Wherein Bill Donohue defends the Inquisition

[SpuriusMaximus]

One of the most enduring myths of the Inquisition is that it was a tool of oppression imposed on unwilling Europeans by a power-hungry Church.

... which is exactly what it was. I don't see how having an institution devoted to keeping people faithful to the church, under threat of torture and death, can be anything else. Any amount of waving around excuses about how it wasn't that bad, or only dealt with X but not Y, still don't make it anything else than a tool of oppression.

Nothing could be more wrong.

... than the BS apologetics for it.

In truth, the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics...

Order, justice and compassion, like... to the Cathars?

Plus how the heck CAN someone say with a straight face that torturing and killing people for thought crimes has anything to do with justice? Doing less injustice than some other guy doesn't mean the same as bringing justice.

Most people accused of heresy by the medieval Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentence suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ... Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to the secular authorities.

That's a side effect of the way it worked. True, first time offenders were generally allowed to confess, repent, and get an "or else" hanging above their head for the rest of their lives. Being accused again, that was the real killer.

However, hanging a death threat over someone's head for the rest of their lives worked better than mass murder, but that doesn't make it any less a tool of oppression.

Also, let's not forget that a lot of those with "suspended" sentences, had gone through horrible torture until they confessed to being heretics. Or that those "obstinate and unrepentant" were including those few who didn't cave in under torture and confess to being heretics, or doing anything wrong at that.

And at that, am I the only one to whom the quote makes it sound like, yeah, but those who didn't confess and repent deserved it?

Despite popular myth, the Church did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense.

Only at the instigation of the church, and because if you refused to carry out that, you could be excommunicated yourself.

The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule...

Again, like the Cathars? I'm sure they weren't gonna be roasted by their fellow Cathars in their communities. Or like the Baltic pagans? I'm pretty sure that until the Church sanctioned that crusade and their forced conversion, they weren't roasting each other for not being Christians. Etc.

Plus, wth, being a more toned down version of oppression, is still oppression. Not being as bad as a lynch mob is hardly something positive.

Also, I really take offense at the "and even not-so-innocent" quip. Those people were not guilty of anything harmful. They were at most "guilty" of not bowing to an oppressive regime. They were about as "not-so-innocent" as the people in Tiananmen Square were, and that _some_ of them were not executed doesn't make it OK for the ones that were. Not killing ALL innocents is hardly less villainous.

By the 14th century, the Inquisition represented the best legal practices available. Inquisition officials were university-trained specialists in law and theology. The procedures were similar to those used in secular inquisitions (we call them "inquests" today, but it's the same word)...

So were a bunch of witch hunters, starting with the authors of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum. So the pro-hominem kinda breaks down.

No major court in Europe executed fewer people than the Spanish Inquisition. This was a time, after all, when damaging shrubs in a public garden in London carried the death penalty. Across Europe, executions were everyday events. But not so with the Spanish Inquisition. In its 350-year lifespan only about 4,000 people were put to the stake.

So, wait, weren't we talking the Medieval Inquisition? How did we get to the Spanish one just for this comparison?

Plus, that's still 4,000 innocents too many.

Compare that with the witch-hunts that raged across the rest of Catholic and Protestant Europe, in which 60,000 people, mostly women, were roasted. Spain was spared this hysteria precisely because the Spanish Inquisition stopped it at the border. When the first accusations of witchcraft surfaced in northern Spain, the Inquisition sent its people to investigate. These trained legal scholars found no believable evidence for witches' Sabbaths, black magic, or baby roasting. It was also noted that those confessing to witchcraft had a curious inability to fly through keyholes. While Europeans were throwing women onto bonfires with abandon, the Spanish Inquisition slammed the door shut on this insanity...

For a start, that's a very lopsided comparison, since it pits the combined populations of Germany, France, England, etc, against the population of Spain. I mean France alone had peaked at 20 million by the time we can talk about the Spanish inquisition, while Spain was less than half that. Italy oscillated around 12 million, Germany fluctuated somewhere between 10 and 15 millions, etc. So essentially we're talking 4000 executed in Spain, vs 60,000 executed in a whole continent with a total population easily over ten times that of Spain. When you compare PER CAPITA, actually the Spanish inquisition doesn't come out as much better.

