The Church could give us a moral definition of murder that has not changed since the times of Jesus. Note the difference between a moral definition and a lexical definition. The lexical definition you look up in a dictionary [murder means unjustified killing by definition]. The moral definition you look up in those books they plaster law offices with [including Church law offices].

I don't see how anything has changed in this regard. I don't think the development of thought with regard to the Inquisition and later post-medieval understanding of crime and punishment is an essential change in the notion of murder. The Inquisition represented an expansion (from what we have today) in the types of "crimes" which were regarded as a threat to society (to include heresy). Therefore, it was just a different (and yes, flawed) understanding of what constituted societal threats. As C.S. Lewis said, "the rules of chess create chess problems." The consistent relativist (that rarest of birds - perhaps even extinct) is free of such problems, as he has no standard to measure shortcomings by. We Christians, on the other hand, have the standard of Jesus and the Hebrew ethical tradition.

How does (or did) the Catholic Church justify torturing suspected heretics to get the truth and killing them if they didn't recant? If I recall John Paul II's recent comments on the matter, he did also state that the Inquisition was a Church institution and that the Church should bear responsibility for its actions. However, even if you blame the torture and the killing on the lay governments, the Church sanctioned them as morally licit (often ordering the laymen involved to torture/execute the suspect/convict). So let's rephrase the question. How does (or did) the Church justify those actions of the Christian governments?

Fair enough. This was the thing that troubled me most about the Catholic Church before I converted, and it still troubles me in a moral sense (but not from the standpoint that it disproves Catholic claims). I now understand much better why these things occurred, and what the Church has learned in the subsequent centuries. It goes back to the mediæval mindset and worldview. Unless one makes some objective attempt to truly understand that, they will never remotely understand the Inquisition or the Crusades, as the sort of motives which propelled the mediævals are absolutely foreign to the modern relativist, indifferentist mental outlook - if not outright incomprehensible.

What you describe is precisely what relativism is. It would make no sense if we were dealing with moral absolutes.

I think I have just countered this assumption. If one was to go into this further, it would require a delving into psychology and motives for believing certain things. In the Middle Ages, all heresy was pretty much regarded as obstinacy and in bad faith; evil will, etc. The Church today takes a much more psychologically nuanced approach: much heresy is believed in good faith; hence the adherent is less culpable; hence not guilty enough to be punished, etc. (i.e., on the human level: divine judgment being something else altogether). We have also learned that coercion is pointless, which was the original Christian position, anyway (before heresy became wrapped up in civil disorder, such as in the cases of the Donatists, Monophysites, Arians, and Albigensians, among others).

What you have to explain to me is a rejection of the principle which didn't change in all this: that heresy can be every bit as dangerous to individuals and societies as physical crime is (in fact, much more so, assuming the background premises). You can simply disbelieve in the whole edifice of Christianity. But it is another thing to accuse us of internal inconsistency. You see this in the Middle Ages vs. today vis-a-vis the heretic. I have tried to show that the inner principle remained the same, while the application and particular understanding of it has undergone positive development.

German theologian Karl Adam wrote:

It is true that heretics were tried and burnt in the Middle Ages . . . The origin of such persecutions is to be sought rather in the Byzantine and medieval conception of the state, whereby every attack on the unity of the faith was regarded as an open crime against the unity and stability of the state, and one which had to be punished according to the primitive methods of the time......

The religion of the medieval man embraced his whole life and outlook......So that every revolt against the Catholic faith seemed to him to be a moral crime, a sort of murder of the soul and of God, an offence more heinous than parricide. And his outlook was logical rather than psychological. He rejoiced in the perception of truth, but he had little appreciation of the living conditions of soul by which this perception is reached.......In dealing with the living man we have to take account not only of the logical force of truth, but also of the particular quality of the mental and spiritual endowment with which he reacts to the truth. Because they were not alive to the infinite variety of such spiritual endowment, they were all too ready, especially when truth was impugned, to conclude at once that it was a case of "evil will" (mala fides) and to pass sentence of condemnation, even though there were insuperable intellectual obstacles (ignorantia invincibilis) in the way of the perception of the truth. This pre-eminently logical attitude of mind is characteristic of the Middle Ages. That epoch had no feeling for life as a flowing thing with its own peculiar laws, no appreciation of history, whether within us or without us. And this attitude was not to be overcome and corrected, until the spirit of the time changed, until in the course of centuries and by a long evolution a new outlook took its place. Therefore the persecutions of heretics did not proceed from the nature of Catholicism, but from the political and mental attitude of the Middle Ages.....

