The Real Inquisition: Investigating the popular myth.

National Review Online ^ | June 18, 2004 | Thomas F. Madden

[Polybius]

No time to go into detail now, but most of the battles you list are good examples of "winning the battle but losing the war."

Your implication was that Spain never won a battle against Protestant armies. I refuted that point.

In regards to "winning the war", Spanish arms did win the wars to keep both France and Belgium Catholic.

Be that as it may, the inter-Christian religious intolerance on both sides was very unfortunate for Europe.

A much better use of resources would have been a united Christian front against militant Islam that was still knocking at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

[Havoc]

Now THERE'S an impartial, level-headed sort *eyeroll*

Um, excuse' but how impartial does one need to be to list the torture devices used by the inquisition? It isn't his partiality or impartiality that bugs you - its his clarity that gets straight to the gut which bothers you. I didn't quote him for anything other than the list of devices and how they were used. The guy happens to be accurate.

Funny... That's not all how that reads to me. It says they must be doing so in defense of the Church.

Ah, so murder in defense of the church isn't counted as a murder. Gee, I think that's pretty much the same thing I noted. If it isn't, the difference is not sufficient to bicker about. I definitely see no ground for picking knits. And it is still standing as an affront to what Christ him self told us on two seperate occasions.

No actually, being excommunicated is far worse and far rarer than being termed a heretic..

Really, That is not shown in Canon 3. It is not shown in civil law. Canon law demanded the death penalty for heresy. It only excommunicates people from your religious organization for listening to heretics. If they recanted, they could be brought back in - just as with the nobles; but, if after a year they had not recanted, then they were deemed heretics and their lives were then considered forfeit. Your story doesn't jibe with the conciliar documents or Papal bulls or the civil law in the larger picture. As with Dave, you seem to be mistating willfully what is there in effort to lessen the blow of what Rome ACTUALLY says behind the scenes. It is noteworthy that Lateran IV Canon 3 is still the Law of the Church and that it is still lawful in the church of Rome to murder heretics.. or should we qualify that and say "people whom Rome deems to be heretics". It is a relative term. Islam uses the term infadel.

[OLD REGGIE]

Ping! You gotta see 66 and 116, just beyond belief.

But not surprising.

BTW in Pennsylvania a "creek" is sometimes called a "kill" so when Dave says "kill" he probably means "creek".

[OLD REGGIE]

If the Catholic Church believes people will be contaminated makes it mandatory for those people to be exposed to the entire Bible, at least every three years. (It's considered a mortal sin otherwise.) Sorry if that gets in the way of your hatred and intolerance.

Baloney! You most likely wouldn't be exposed to the entire Bible in 10 years.

You should know what you are talking about before you begin spouting falsehoods.

[RobbyS]

Nice to believe in inevitable progress but that is a matter of faith. For certain individuals , the only thing that is certain to them was that the river has risen up to their necks and they will surely drown. Only in retrospect do things always "come out right." I should think that after looking at the events of the 20th Century that you might see that things can turn out very badly indeed. Wilhemine Germany was a safe haven for German Jews and they became great German patriots. Then along came Hitler. Or imagine yourself a peasant of the 14th Century. Along comes bad weather, famine and the sudden onslaught of the Black Death. For surviving members if your village, there is a slight economic advantage, but death from epidemics will remain a harsh reality of life until the 18th Century. The theory of progres goes from peak to peak and ignore the valley's below, and even the facts of history which tell us that sometime peaks disappear entirely and we are taken down to a plain reaches to the horizon.

[nickcarraway]

You should know what you are talking about before you begin spouting falsehoods.

You should know what you are taking about. Eveyr Catholic has to be exposed to the entire Bible every three years. It's a mortal sin not to be. But that's just the minimum.

[OLD REGGIE]

You are willfully guilty of bearing false witness against an entire faith. Good luck with that millstone. I shall continue to pray for you, and to flag your lies and hatred for the unaware.

You are a coward who attacks and runs. It would do you well to document at least some of your claims.

In the meanwhile you paint a picture of yourself as a sniveling coward.

[OLD REGGIE]

Sounds to me like a good justification for the death penalty.

I take it that you still believe the execution of Heretics, as defined by the RCC, would be a good thing.

The article was written by a professional apologist. What else do you expect from him?

[Petronski]

You are a coward who attacks and runs. It would do you well to document at least some of your claims

I've already said that the other Catholics on this thread have well documented misstatements by Havoc and others. Your (plural) behavior on this thread is well documented...on this thread. I have no desire or time to play your silly word games, and there is no need to re-cover the same old ground over and over and over again. As for charges of cowardice, well I'll leave that to the judgment of the entire group.

And I (continue to) leave the snivelling to Havoc.

[OLD REGGIE]

You should know what you are taking about. Eveyr Catholic has to be exposed to the entire Bible every three years. It's a mortal sin not to be. But that's just the minimum.

I do. You don't.

Show me the relevant teaching from the Catechism or any official Church document.

I say there is none. You say there is. That should be easy for you to prove.

[valkyrieanne]

You made good points, and I especially agree with the one about uniting to fight the Muslim incursions. We might have a very different world picture today had the Turks been weakened earlier on.

[synwojciecha]

You and SuperSpin should get together on your understanding of "exterminate". Don't you understand you must be a Catholic Hater to equate "exterminate" with "kill"?