It just had other fish to fry. Horrible pun intended.

Also it misses the point that although the RCC _did_ for a while hold that witchcraft doesn't exist and condemned that superstition, those witchcraft hunts were made possible by a series of Papal Bulls which did confirm again that witchcraft exists. Essentially, those witch hunts were ALSO semi-endorsed by the RCC.

 

[Craig B]

... which is exactly what it was. I don't see how having an institution devoted to keeping people faithful to the church, under threat of torture and death, can be anything else. Any amount of waving around excuses about how it wasn't that bad, or only dealt with X but not Y, still don't make it anything else than a tool of oppression.

And don't forget this.

The expulsion ... was so cataclysmic an event that ever since, the date 1492 has been almost as important in Jewish history as in American history. On July 30 of that year, the entire Jewish community, some 200,000 people, were expelled from Spain.

Tens of thousands of refugees died while trying to reach safety. In some instances, Spanish ship captains charged Jewish passengers exorbitant sums, then dumped them overboard in the middle of the ocean. In the last days before the expulsion, rumors spread throughout Spain that the fleeing refugees had swallowed gold and diamonds, and many Jews were knifed to death by brigands hoping to find treasures in their stomachs.

The Jews' expulsion had been the pet project of the Spanish Inquisition, headed by Father Tomas de Torquemada. Torquemada believed that as long as the Jews remained in Spain, they would influence the tens of thousands of recent Jewish converts to Christianity to continue practicing Judaism. Ferdinand and Isabella rejected Torquemada's demand that the Jews be expelled until January 1492, when the Spanish Army defeated Muslim forces in Granada, thereby restoring the whole of Spain to Christian rule. With their most important project, the country's unification, accomplished, the king and queen concluded that the Jews were expendable. On March 30, they issued the expulsion decree, the order to take effect in precisely four months. The short time span was a great boon to the rest of Spain, as the Jews were forced to liquidate their homes and businesses at absurdly low prices. Throughout those frantic months, Dominican priests actively encouraged Jews to convert to Christianity and thereby gain salvation both in this world and the next.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/expulsion.html
Muslims were later expelled too.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Indeed. It's both dishonest and really evil to pretend that see, it was the secular authorities who wanted Jews and heretics dead, and the Church was at least making sure they get a fair trial, when the persecution by those secular authorities was instigated by the Church at every step in the first place, and the us-vs-them lines were drawn by the Church in the first place.

 

[Elizabeth I]

It's called kettle logic, and the name comes from one of Freud's story about a guy who borrowed a kettle, and was accused of returning it damaged. So he essentially claims:


* That he had returned the kettle undamaged;
* That it was already damaged when he borrowed it;
* That he had never borrowed it in the first place.

It reminds me of an article I read in Smithsonian magazine years ago that included an anecdote about an Australian who was accused of stealing some cattle from a neighbor. He was found with the cows actually on his property, so the verdict should have been a foregone conclusion. However, the accuser was a jerk and not popular, while the accused was everybody's friend. So the jury came back with the verdict, "Not guilty if he gives back the cows." The judge said, "That's not a proper verdict. Go back and deliberate some more," and the jury came back in with, "Not guilty and he doesn't have to give back the cows."

 

[fuelair]

I never would have suspected that.

You never suspect the Spanish Inquisition!!! (it's a meme thing)

 

[GDon]

Since Bruno was convicted by the Roman Inquisition I fail to see how the record of the Spanish Inquisition is relevant.

Agreed; but that's why I separated the two points out in two separate posts.

The first is on the Inquisitions generally, quoting from the article that Donohue used when claiming the Inquisitions were a 'gentler' form of justice than that of the secular authorities of the times, burning alive less people at the stake (which I agree is still nothing good to be putting on the resume!)

The other is the issue of calling Bruno a martyr for science, which doesn't appear to have been the case.

 

[Navigator]

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.