The theologian has by means of psychological and historical studies attained a wider understanding and become increasingly cautious in attributing an "evil will" to the heretic. He has become more alive to the thousand possibilities of invincible and therefore excusable error.......

{The Spirit of Catholicism, 1929, rep. by Image Books, Garden City, NY, 1954, pp. 182-184}

Of course I must point out the manifest absurdity of any modern criticizing the Church over these centuries-old scandals when every day in America 4000 innocent preborn children are being ruthlessly and legally slaughtered in their mother's wombs (some as they are emerging fully-formed out of their mother's wombs - they get to have their brains sucked out by "enlightened," "progressive" "doctors"). I think a little moral balance and a spreading out of righteous indignation is called for here. Even the Code of Hammurabi in 1800 B.C. from Babylonia condemned abortion.

I happen to think that the Inquisition was a mistake, true, but that was not implied in the questions that started all this. The question simply asked what justification there was for torture/killing of heretics.

:-) I accept your clarification. I think we both learn many things when reading those, and one can never assume that they fully understand all the ins and outs of an opponent's viewpoint.

In any event, it is both morally and logically ridiculous and outrageous to take pot shots at the centuries-old Catholic Inquisition in an ostensible discussion of moral philosophy when a far more hideous and unjust Inquisition and Holocaust (indeed, genocide: war against the class of preborn persons) takes place in our midst every day. As I seek to apply the justice of my position equally, I can't possibly discuss one form of persecution without also discussing the other.

But we can't see today - as a society - the clear wrongness, injustice, and outrage of abortion. And virtually the only motivation for abortion is personal convenience, expedience, and the Almighty dollar. At least the Church in the Middle Ages had a worthy motive for persecuting those they felt to be heretics. Right or wrong, their motive was to protect other souls from being led astray and possibly winding up in hell. That's a far cry from the motive of sexual license without responsibility, or the monetary motive of the abortionist. You see the fruit of Christianity and a powerful Church (long since corrected and reformed). I see the fruit of humanism and secularism and post-modernism - very much ongoing and showing little sign of being open to moral reason and rudimentary notions of justice or rights, where the preborn are concerned.

At any rate, see my general response to this question: Dialogue: Reflections on the Crusades, the Inquisition, & Slavery. The following also gets into the "psychological" reasons why this occurred: The Catholic Church's View of Non-Catholic Christians (Karl Adam). Of related interest is my documentation that the Protestant record on such matters was far worse and far more hypocritical: The Protestant Inquisition ("Reformation" Intolerance & Persecution).

Michael W. Martin, a Catholic Internet apologist, wrote:

If we start with what was perhaps the first of these so-called Church sanctioned executions for heresy, we find a considerably different picture. In the 4th century the Priscillians were stirring up trouble. They were declared heretics by the Church and excommunicated. However, that did not end the matter. The Empire, which had declared itself Christian by this time, was concerned with the civil unrest that was caused by the Priscillians and decided to impose capital punishment as the penalty for this heresy. St. Martin of Tours was horrified that the state would do such a thing, but his protests fell on deaf ears. The STATE, not the Church, then executed them.

Another example are the Donatists who also were heretics. The Donatists had an army of peasants, known as the Circumcellions. They would enter towns and beat or even kill the orthodox clergy and install their own prelates. Again the empire stepped in to restore order and heretics were executed. Again, it was the state and not the Church. Yes, St. Augustine was fed up with the violence of the Circumcellions and admitted that the use of force was necessary, but then people were being dragged though the streets and even killed. There comes a point in time in which the use of authority is necessary and proper.

Generally speaking, the Church proper had (and still has) very little temporal authority. For example, there were some protesters who entered St. Patrick's Cathedral, disrupted Mass, and generally cause a lot of havoc while the Cardinal was there. Whom do you think he called? The Pope's secret police? :-) No, he called the civil authorities to restore order. Just as it is today, all during the Church's history any temporal authority exercised by the Church in fact pretty much came from civil authority. Church prelates did not have a large standing standing army or police force, the King or state did. Thus when problems arose that required the use of temporal authority, it was generally the state which carried it out and in whatever way the state wanted to, just as was done in New York.

