A few years ago, as the world was preparing to usher in the new millennium, Pope John Paul II called for a study of the Inquisition. Reportedly, he wanted to get his facts straight before issuing an "apology" sometime during the year 2000.
No doubt, RCC spin doctors were revving up to put the labors of the Roman Church and, in particular, the Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, as it was called when established by Paul III, in the best light possible. Not that some who speak for Rome had not been busily at work for many years gilding the bloody history of the Inquisition.
Funny thing about the Inquisition. Just mention the word in the presence of a Christian and he likely will get all emotional over the "millions and millions" of believers tortured and burned as Rome labored to eliminate "heresy and heretics" from her corporate body. To bring the topic into a conversation with Catholics is likely to generate a flood tide of denials. Where is the truth? Has a bad rap been laid against the Roman Church? Or, did the horrors alleged against the Holy Office [a more recent name for the Inquisition] actually happen? Should the Pope publicly apologize for the abuses of the Inquisition?
I mean, why bother? After all, the Inquisition ended more than a century-and-a-half ago. Everyone who was injured by the Inquisition is long dead.
Can. 1364 §1 An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication, without prejudice to the provision of Can. 194 §1, n. 2; a cleric, moreover, may be punished with the penalties mentioned in Can. 1336 §1, nn. 1, 2 and 3.
Can. 1369 A person is to be punished with a just penalty, who, at a public event or assembly, or in a published writing, or by otherwise using the means of social communication, utters blasphemy, or gravely harms public morals, or rails at or excites hatred of or contempt for religion or the Church.—Code of Canon Law; Book VI, Part II, Title I, English translation copyright 1983 The Canon Law Society Trust
"Punished with a just penalty?" I wonder what that means. In the copies of the new Canon Law of the Catholic Church that I have encountered on the Internet, I have not been able to discover all that such "just penalties" might include. Perhaps there is more to the Canon Law. Apostate Franciscan monk Joseph McCabe wrote, in his Rationalist's Encyclopedia:
Fr. Marianus de Luca, the author of the Latin version of the Canon Law published by the Vatican Press in two stout volumes in 1901, with a letter of approval from the Pope, was professor of the subject in the Gregorian University. In several passages and at great length he reproves liberal Catholics who say that the Church has surrendered "the right of the sword," and argues that the Church has the right and the duty to put heretics - by which Catholic law means apostates - to death (Vol. I, pp. 132 and 270) . . . Cardinal Lepicier, entirely agrees. After proving that apostates "may justly be put to death" (p. 194), he completes the repulsive teaching by claiming that they are all in "bad faith," since "no one can lose the faith except by the very gravest sin"--De Stabilitate et Progressa Dogmatis, 1910, p. 201
Lepicier's manual was being used in Canadian and American Catholic seminaries early in the previous century. I wonder if it still is.
Perhaps there is another, more accessible, source wherein we might find what would be considered a "just penalty" for exciting contempt for the Roman church or for being what Rome considers a "heretic."
The universal belief that the Church of Christ, in its day-to-day business of teaching the doctrine of Christ, is divinely preserved from teaching erroneously, entailed the consequence that (to use a modern terminology) the General Council is considered infallible in its decisions about belief. If the official teachers as a body are infallible as they teach, scattered about the world in their hundreds of sees, they do not lose the promised, divine, preserving guidance once they have come together in a General Council. And once General Councils have taken place we begin to meet explicit statements of this truth. The councils themselves are explicitly conscious of it when, making their statement of the truth denied by the innovator, they bluntly say of those who will not accept their decision, Let him be anathema. St. Athanasius, who as a young cleric was present at Nicaea, can refer to its decree about Arianism as something final, the last all-decisive word: "The word of the Lord, put forth by the Oecumenical Council at Nicaea is an eternal word, enduring for ever."{Letter to the Africans, in Rouet de Journel S.J., Enchiridion Patristicum, no. 792.} Eighty years or so later than this the pope, St. Leo I, warning the bishops assembled at the General Council of Chalcedon to leave untouched the decisions of Nicaea about the rank of the great sees of the East, speaks of Nicaea as "having fixed these arrangements by decrees that are inviolable," and says, "These arrangements were made by the bishops at Nicaea under divine inspiration." This was in the year 451. His successor, St. Gregory the Great, writing about 594 to the patriarch of Constantinople, has a reference to the special prestige of the first, doctrine-defining General Councils which equates their work with that of Holy Scripture: "I profess that as I receive and venerate the four books of the Gospels, so I do the four councils," which he proceeds to list: Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451. These, he says, "are the four squared stone on which the structure of the holy faith arises."--Mgr. Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325 – 1870. {Work carries the Nihil Obstat & the Imprimitur of Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, September 28, 1960}
Well, we can look back to earlier days to see how the RCC dealt with what they considered "heretics."
