Posted on 07/18/2015 9:34:09 AM PDT by Salvation
Question: What was the Church’s involvement with the Spanish Inquisition? It seems clothed in shadows. — Dorothy Perez, San Antonio Answer: This brief column cannot cover all the details and provide extensive references. However, the Spanish Inquisition was run by the secular government, not by the Church. The Church did have its own inquisition, distinct from the secular government of Spain. Most people preferred the Church’s inquisition and often appealed cases there since it was more clement and just by their estimation. The term “inquisition” simply refers to an inquiry into charges leveled against a person, usually of heresy. They were questioned as to their true views rather than be condemned on hearsay or rumors. If a person was found guilty of heresy, they were permitted to recant or clarify their views. If they would not, the solutions ranged from exile and imprisonment to, in rarer cases, death. In an age of secularism and wider religious liberty (though it is increasingly threatened), such severe measures strike moderns as excessive and reactionary. However, until recent times, religion, social order and justice were strongly tied to proper religious practice and understanding. For one to adopt heretical views and encourage others to do so posed a serious threat to the social order and peace. The state, even more than the Church, would seldom abide religious rebellion and knew by instinct that social disorder and chaos often followed religious squabbles. Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no. The Church’s hands are not likely pure in the matter. But neither are the Protestants who ran a tight ship in places like Geneva and England. There are many Catholic martyrs to show that Protestants, too, worked with local governments to shut down dissent from Protestant notions and punish noncompliance, often with death.
This brief column cannot cover all the details and provide extensive references. However, the Spanish Inquisition was run by the secular government, not by the Church.
Monsignor Pope Ping from his OSV column.
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
sorry....force of habit.
“Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no. The Church’s hands are not likely pure in the matter. But neither are the Protestants who ran a tight ship in places like Geneva and England. There are many Catholic martyrs to show that Protestants, too, worked with local governments to shut down dissent from Protestant notions and punish noncompliance, often with death.”
This cries for dissection!
“Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no.”
Let’s obscure this and put the best face on it! Jeb could speak like this.
“The Church’s hands are not likely pure in the matter. But neither are the Protestants who ran a tight ship in places like Geneva and England.”
We’re not that bad! Everyone does this!!! Look over there! Sinners!
“There are many Catholic martyrs to show that Protestants, too, worked with local governments to shut down dissent from Protestant notions and punish noncompliance, often with death. “
We are victims too!!!
Please also note the the Spanish Inquisition followed 700 years of mulsim rule.
muslim cruelty was the only model the Spaniards had for running a country.
They quickly got over it.
Anyone who is upset that some Catholic priest had a tendency to molest children needs to welcome the American Inquisition with open arms. I do.
True.
Did you read the article?
Yeah like Mel Brooks once said
You can’t escape from Spanish inquisition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnF1OtP2Svk
No.
“Captain From Castile”
The Black Legend - The Spanish Inquisition
The British Jewish historian Henry Kamen, well-known scholar of the Spanish Inquisition, has calculated a total of some 2,000 victims put to death along its four centuries of existence.
Kamen adds that “it is interesting to compare the statistics on sentences to death of civilians and inquisitorial tribunals between the 15th and 18th centuries in Protestant Europe: for every one hundred death sentences handed down by courts, the Inquisition (Catholic) issued one.”
According to Professor Philip Wayne Powell, were executed just over 100 people in the 250 years in which it was acting the Inquisition in the Spanish America.
The number of Protestants condemned to death by the Catholic Inquisition, from 1520 until 1820 that was deleted, or in 300 years, according to the German Protestant researcher who specialized in this subject, Schafer, was 220; of them, only 12 were burned.
Allow me to present historical facts regarding the Protestant Inquisition.
Luther, founder of Protestantism, in 1525 writes the nobles: “how many farmers can kill: wound, paste, disgorging to himself.” Happy if you die in it, you die in obedience to the word divine. More than one hundred thousand peasants perished. Luther also demanded that the heretics must be condemned without hearing them... “
(Amazing parallel with the current Islamofascism).
Luther wrote in July 1525 in his open letter against the peasants: “If you believe that this answer is too hard and that its only purpose is to let them shut up by violence, I reply that this is true - a rebel does not deserve to be replied with reasons, because does not accept them.” The appropriate response is a punch that causes you to bleed nose. The farmers don’t want to hear... need to open them ears with bullets until they their heads explode. Who does not want to hear the word of God when is told with goodness has to listen to the executioner when it arrives with his axe... I don’t want to hear or know nothing of mercy.”
About Jews in his famous lectures of desktop Luther said: “throwing the Jews sulfur and tar, if one could throw them fire from hell, so much better.... and this must be done in honor of our Lord and of Christianity…Their houses must be chipped and destroyed... be removed their books of prayers and Talmud, their rabbis are prohibited from teaching, under the penalty of death, from now on. And if all this were little, they must be expelled from the country as rabid dogs.”
In Protestant Germany, more than 100,000 witches were burned. Even children seven years old and dying elderly. A single judge burned in 16 years 800 witches (an average of 50 people a year).
In 1560 the Scottish Parliament decreed the death penalty against all Catholics. Here are some articles of the English code for Ireland:
“Catholic teaching to other Catholic or Protestant shall be hanged.”
“If a Catholic acquires land, all Protestant has the right to deprive him.”
“Perpetual exile to every Catholic priest; those who evaded it, be half hanged alive and then dismembered”.
The Calvinist communities of Paris, Orleans, Rouen, Lyon, Angey at their general synod in 1559, enacted death penalty to the heretics.
Should be taken into account that the Protestant Inquisition existed in most of Europe in which inmates lacked any legal protection and of which no one speaks.
Catholics on the other hand not enjoyed any legal protection under the Protestants, standing out for its cruelty the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I of England when Catholics were dismembered tied to the legs of four horses. They were times of great barbarity when attached to an English monarch the privilege of the divorce by beheading of his wife.
“Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it” Jorge Santayana
Okay, now I did.
Catholics need to stop getting spooked when somebody mentions the Inquisition. The Inquisition was a force for good in its time and was yet another Catholic/Catholic-led organization that kept Europe safe from Islam, as many Protestants allied themselves with the Turks. Did they use some brutal methods? Yes, but so what? Everybody did. Did they make some mistakes? Yes, but nobody is perfect.
That's because they followed the commandments of men (and their base desires) rather than Sola Scriptura which would have guided them away from this shameful sinful path.
If you’re going to troll, try to put some effort into it.
“...a punch that causes you to bleed nose.” “...need to open them ears with bullets until they their heads explode.”
I’d have thought Luther’s grammar would have been better than that. Maybe he was using some crappy computer translation program, though.
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