.” (59)
But in the above-listed cases, Popes were writing as if they meant
their decrees to be in force perpetually; they did not say these
rulings were temporary concessions to unfortunate circumstances, or
that they were private opinion. Even today, the Vatican says that the
laity must obey Church rulings in “disciplinary matters” with “docility
in charity.” (60)
No doubt, those who carried out the Inquisitions thought they were
doing just this. Present-day Vatican officialdom offers that very
defense of the Inquisitors and their deeds. During an early 2006
television program about the Inquisition, the Rev. Joseph Di Noia, the
Under Secretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, said:
"It was a mistake to torture people. However, torture was regarded as a
perfectly justified, legitimate way of producing evidence and it was
therefore legally justified." (61) The Bush
Adminstration could make the same relativistic, historical-context
defense for the present-day "necessity" for torturing American war
prisoners; the Soviets and the Nazis could have likewise said that
torture was "perfectly justified" in their struggle against enemies of
the State.
As noted above, the Church has reversed itself on these prior
teachings. Apologists for the Vatican use tortured logic to explain why
(for instance) the prior teaching that “error has no rights” and that
states ought to suppress non-Catholic faiths is not contradictory to
the current teaching that favors freedom of religion and disavows
coercion of conscience. Such verbal gymnastics are no service to
Christ, who said, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No;’ anything
more than this comes from evil.” (Matt. 5:37) Far better for the Church
authorities just to say: “We were wrong before, and have changed what
we used to teach – so that we can better serve Christ.”
REFERENCES
(1) John Mallon, “The Obedience Test,” http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=34&idsub=127&id=2402,
accessed 01/11/06. Mallon is a contributing editor for Inside the
Vatican magazine.
(2) Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction, Basilica Press,
1999, p. 15.
(3) Urban II, speech at Clermont, in Charles A.
Coulombe, Vicars of Christ, Citadel Press, 2003, p. 226.
(4) Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction, Basilica Press,
1999, p. 195.
(5) Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, Yale
University Press, 2001, p. 225.
(6) Claudio Rendina, The Popes: Histories and
Secrets, Seven Locks Press, 2002, p. 476-477.
(7) William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the
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(8) Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, Yale
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(9) John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991
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(10) Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes,
Harper San Francisco, 2000, p. 334.
(11) Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, Yale
University Press, 2001, p. 282.
(12) Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, article 80,
1864, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm,
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(13) Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity,
Atheneum, 1976, p. 490.
(14) Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity,
Atheneum, 1976, p. 493; quoted from a speech by Pius XII to the
cardinals.
(15) Leo XIII, encyclical “Diuturnum Illud,”
paras. 5, 6, in Anthony J. Mioni, Jr., The Popes Against Modern Errors:
16 Papal Documents, TAN Books and Publishers, 1999, p. 42.
(16) John XXIII, encyclical “Pacem in Terris,”
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(17) T. David Curp, “A Necessary Bondage? When
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(18) T. David Curp, “A Necessary Bondage? When
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(19) Leo XIII, “Catholicae Ecclesiae,” 1890,
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(20) Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 1965, para. 27,
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(21) Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic
Dogma, para. 430, Herder, 1957, p. 169.
(22) Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic
Dogma, para. 469, Herder, 1957, p. 187.
(23) Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic
Dogma, para. 714, Herder, 1957, p. 230.
(24) Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic
Dogma, para. 1677, Herder, 1957, p. 425.
(25) Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, 1964, ch. 2,
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(28) With a few minor exceptions: for “baptism of
blood,” and “baptism of desire.”
(29) Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity,
Atheneum, 1976, p. 253.
(30) H. W. Crocker III, Triumph, Forum
Publishing, 2001, p.. 227.
(31) John Edwards, Inquisition, Tempus
Publishing, 2003, pp. 174-175.
(32) Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity,
Atheneum, 1976, p. 308.
(33) Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction, Basilica
Press, 1999, p.. 240.
(34) Warren H. Carroll, The Glory of Christendom
(A History of Christendom, vol. 3), Christendom Press, 1993, p. 609.
(35) Catechism of the Catholic Church, para.
2296, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P80.HTM,
accessed 01/14/06.
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accessed 01/14/06.
(37) Society of Jesus USA, “Demonologists and the
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(38) Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft,
Thames and Hudson, 1980, p. 76.
(39) Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft,
Thames and Hudson, 1980, p. 79.
(40) Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft,
Thames and Hudson, 1980, p. 79.
(41) Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft,
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(42) Sandra Miesel, “Who Burned the Witches,”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_anti-Semitism,
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(45) Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners, Yale
University Press, 2001, p. 216.
(46) Karen Armstrong, Holy War, Anchor Books,
2001, pp. 458-460.
(47) Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God,
Ballantine Books, 2001, p. 7.
(48) Desmond Birch, Trial, Tribulation, and
Triumph, Queenship Publishing Co., 1996, pp. 263-264.
(49) Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God,
Ballantine Books, 2001, p. 3.
(50) Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God,
Ballantine Books, 2001, p. 7.
(51) John Edwards, Inquisition, Tempus, 2003, p.
66.
(52) Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 1965, para. 27,
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accessed 01/15/06.
(53) Warren Carroll, “Isabel of Spain, the
Catholic Queen,” http://www.queenisabel.com/history-03.html,
accessed 01/16/06.
(54) Fr. Alphonsus Maria Duran, “Queen Isabel and
the Spanish Inquisition,” http://www.queenisabel.com/history-05.html,
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(55) Gregory XVI, encyclical “Mirari Vos,” para.
14, in Anthony J. Mioni, Jr., The Popes Against Modern Errors: 16 Papal
Documents, TAN Books and Publishers, 1999, p. 7.
(56) Pius IX, encyclical “Quanta Cura,” para. 3,
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Documents, TAN Books and Publishers, 1999, p. 18.
(57) Vatican Council II, Dignitatis Humanae,
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(58) Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae, 1075,
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accessed 01/11/06.
(59) Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction, Basilica
Press, 1999, p.. 241.
(60) Catechism of the Catholic Church, article
2037, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P74.HTM,
accessed 01/06/06.
(61) Jonathan Petre, "Inquisition was a mistake
but legally justified, claims Vatican official", London Telegraph,
January 30, 2006, http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/30/ninq30.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/30/ixhome.html,
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Published on February 2, 2006
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