Wherein Bill Donohue defends the Inquisition

[Alareth]

The new Cosmos that premired on Sunday has Bill Donohue upset. He claims the section on Giordano Bruno stating that the church used to Inquisition to try and punish him is anti-catholic propaganda.

http://www.catholicleague.org/cosmos-smears-catholicism/

The ignorance is appalling. “The Catholic Church as an institution had almost nothing to do with [the Inquisition],” writes Dayton historian Thomas Madden. “One of the most enduring myths of the Inquisition,” he says, “is that it was a tool of oppression imposed on unwilling Europeans by a power-hungry Church. Nothing could be more wrong.” Because the Inquisition brought order and justice where there was none, it actually “saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.” (His emphasis.)

The Inquisition was all friendly eh?

 

[marplots]

The new Cosmos that premired on Sunday has Bill Donohue upset. He claims the section on Giordano Bruno stating that the church used to Inquisition to try and punish him is anti-catholic propaganda.

http://www.catholicleague.org/cosmos-smears-catholicism/



The Inquisition was all friendly eh?

Sounds like the combined argument is that the Inquisition was a good thing and the Catholic Church had nothing to do with it. Is this one of those shotgun counterarguments where everything gets thrown at the wall in the hope something sticks?

 

[Loss Leader]

I'll buy the concept that the Inquisition was a phenomenon of social reorganization. I have a little trouble with the idea that it saved lives.

 

[hgc]

Well, there's the "inquisition," and then there's the Inquisition. The real thing was somewhat more expansive in scope than the popular idea of the inquisition (witch burning). But then its purpose was always the suppression of heresy, which, you know, isn't something that's considered polite today. But it still has its fans, apparently.

Bill Donahue is, as always, a skillful and remorseless liar. He's one of the most political religious agitators going.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

The Inquisition was all friendly eh?

I never would have suspected that.

 

[Matthew Cline]

I think he's saying something like: the mob and secular rulers demanded that heretics be persecuted, so if the Church had tried to stop the persecution it would have failed. So the only choice they had was to take over the persecution and systematize it so as to reduce the total amount of persecution. Or, maybe that wasn't the intent of the Inquisition, but that was practical effect of it.

 

[lylfyl]

. . .I think he's saying something like: the mob and secular rulers demanded that heretics be persecuted. . .

I need to reread Donahue's response when I'm not so tired, but these words don't seem to go together.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'll buy the concept that the Inquisition was a phenomenon of social reorganization. I have a little trouble with the idea that it saved lives.

Wait, what?

Am I missing sarcasm? I am sarcasm challenged without those rolling eyes smilies.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Colbert was on it last night. Man's a genius.

His interview with Tyson was priceless:

Science is true whether you believe it or not.

 

[paulhutch]

Mel Brooks's NSFW take on the Inquisition.

​

 

[LaurelHS]

As for Bruno, he was a renegade monk who dabbled in astronomy; he was not a scientist. There is much dispute about what really happened to him. As sociologist Rodney Strong puts it, he got into trouble not for his “scientific” views, but because of his “heretical theology involving the existence of an infinite number of worlds—a work based entirely on imagination and speculation.”

Donohue sounds like he's admitting that Bruno he got into trouble for his ideas and not his actions. And he sounds like he's okay with people being persecuted just because their ideas aren't conventional.

I would like to know why Pope John Paul II apologized for the Inquisition if the Church had so little to do with it.

 

[arthwollipot]

Yeah, I'm a little surprised that he'd have the balls to argue that the Inquisition wasn't associated with the Church.

 

[Craig B]

I'll buy the concept that the Inquisition was a phenomenon of social reorganization. I have a little trouble with the idea that it saved lives.

It was a revenue racket in origin, mainly.

One aspect of being the victim of the Inquisition that is often overlooked is that those who were found to be heretics would have their property confiscated. Records detailing just how much property was confiscated from convicted heretics and handed over to the Vatican are rather difficult to come by. Equally difficult is the task of finding out just how much money all the property was worth.

One aspect of the Inquisition that is known is that how the money made off the sale of the property was split. A third of the money would go directly to the Vatican while the other two thirds were split equally between the Inquisitor at the local level and the surrounding authorities. Of course, with all that money just lying around, sometimes the local inquisitors and the local authorities got it into their head that they could see a healthy payday by perhaps not handing over everything to the Catholic Church. The Vatican has always played hardball when it comes to getting money it thinks it deserves and it was certainly not unknown for the Pope to launch his army outward against the local inquisitors and authorities to ensure the Church got its fair share.

http://voices.yahoo.com/how-revenue-may-been-motivating-factor-behind-8768735.html?cat=37
So the Church had plenty to do with this vile scam.

 

[hgc]

Yeah, I'm a little surprised that he'd have the balls to argue that the Inquisition wasn't associated with the Church.

Oh that's nothing. You should see his defense of the church in Ireland against the revelations of decades of systematic child abuse. Balls doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

[Craig B]

Oh that's nothing. You should see his defense of the church in Ireland against the revelations of decades of systematic child abuse. Balls doesn't even begin to cover it.

Well ...

 

[Matthew Cline]

I need to reread Donahue's response when I'm not so tired, but these words don't seem to go together.

I think I used the wrong term. I meant kings, dukes and such. Maybe it's "temporal rulers"?

 

[Craig4]

So Toruoemada did the Inquisition stuff when he was on leave from his day job as a Dominican friar?

 

[fuelair]

Sounds like the combined argument is that the Inquisition was a good thing and the Catholic Church had nothing to do with it. Is this one of those shotgun counterarguments where everything gets thrown at the wall in the hope something sticks?

So all the high level, award winning historians I have read who covered that period were lying or in in the pay of foul atheists and antipapists. Riiiiiiiight.

I call BS all the way.

 

[rjh01]

Here is another link about the Inquisition. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm

The church did have a significant role to play.

 

[fuelair]

Oh that's nothing. You should see his defense of the church in Ireland against the revelations of decades of systematic child abuse. Balls doesn't even begin to cover it.

I have several good ideas about what to cover the perpetrators of those evils in.