According to civil law criminals convicted of treason are punished with death and their goods are confiscated. With how much more reason then should they who offend Jesus, Son of the Lord God, by deserting their faith, be cut off from the Christian communion and stripped of their goods. - Innocent III, quoted by Canon E. Vacanard in, L'inquisition, Paris, 1907
Anything more substantial to provide some idea of what powers the Church claims to exercise a "just penalty" on "heretics?"
The one material exception is the enactment of the death penalty in the secular Constitution of Lombardy in 1222 and 1224. Here, at first sight, is an historical fact of great value to the apologist: while Canon Law did not clearly prescribe the death sentence, an emperor, Frederick II, introduced it.
Pope Gregory IX had this law inscribed in the papal registry, compelled the secular authorities at Rome and in most of the Italian cities to enforce it, and, as Vacandard assures us, "did his utmost to enforce everywhere the death-penalty for heresy" (The Inquisition, p. 132). In other words, as soon as there was a secular law prescribing the death penalty, the Popes, with great delicacy, handed over heretics to the "secular arm" and tried to get the law adopted everywhere. It was made an imperial law by Frederick in 1237.--Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter 23, © Internet Infidels 1995-2007
We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that raises against the holy, orthodox and Catholic faith which we have above explained; condemning all heretics under whatever names they may be known . . . Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath.—Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, Canon 3, "Medieval Sourcebook," (c) Paul Halsall 1996
The Jesuit Cardinal Billot, [head of the French Catholic Church] wrote and published a Latin Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi (1922) and the Jesuit Professor Sortain a Traite de Philosophie (1924) in which the clergy were candidly told that Rome still had the right to use physical measures including the death-sentence, against heretics.--Joseph McCabe, How the Faith Is Protected, Chapter 1 )C_ Internet Infidels 1995-2007
Catholic apologists would have us forget the horrors of the Inquisition or, better yet, believe they never happened. In these days of ecumenical posturing, it is an easy thing to believe that Rome has mellowed and now willingly embraces those who do not hold to precisely the dogma and doctrine she proclaims. Think about this: the Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, established by Paul III, has not disappeared from the scene. It is alive and well and, one would imagine, patiently waiting for the time when it's incredible power over life, death and property will be restored.
There is an office in Rome where the truth of Catholicism is kept pure, a place where true doctrine is kept free from all contamination of error or heresy. This office has been used for centuries to assure that nothing but the true Catholic faith is passed on to the next generation of Christians. At the present time, it is called The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Five hundred years ago, it was called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The Office of the Inquisition was never disbanded – just renamed.--Timothy F. Kauffman, Graven Bread; White Horse Publications, © 1994, p. 53
Still around; rather like a plague virus just lurking and waiting for an opportunity.
It is far too easy to paint the darkest picture. After all, the Inquisition courts of history did not always condemn those who stood before them to burning at the stake. Sometimes, they merely excommunicated them, or confiscated all their property, or maybe tortured them. Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture to extract confessions from alleged heretics. [Innocent IV, Papal Bull Ad Extirpanda de Medio Populi Christiani Pravitatis Zizania], May 15, 1252. The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol VI: Victory of the Papacy; Cambridge University Press © 1964), pg. 725l
An English translation of Ad Extirpanda de Medio Populi Christiani Pravitatis Zizania is available online. It is preceded by some quite enlightening comments, which I urge all to carefully read. Read it here
Burning at the stake. Loss of everything I own. Incredibly barbarous torture. No real hope of salvation. No. The Roman Catholic Church has nothing that I want.
For those who would like to know more about the various methods used by inquisitors to convince their victims to confess to crimes against Mama Church, would likely discover very little by visiting Catholic websites. On the other hand, very detailed descriptions [with source data] are available at this most assuredly non-Christian website. Be advised, it ain't purty
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.-- Isaiah 45:22