The typical scenario in the Middle Ages was that so-and-so would be charged with heresy or witchcraft. The Church would try so-and-so and if found guilty would hand him over to the civil authorities for punishment. The civil authorities set the punishment which indeed was not infrequently the death penalty. The death penalty was the standard penalty for most serious crimes and heresy was a serious crime.

Part of the reason for the death penalty for heresy was that it was also a source of civil unrest. Hey, the Romans saw Christians as having a heretical notion of God and that this would undermine the Empire. Hence the Christians were sent to the feed the lions, personally. Now make the Empire Christian and it is the other heresies that become the problem (like the Priscillains). I might add that a lot of Catholics lost their lives under King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth because they were "heretics" and considered "against the state". The same was true in Germany and Switzerland under the Lutherans and the Calvinists. Execution of heretics is not a unique situation historically or culturally.

Now anyone who thinks that the state carried out the will of the Church in all things the day after Constantine declared the state to be Christian is unbelievably ignorant of basic history. Some of the emperors and kings have been Christendom's biggest heretics. Go look up the Arian controversy. When an emperor became an Arian (Arains denied that Jesus was God), he began an empire wide persecution of those who held to the true faith. Such greats as Athanasius, Ambrose, and Hillary were exiled to remote parts of the empire for their refusal to cave into the emperors's demand for them to adopt Arianism. Others died in the defence of Jesus' divinity.

Church doctrine is formulated through the statements of Councils and Papal Encyclicals. No such official doctrinal document of the Church exists stating that "witches should be burnt" and I challenge anyone to come forward with such an official level document. If I may give an example, just because someone or group of someones in the goverment SAYS something is against the law does not mean that it IS automatically against the law. Doctrine, like civil law, has a definite process by which it gets promulgated. If, as I do not doubt, some Church officials have made such statements, this does not mean it is official Church teaching any more than if the President stood up and said that wearing the color blue is now illegal.

I do not doubt that some Church officials felt that such a thing was a prudent thing to do, for witches supposedly had the power to kill at will. (Check the Salem Witch trials!) Nor do I doubt that some witches were burnt with the complicity of some Church officials. However, this is a far cry from a doctrinal statement that says one must believe that witches had to be burned!

The killing of heretics was based on the notion that they were a menace to society, and would cause untold harm to society and souls, because in those days, heresy was considered as harmful and dangerous (if not more so) than physical crime is today. Humanists believe that the body dies and that is it. Christians believe that a deliberate, obstinate heretic will burn in hell forever; hence the high importance placed on preventing the spread of heresy.

What is the humanist, post-Christian, so-called "progressive and enlightened" record, on the other hand? We have well over 100 million deaths imposed by atheistic Communism, and for what reason (e.g., Stalin starved 10 million Ukrainians to death - even while his "liberal" comrades and fellow travelers in the US were adoring him)? Well, the "reasons" were ideological, political; motives of sheer power and repression. We have carpet bombing of cities, such as Dresden by the US in WW II, or Hanoi in Vietnam, in clear violation of the Christian just war criteria, the murder of thousands of non-combatants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nazi Holocaust (in which hundreds of thousands of Christians - especially Poles - died alongside the six million Jews).

We have abortion: over 65 million or so executions a year worldwide of preborn children: for what motive? I have already detailed my opinion on that . . . Now we have pushes for legalized euthanasia, and we have infanticide. Meanwhile, "liberals" go around protesting about capital punishment (which the Catholic Church opposes in virtually all cases) and the treatment of animals and trees and the ozone layer . . . And we still have skeptics like you prattling on about the supposedly woeful and unmatched Christian record in these matters . . . .

Nowhere did I say that the Christian record is unmatched by others. But it is no better.

Pretty much a distinction without a difference, no? :-) No better than the Communist record, for Pete's sake??!!!!! My patience will wear thin rapidly, if I am confronted with many more absurd historical statements like this.

What Hitler and Stalin did differs in no essential way from what the Inquisition did. It is only that today we have more efficient ways to kill people and there are more people around to be killed.

I have already explained how the motives were entirely different. Everyone agrees that there are instances of killing which are not murder. Few can offer any moral defense whatever for what Stalin and Hitler did. The Inquisition, on the other hand (even apart from the monstrous distortions of its nature and scope by severely-biased secular historians) can be defended on several grounds; not absolutely, but relatively - as I have tried to do in some fashion. But to say that there is no "essential" difference is patently ludicrous and preposterous, in my opinion. If you are to make such a claim, at least flesh it out; give me some substance beyond mere assertion.

