Posted on 06/16/2004 9:46:03 AM PDT by areafiftyone
The Vatican sought to play down the terrors of the Inquisition yesterday, claiming that far fewer people were tortured and executed for heresy than was popularly believed.
The reassessment by Church historians was seized on by the Pope to qualify the apology he made for the Inquisition during the Church's millennium celebrations.
The research emerged from a conference of scholars convened in 1998 to help the Pope assess the impact of the Inquisition, which often used brutal methods to suppress alleged witchcraft and doctrinal unorthodoxy.
Church officials said that statistics and other data demolished myths about the Inquisition, including that torture and executions were commonly used.
"For the first time we studied the Inquisition in its entirety, from its beginnings to the 19th century," said Agostino Borromeo, a professor of history of Catholic and other Christian confessions at Rome's Sapienza University. Prof Borromeo said that while there were some 125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, research found that about one per cent of the defendants were executed, far fewer than commonly believed. Many of the burnings at the stake were carried out by civil rather than religious tribunals.
Yesterday, the Pope reiterated his mea culpa but stressed that actions which had "disfigured the face of the Church" had to be viewed in their historical context.
When I became a Christian in 1985, I read everything I could get my hands on to learn more about my Savior and my faith. I voraciously consumed anything that almost any Christian writer or commentator published.
Among the literature I came across, read, and took to heart, was some anti-Catholic literature which stated pretty much everything you have posted. I actually believed that way for several years.
Getting closer to Jesus, reading more of His Word, and growing in Christ dispelled me of that nonsense.
What do you have to say about the thousands of executions of "witches" in protestant countries?
And this liberal Dominican was at least 500 years old and spoke from personal experience, right?
Frankly speaking, the Dominicans are amongst the most liberal, tradition-hating Orders in the RCC. There is a very good former Domincian priest, who is also a theologian/professor, named Fr. John O'Connor. He taught theology at a major University for many years, but was blackballed and releived of his position when he tried to reveal the truth about the homo problem in the Domincans and other Church problems.
Fr. O'Connor has produced many Catholic videos and audio tapes that teach the TRADITIONAL Catholic teachings, in other words, the Truth. Fr. O'Connor would not teach that the Spanish Inquisition was so evil.
Though it did ential some regretful abuses it was felt necessary to the survival of Spain by their King and Queen. It's easy for modern revisionist 'historians' to sit at their keyboards and concoct anti Catholic diatribes with partial truths and missing facts. But just imagine what America would look like after finally overthrowing 400 years of Islamic rule, torture and oppression? We'd be in the mood for killing or deporting anyone who even remotely did not look, talk or pray like us. (I think the Japanese internment during WWII was a classic example of a nation of good people doing what is necessary to survive during a time of crisis).
But Lenin asserted that he and his party would bring about a perfect and just society, liteally heaven on earth. All they required was absolute power to get rid of the bad people who were responsible for the injustice. The Church fell prey to the same sort of people, but because of the Holy Spirit never sunk to the same depths. The Bolsheviks and the Nazis were motivated by a very different spirit.
Millions, not thousands.
"We ain't as bad as everyone says we is" - Us.
See, we quoted our own people and we say we isn't as bad. Do you believe us now?
It's way too easy for the revisionists to distort history on an historically challenged American public. Most of this stuff, both anti-Catholic and anti-Christian in general, is taken out of context by those who would like to see the demise of Christianity. (Judge for yourself whom that might be).
The Spanish Inquisition was essentially secular in nature, instituted by the King and Queen of Spain to expose Muslims and Jews who converted falsely and whom they felt threatened their national security, (the King got the Pope's signature merely to help lend credibility to it, but certainly not to authorize it). No Popes during this period in history held any power over Kings. In short order even Catholic priests and Bishops were getting arrested by the Inquisition, and the Pope's protests against the Inquisition's abuses went largely unheeded.
Still, the Spanish Inquisition was probably every bit as necessary in the beginning to Spain's national security as was our own little "inquisition" of Japanese-Americans during WWII. We will never know how many American lives were saved, and battles were won, due to the internment of hundreds of Japanese spies, infiltrators, and traitors. But already we see the "historians" viewing our parents and grandparents disdainfully for their alleged "abuses" of Japanes-Americans. How much easier it is for them to distort the history of our more ancient ancestors.
That is a awfully bold contradiction of the truth there when in fact the Church consistently teaches that it applies only to ex cathedra statements:
So a pope is not protected from teaching "heresy"? He can freely teach "heresy", so long as he doesn't make any "official" (whatever standard you would apply to this) ex cathedra statements in contradiction to the faith?
"The Vatican sought to play down the terrors of the Inquisition yesterday, claiming that far fewer people were tortured and executed for heresy than was popularly believed. "
Nahh. Just pull out a pair of glowing hot pliers and most people will fess up without any further action. As for executions, the Inquisition never executed ANYBODY.
They got the local Catholic officials to do their dirty work for them.
But then the Protestants of the time were hardly any better.
And to think these people called themselves "Christians".
I think you meant, who were forcibly converted.
No Popes during this period in history held any power over Kings.
So the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council were no longer operative? Or are they still held de jure even if they are de facto unenforceable?
Just a reply. Havoc, to the Voltairean refrain that that whore the Church ought to be destroyed because it stood for only
persecution and superstition. The subtext was, just do WE what we say and peace and truth will reign everywhere and forever more. What the French Revolution led to thirty years of war and despotism between 1914-1945 that put in the shade the Thirty Years of War from 1618-1648.
The Dominicans should know - they ran it.
"Burning is no worse than drawing and quartering,"
Yeah, but THAT was ALSO started under a Catholic Monarch - I think it was Edward I aka "Longshanks".
I think it was Innocent III and I believe the occasion was the Cathar "Heresy".
The political authority claimed by the medieval popes was analogous to the authority claimed--and exercised--by the United States Supreme Court over the States of the Union and the other branches of the Federal government. Anytime a king balked, the papacy was in the same position that The Supreme Court was when Andrew Jackson refused to uphold the rights of the Cherokee nation. Only with the aid of the French king did the papcy defeat the Empire, and then the Papacy was made captive to the French.
Edward is not known as being devout, aos why called him a "Catholic" monarch? It was certainly not a punishment he was urged to use by the Church.
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