Same as with Hiroshima.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'd add that while, true, Bruno was not really a champion of science (I'm not sure what kind of application of a scientific method would make him sure of reincarnation or that Satan will be saved), the RCC weren't really pro science either. I mean, as soon as the first universities were formed, in the wake of recovering ancient manuscripts from the Arabs, in 1210 the RCC actually tried to forbid even talking about Aristotle's system entirely, under penalty of excommunication. Yeah, we all know how by Galileo's time the RCC backed the Aristotelian system, but that was only when they failed to enforce that interdiction. And then in 1270 and 1277 they allowed it, but produced whole lists of many many many dozens of points from Aristotle that you were not only not allowed to teach, but you weren't even allowed to listen to, unless you went straight to a bishop to denounce the one you listened to and repent.

Granted, it's kinda hard to imagine that some of those points -- like that there was no first human created, and there will be no Armageddon -- were actually taught by (nominally) Catholic theologians. But then again, someone felt a need to forbid those, so I guess someone must have.

So, yeah, if someone takes that "yeah, but in 1600 the church wasn't suppressing heliocentrism" to mean they weren't opposed to science at all... the church WAS a brake on science and what you're allowed to study, some 4 frikken centuries before Galileo.

Anyway, look it up. What happened with the Church's trying to rein in universities is mainstream history.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Same as with Hiroshima.

Except with Hiroshima, the alternative was that millions of Allied soldiers would have died storming Japan, which was a brutal aggressor. WTH is the equivalent of THAT for the Inquisition? Were the heretics slaughtering good Catholics wholesale, or what?

Even if you look at what prompted creating the more centralized inquisition, namely the brutal suppression of the Cathars, it wasn't the Cathars that were the aggressors. The Cathars just wanted to be left in peace. It was the Catholics that declared a crusade on them, and proceeded to exterminate them, forming an organized Inquisition to be organized about it.

No, you don't get to compare that to Hiroshima. You don't get to compare X to the USA in WW2, when X is the aggressor there.

 

[Craig B]

Agreed; but that's why I separated the two points out in two separate posts.

The first is on the Inquisitions generally, quoting from the article that Donohue used when claiming the Inquisitions were a 'gentler' form of justice than that of the secular authorities of the times, burning alive less people at the stake (which I agree is still nothing good to be putting on the resume!)

The other is the issue of calling Bruno a martyr for science, which doesn't appear to have been the case.

Bruno was a martyr, murdered by bigots and religious tyrants. One of the charges against him was a belief in the plurality of worlds. Perhaps it was not the most important charge, but it was on his rap sheet. The argument that the inquisition was a benign organisation trying to save heretics from mob violence is an impudent piece of nonsense. It was an oppressive organisation given over to murder, punishment and above all relentless and shameless robbery, the greatest sin of the Church of those days.

Far from protecting people, it went out of its way to find new victims. Far from securing them from state violence, it "relaxed" them to these states. Nay, in Rome the Church was the state. The Inquisition was vile and pettifogging as well as rapacious and cruel.

The last notable action of the Roman Inquisition occurred in 1858, in Bologna [then in the Papal States] when Inquisition agents legally removed a 6-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his family. The local inquisitor had learned that the boy had been secretly baptised by his nursemaid. Pope Pius IX raised the boy as a Catholic in Rome. The boy's father, Momolo Mortara, spent years seeking help in all quarters, including internationally, to try to reclaim his son. The case received international attention and fueled the anti-papal sentiments that helped the Italian nationalism movement and culminated in the 1870 Capture of Rome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Inquisition. Momolo Mortara never got his son back.

 

[Zelenius]

He might indeed. One of the early tasks of the Inquisition was to ferret out secret Jews. Open Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, but many stayed on as phony Christians. There was a racist element to this too, as people with Jewish ancestors were barred from certain public offices, regardless of their religious affiliation.

I didn't know that. Hardly a week goes by when I don't learn something new about the Catholic Church's inhumanity and hypocrisy.

 

[GDon]

... which is exactly what it was. I don't see how having an institution devoted to keeping people faithful to the church, under threat of torture and death, can be anything else. Any amount of waving around excuses about how it wasn't that bad, or only dealt with X but not Y, still don't make it anything else than a tool of oppression.

According to another Madden article, entitled "The Real Inquisition", published 2004:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/211193/real-inquisition/thomas-f-madden

The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training–something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.