Nazis and Communists certainly could offer justifications, just as you could for the Inquisition. You seem to be of the KALI-ALI persuasion. If Ali takes Kali’s cow, that’s bad. If Kali takes Ali’s cow, that’s good.

Ditto; you resort to your favorite little illustration without presenting a reasonable argument.

As Mother Angelica said on a recent show, just imagine how good the world would be if we were all Christians believing the same thing and doing the will of God! Well, look at the Middle Ages + Renaissance in Europe. That's what we would get all over again. And very few of us would want it.

The Middle Ages vs. today? I would go back there in a second (except I do love the Internet and roller coasters and rock music LOL). And I thought the Renaissance was supposed to be the rebirth of the glorious humanist principles? I suppose you would choose the "Enlightenment" as the beginning of the lovely barbaric and savage age we now find ourselves in - the century more violent than all preceding ones put together?

Even with modern technology we wouldn’t want the spirit back. There was no freedom of thought, speech or religion in those days. Even what we write on the Internet would be policed by the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index. And you would be in just as much trouble as I would be.

Stereotypes all (with some kernel of truth - as all good stereotypes possess). I will answer with Chesterton:

There is something odd in the fact that when we reproduce the Middle Ages it is always some such rough and half-grotesque part of them that we reproduce . . . Why is it that we mainly remember the Middle Ages by absurd things? . . . Few modern people know what a mass of illuminating philosophy, delicate metaphysics, clear and dignified social morality exists in the serious scholastic writers of mediaeval times. But we seem to have grasped somehow that the ruder and more clownish elements in the Middle Ages have a human and poetical interest. We are delighted to know about the ignorance of mediaevalism; we are contented to be ignorant about its knowledge. When we talk of something mediaeval, we mean something quaint. We remember that alchemy was mediaeval, or that heraldry was mediaeval. We forget that Parliaments are mediaeval, that all our Universities are mediaeval, that city corporations are mediaeval, that gunpowder and printing are mediaeval, that half the things by which we now live, and to which we look for progress, are mediaeval.

{"The True Middle Ages," The Illustrated London News, 14 July 1906}

The early Church was ascetic, but she proved that she was not pessimistic, simply by condemning the pessimists. The creed declared that man was sinful, but it did not declare that life was evil . . . The condemnation of the early heretics is itself condemned as something crabbed and narrow; but it was in truth the very proof that the Church meant to be brotherly and broad. It proved that the primitive Catholics were specially eager to explain that they did not think man utterly vile; that they did not think life incurably miserable; that they did not think marriage a sin or procreation a tragedy.

{The Everlasting Man, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1925, p. 223}

As to lying, lots of people lie about lots of things for lots of reasons. I don’t see how you perceive us to be greater liars than Christians. Do you have statistics that support your contention? I don’t.

When you lie about us, we know it, because we are well-acquainted with our own views. Christian history has been distorted beyond all semblance of what has actually occurred. You will say your side has been lied about, too. No doubt this is correct. But that doesn't undo the fact that your side is currently the elite "establishment," and we all know that the "winners" write history, don't we?

A further complication is whether what you think is a lie is really a lie. Just one example: who lied more about the Galileo case?

I don't know, as I haven't studied it. But judging from my studies of humanist bias and wholesale distortion in many areas of thought (in the media and academia), I would fully expect to see that the Church was much more lied about. Now, mind you, the preceding is not an argument; just an expectation. I was lied to about the Catholic Church as a Protestant, and I see the lies all around me (as an apologist who likes to dialogue), coming from my anti-Catholic Protestant brethren. The secularists (and even - sadly - many Eastern Orthodox) join right in, bashing the Catholic Church. It is considered one of the most fun targets around - always good for a few laughs and exercises in obscurantist idiocy, historical revisionism, and sophistry. We are a big target precisely for the reason that we are so historically significant, influential, and unable to be lightly dismissed. So ridicule and slander is utilized as a "quick fix" for the "Catholic problem."

Christians have always been very good at claiming credit for everything they like that happened while the Church existed.

Oh, so humanists shouldn't take credit for the supposed "tolerance" and child-killing we have in society now, simply because it occurred under their cultural dominance?