Judging by the actions of the church during the Medieval inquisition, "exterminate" meant rendering them incapable of spreading the heresy, either though imprisonment, execution, or getting them to recant. It did not involve indiscriminant slaughter of large masses of people. Even during during the peek of the Medival inquisition, the numbers of executed heretics did not amount to more than a few hundred.

Again, let me stress, the 4th Lateran Council was dealing with the Albigensian heretics, who, frankly, deserved extermination in the above sense of the word. It was not dealing with Protestants, seeing as how the council met 2 centuries before the reformation.

[GoLightly]

I'm familiar with English history of that time, but my knowledge of history on the continent has a lot of holes in it. It's one of those things I keep meaning to get to, but instead I find myself learning bits & pieces as issues get raised. Someone (you?) brought up the 30 year war & I confused it with the Kalmar war, even though they were very different wars.

I know Mel Brooks movies have their audience, but they seem to put me to sleep. Popular American knowledge passes me by, but a lot of the stuff I'm interested in causes people's eyes to glaze over if I try to talk about it.

Back to the issue at hand, kinda. I heard that the tradition of serving ham on Easter began during the Spanish Inquisition. Hanging hams by doorways & serving pork became a way of proving conversion to Christianity.

See, you deal in dates & big events, while I deal in minutia. lol

I kinda knew Charlemagne was in power around the earlier date you mentioned & I also knew he has been credited with upholding & spreading Western Christianity, so I wanted to find out what part, if any he played into it all. I find him making an alliance with an Islamic ruler against Christian Spain? Then again, he was German & he ruled France... :::snicker:::

Thank you for sharing your interesting knowledge.

BTW, I looked back at your list of victories for Roman Catholic Spain & somewhere in the back of my mind I find myself reaching for an Italian name... Catherine de' Medici & all of the intrigue that swirled around her & her family. Didn't assassinations & brokered deals have a lot to do with France finally settling down to be a Roman Catholic nation?

[GoLightly]

You start with the presumption that there was no charge that could ever merit death then?

No, I do not.

Without the inquisition, the accused were usally killed. With the inquiisition, 99% of them are spared. That's pretty amazing actually.

The only thing that would convince me a 99% survival rate is good, would be New Testament justification for one execution for the sin/crime of heresy.

What he is saying is that the Inquisition was a remarkable leap forward in justice, which demonstrates a respect for life.

The black death was part of his point, which you seem to have dropped, when I think it's a key to the point he was attempting to make. Include the black death & I find myself thinking he's steering modern minds to a conclusion. Do you need me to spell it out?

>> When did it stop being about the universal truth?<<

When Protestants decided that that they could have 15,478,386 opinions on any moral standard, and they were all okay, as long as they disagreed with Catholic tradition.

Tsk, tsk.

>> IMO, this is just as true now as it was then. <<

Well, your flat out wrong then. OUR society is built on religious pluralism and secualr standards of law, and loyalty. There are very few institutions which rely *directly* on religion in America.

We seem to define "fabric of a community" differently. What do you think allowed/allows us to build community as you described?

[Polybius]

I heard that the tradition of serving ham on Easter began during the Spanish Inquisition. Hanging hams by doorways & serving pork became a way of proving conversion to Christianity. See, you deal in dates & big events, while I deal in minutia. lol

There is a Portuguese dish, carne de porco com ameijoas (pork and clams) that served the same purpose. However, since Muslims could eat neither pork nor shellfish, it was a double whammy. :-)

I find myself reaching for an Italian name... Catherine de' Medici & all of the intrigue that swirled around her & her family.

Catherine de Medici was Queen of France, ruled as Regent for he second son, Charles IX, and continued to dominate him even after he reached his majority. She played a balance of power game between the Huguenots and the Roman Catholics led by the house of Guise.

As I recall, the Pope once asked his Papal Ambassador to France what Catherine's true beliefs were, Catholic or Protestant. The Ambassador replied, "Your Holiness, the Queen does not believe in God."

Didn't assassinations & brokered deals have a lot to do with France finally settling down to be a Roman Catholic nation?

When the Protestant Henry of Navarre was foiled in his attempt to capture Paris by force of arms by Spanish intervention in 1590, he decided to renounce Protestantism and convert to Catholicism. He was then accepted and crowned as King Henry IV of France in 1594.

His comment was, "Paris vaut bien une messe (Paris was worth a Mass)."

[Logophile]

Note that Thomas Nast depicted both the "Roman Church" and the "Mormon Church" as foreign reptiles. (Why he would consider the Mormon Church as foreign is not clear to me.)

You are correct that anti-Catholicism has persisted well into the 20th Century. I would go a step further and say that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well in the 21st Century.

[OLD REGGIE]

Tell me "execute" doesn't leave you dead. Tell the same to SpinMaster.

[Antoninus]

Wow. It's about time.

[Antoninus]

As a result, the inquisition was invented to insure that the people were obeying the teachings of the Catholic Church and were not being contaminated by reading the actual scriptures.

If you had actually bothered to read the article, you'd know that the Inquisition was begun long before the invention of the printing press.

It's ironic that you're extolling the proliferation of ideas via the printing press in the 16th century, but won't even consider an idea that shows your belief to be wrong on points of fact here in the 21st century.

[Antoninus]

Second, the Church of Rome has, historically, discouraged Catholics from owning Bibles and printed or wrote those Bibles in a language the populace (those who could read in their own language) couldn't understand.

Nonsense. Just what percentage of the population of Europe do you think was even literate in those days, anyway? Not many. And generally, if you were literate, you were literate in Latin.