The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.​

Madden goes on to talk about how the Inquisitions moved out of control of the Catholic Church into the hands of secular kings:

During the 13th century the Inquisition became much more formalized in its methods and practices. Highly trained Dominicans answerable to the Pope took over the institution, creating courts that represented the best legal practices in Europe. As royal authority grew during the 14th century and beyond, control over the Inquisition slipped out of papal hands and into those of kings. Instead of one Inquisition there were now many. Despite the prospect of abuse, monarchs like those in Spain and France generally did their best to make certain that their inquisitions remained both efficient and merciful. During the 16th century, when the witch craze swept Europe, it was those areas with the best-developed inquisitions that stopped the hysteria in its tracks. In Spain and Italy, trained inquisitors investigated charges of witches’ sabbaths and baby roasting and found them to be baseless. Elsewhere, particularly in Germany, secular or religious courts burned witches by the thousands.​

In truth, the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics.

Order, justice and compassion, like... to the Cathars?

Was the Inquisition involved in the slaughter of the Cathars? Genuine question. No doubt they persecuted them, as they persecuted any heretics. But did they pursue persecution beyond that? Medieval history is not something I know about, but I suspect you are confounding Church atrocities wth Inquisition atrocities. Many of your other points seem to do the same, so I will leave them to those who want to talk about Church atrocities.

 

[Craig B]

I didn't know that. Hardly a week goes by when I don't learn something new about the Catholic Church's inhumanity and hypocrisy.

Wiki on the Jesuit Order.

Although in the first 30 years of the existence of the Society of Jesus there were many Jesuit conversos (Catholic-convert Jews), an anti-converso faction led to the Decree de genere (1593) which proclaimed that either Jewish or Muslim ancestry, no matter how distant, was an insurmountable impediment for admission to the Society of Jesus. The 16th-century Decree de genere remained in exclusive force until the 20th century, when it was repealed in 1946.

Yes, 1946. By that year racist antisemitism had become somewhat embarrassing, no doubt. In practice I believe the Jesuits excluded candidates with any Jewish ancestors in the previous five generations. Less demanding in this regard, I think the Wehrmacht settled, during the Nazi era, for three "judenrein" generations. Although unlike the Nazis the Jesuits didn't murder, but merely expelled, any Jews they discovered in their ranks.

 

[Craig B]

Was the Inquisition involved in the slaughter of the Cathars? Genuine question. No doubt they persecuted them, as they persecuted any heretics. But did they pursue persecution beyond that? Medieval history is not something I know about, but I suspect you are confounding Church atrocities wth Inquisition atrocities. Many of your other points seem to do the same, so I will leave them to those who want to talk about Church atrocities.

Here's from the article already cited.

The Inquisition was established in 1234 to uproot the remaining Cathars. Operating in the south at Toulouse, Albi, Carcassonne and other towns during the whole of the 13th century, and a great part of the 14th, it succeeded in crushing Catharism as a popular movement and driving its remaining adherents underground. Cathars who refused to recant were hanged, or burnt at the stake.

That was the very reason the Inquisition was established in the first place.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

According to another Madden article, entitled "The Real Inquisition", published 2004:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/211193/real-inquisition/thomas-f-madden

The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training–something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.

The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.​

Bullcrap. Seriously, even as apologies for something atrocious go, that's just bullcrap.

The ONLY reason why lords punished heresy, is because the church preached to them an intolerant religion in the first place. And for some expulsions and persecutions, e.g., the expulsion of Jews from Spain that Craig already mentioned, it was DIRECTLY demanded by some member or another of the clergy.

Also local rulers who disobeyed the church could be subject to excommunication (which DEMANDED that their vassals turn against them), see Heinrich IV and his march to Canossa to beg forgiveness, or even subject to a crusade, see the Cathars. So let's bloody stop pretending that, oh noes, those rulers totally were the bad guys while the church just tried to stop them.

I'm sorry, one doesn't get to play dissociative disorder and pretend that actions directly instigated and demanded by the church, are somehow someone else's and totally unrelated to the church.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

And frankly, the whole notion of apologetics for the Inquisition, on account that no, see, it just brutally tortured most of the accused, not execute everyone... is making me sick.