And surely, some things they did right as well. Our universities were started as Christian schools. Hospitals were first organized by Christian orders. Preservation of old documents was one function in the monasteries. Teaching the population at large good practices of agriculture was another. And when the only teachers were clergy, of course they were the only teachers of any morality as well.

Well, a breath of fresh air!

However, science was already started in ancient Ionia and Greece, and then lost when the Christians took over the Roman Empire. It had to be reinvented by the Christians in the late Middle Ages, early Renaissance. And when it got too bold, around 1600 and later, the Church did nothing but oppose any advances. I could criticize the other items you list as well, but that would just get us further off the track.

Interesting: so the "good Christians" of the late Middle Ages rescued science from the "bad Christians" of the Constantinian period? Funny, that virtually all of the prominent scientists in the 17th, 18th, even much of the 19th century were also committed Christians as well (you mentioned one earlier: Newton; Kepler, Pasteur and Mendel immediately come to mind). Odd, then, that you seem to want to contend that Christianity (particularly, Catholicism) is, on the whole, an anti-science institution.

Absolutists think they have enough truth to come and invade our homes just to check that we don't do anything there they don't approve of.

I'm beginning to think that you use the word "absolutism" as a synonym for "brute force" or "political coercion - the state as a subservient arm of the Church." That ruins the objectivity and constructiveness of this discussion, as it is merely a manifestation of the same old prejudices, falsehoods, and stereotypes, which resolve nothing and only create ill will between people. I don't have to lie at all about the ill fruits of humanism: they are all around us. But the critic of Christianity always seems to have to lie about or grossly distort both our historical actions and our attitudes. Why is that? I suppose that in the end the reason for that may (at least in part) be the following:

Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of god's Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14; cf. 1:18-25, Rom 1:18-32).

In this case, people opposed to Christianity (I'm speaking generally now) seem unable (or unwilling) even to recognize the clear historical progress in humanitarianism and any number of good things (colleges, science, hospitals, abolition, capitalism, women's rights, etc.) which were the direct cultural result of Christianity. This is so remarkable (as these good results do not require - at least operationally - an explicit theological base) that perhaps an explanation on the spiritual level is required.

As a society, we are where we are today because Christianity was so bad we didn't want it any longer (not to rule, at least).

This is such absolutely classic humanist / liberal rhetoric that I can't help but get a big chuckle out of it. As if Christanity ever "ruled" in America, in the sense in which you mean (the power of governmental coercion) . . . . But the nominal, "pop" civil religion-type of Christianity which prevailed in America through most of its history at least sufficed to hold back the floodgates of immorality and debauchery until the 60s and the sexual revolution did that in. So your analysis here fails from whatever angle it is approached.

Christianity ruled in Europe. The people who arrived here from the northern countries (not Spain or Italy) didn’t want to duplicate European Christian models. Why not if all was so good there?

It is my understanding that America was a very Christian nation in the early period. Everyone knows that the Pilgrims were very religious. They were escaping Anglican persecution in England, as they were Dissenters. Does that mean they were abandoning Christianity? Of course not; such a scenario is ridiculous. But they did turn around and persecute Catholics and others of different religious views when they got here. To me that is a problem arising from the nature of Protestant sectarianism and relativism (especially the Puritan brand), not Christianity per se. So the denominations fought each other until religious nominalists Jefferson and Madison came up with the notion of religious freedom in Virginia and then the country at large. Again, however, there was no wholesale rejection of Christianity on the popular level. There had been the Great Awakening in the 1740s and then again in the 1840s; Methodist and Baptist revivals, and later the Holiness movement (deriving largely from Methodism). I find your "model" of American religious history very odd and revisionist.

Look at the First Amendment. It protects freedom of religion and thought and speech. Let's concentrate on the freedom of religion. What religions did the writers have in mind? There were no Jews here at the time, no Muslims, no Buddhists or Hindus. Aha! the freedom of religion clause was meant to protect Christians against other Christians! The other religions just profited from that clause later, when they got here too.

Yes; but it was also never intended to prohibit all Christian influence in government (moral authority or presuppositions), as the humanist / liberal mindset later distorted it to mean. As for inter-Christian warfare, that was a Protestant phenomenon in this country (the bad fruit of rampant sectarianism). Catholic Maryland, on the other hand, was the first tolerant American colony, even before Roger Williams and William Penn.