 

[Zelenius]

Wiki on the Jesuit Order. Yes, 1946. By that year racist antisemitism had become somewhat embarrassing, no doubt. In practice I believe the Jesuits excluded candidates with any Jewish ancestors in the previous five generations. Less demanding in this regard, I think the Wehrmacht settled, during the Nazi era, for three "judenrein" generations. Although unlike the Nazis the Jesuits didn't murder, but merely expelled, any Jews they discovered in their ranks.

That I did not know either. It reminds me of how Haiti was still paying off their indemnity to Catholic France as late as 1947. That's right, 1947! All because Haitian slaves dared to revolt against French rule and declare independence. France couldn't reconquer the place, but they demanded compensation from Haiti for all their lost "property".

I didn't know about the Jesuits rejecting candidates based on Jewish ancestry 5 generations back.

Recently, I've been reading a lot about the Prisoner in the Vatican period of church history in Italy. This was a very turbulent chapter in its history, with the Pope losing political control over central Italy(the Papal States) due to the unification of Italy, and the big mess that came after, it's all very fascinating. Obviously, the Pope excommunicated the King of Italy and refused to recognize the newly unified Italy. The Italian government treated the Vatican similarly, not recognizing its sovereignty over anything. It was only in 1929 when they finally agreed to mutual recognition under Mussolini, with the Vatican becoming a sovereign micro-state. It's too bad that conflict had to be resolved; can you imagine if it kept dragging on and on, with the Vatican fighting to regain some level of sovereignty during the recent pedophilia scandals?

I hope the Catholic Church will continue to lose power and influence as the world further secularizes. It's mind-boggling how any devout Catholic can read about their church's history and conclude there is anything "holy" about it.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

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.

The one I remember:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." ~ Philip K. Dick

 

[tsig]

According to another Madden article, entitled "The Real Inquisition", published 2004:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/211193/real-inquisition/thomas-f-madden

The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training–something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.

The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.​

Madden goes on to talk about how the Inquisitions moved out of control of the Catholic Church into the hands of secular kings:

During the 13th century the Inquisition became much more formalized in its methods and practices. Highly trained Dominicans answerable to the Pope took over the institution, creating courts that represented the best legal practices in Europe. As royal authority grew during the 14th century and beyond, control over the Inquisition slipped out of papal hands and into those of kings. Instead of one Inquisition there were now many. Despite the prospect of abuse, monarchs like those in Spain and France generally did their best to make certain that their inquisitions remained both efficient and merciful. During the 16th century, when the witch craze swept Europe, it was those areas with the best-developed inquisitions that stopped the hysteria in its tracks. In Spain and Italy, trained inquisitors investigated charges of witches’ sabbaths and baby roasting and found them to be baseless. Elsewhere, particularly in Germany, secular or religious courts burned witches by the thousands.​

Was the Inquisition involved in the slaughter of the Cathars? Genuine question. No doubt they persecuted them, as they persecuted any heretics. But did they pursue persecution beyond that? Medieval history is not something I know about, but I suspect you are confounding Church atrocities wth Inquisition atrocities. Many of your other points seem to do the same, so I will leave them to those who want to talk about Church atrocities.

It was the church that declared these people heretics so claiming the church tried to "save' the heretics is quite disingenuous.

 

[Craig B]

That I did not know either. It reminds me of how Haiti was still paying off their indemnity to Catholic France as late as 1947. That's right, 1947! All because Haitian slaves dared to revolt against French rule and declare independence. France couldn't reconquer the place, but they demanded compensation from Haiti for all their lost "property".

I did know that, but be careful about attributing that imposition to the Catholic Church as such. It happened equally during the secular régime that prevailed in France from 1905. See wiki

The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State ... was based on three principles: the neutrality of the state, the freedom of religious exercise, and public powers related to the church. This law is seen as the backbone of the French principle of laïcité. The French Constitution of 1958 states "The Republic neither recognises, nor salaries, nor subsidises any religion".

The response of Pope Saint Pius X was the 1906 encyclical Vehementer nos (see http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/p...ts/hf_p-x_enc_11021906_vehementer-nos_en.html) in which he famously defines the Church thus:

essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors.

But the secular government was at least as guilty as the Church for the outrageous imposition on Haiti.