In any event, it is much easier for the man who believes little or nothing (in the way of religion), or who is a relativist, to be tolerant, than for the man who believes something passionately. Thus it was easier for Jefferson - as a Unitarian - to push for disestablishment of religion than it was for the Virginia Anglicans to voluntarily relinquish their institutional power (as they believed their religion was true). That is not to take away anything from Jefferson's achievement, which was remarkable for its time, but just a thought . . .

Surprise… I agree fully with the above.

[HUGE GASP - IN SHOCK!!!!!]

You justified the treatment [in the Inquisition] with reasoning that is no longer in use today.

The reasoning I gave then and now is certainly in use today! The belief that heresy is bad and soul-destroying is altogether in effect as well. The understanding of the motives of the heretic and thereby the treatment or punishment is what changed (along with the relationship of church and state in modern societies).

I’m sure that makes sense to you, and presumably to many Catholics. But it does not make sense to outsiders unless morality is relative even to the Church. I think we ran into that before, so we have a repeat argument. Therefore, let me try to clarify further.

The same heresies as before exist today and they are just as bad and soul-destroying as before, so that has not changed. Before, however, the Church was wrong on the motives of the heretic. So it applied the wrong treatment. The correct treatment is what the Church applies today. And that is excommunication (?) or else doing nothing and letting the heresy be, countering it only by teaching to the contrary. If I got this wrong, please correct me. If I got this right, please confirm.

Accurate enough.

Then we can continue the train of thought and see if the reasoning is that of moral relativism or not.

Hopefully taking into consideration my recent reiterations and defenses of the motivation of the Inquisition . . .

I agreed that murder is always wrong, and proceeded to offer a lengthy answer for why I thought the Inquisition did not contradict (as an institution and as a concept) this constant Catholic moral principle (since recently expanded even more). The Inquisition doesn't lend itself to quick, sloganistic explanations. It is historically, morally, and theologically complex.

I have also sought to demonstrate by analogical argument that the "abortion Inquisition" so championed by your side is far more in violation of basic moral principles (pagan and Christian alike) than the Inquisition ever was. That's why I keep talking about abortion - as much as you would love to see me drop that subject (pro-aborts never want to talk about it - and I fully understand why). The Christian is supposed to be concerned about the oppression of the weak and lowly. Don't you know that? Who is more weak and lowly and defenseless than a preborn child? So I'm just being a good "liberal," as that word used to be defined. Besides, we have ended our Inquisition. Yours continues with full vigor. I see a big difference there . . . there is no contest in relative numbers, either.

You say that the Church once called for the killing of heretics, whereas now it does not; ergo: it has contradicted itself and is relativist. But I have attempted to show that - with regard to the Inquisition - there are underlying principles which have remained the same, while the application and "disciplinary" action of the Church has changed. But as the essence lies in the principles, therefore, no contradiction has occurred, nor has relativism been established in these examples. The same applies to the development of doctrine, which many incorrectly understand as an evolution of one doctrine into another.

It seems clear to me that you (like virtually all non-Christians and secular academic types) are unfamiliar with much of the reasoning which lies behind the Inquisition. That's why I said from the outset that the mediæval mindset must be understood to some extent for one to ever hope to comprehend the Inquisition and Crusades with any semblance of objectivity and fairness; this applies even the Galileo incident to some extent (though that is technically post-mediæval).

The reason for mentioning Church history was solely that . . . you argued that Catholic morality was above reproach and flawless, at least in principle. Any shortcomings are either due to sinners or they are shortcomings only to those people who don’t quite understand the historical reasons for practices that were perfectly in accord with the flawless principles. Isn’t that pretty much what you argue?

Yes. I don't think, however, that the Inquisition need be absolutely defended by the Catholic apologist. I don't try to do that. I don't like the Inquisition at all myself (as I view coercion in matters of religion and conscience as a contradiction in terms - precisely the position of Vatican II).

Precisely what puzzles relativists. Even you (and the rest of the Church) no longer “like” the Inquisition. And Vatican II seems to find coercion in matters of religion to be a contradiction in terms. So the torture/killing by the lay governments that was a direct result of Inquisition procedures, and declared morally licit by the Church, would no longer be morally licit today. To our simple minds, that means that “murder” definitions have changed. What are we missing?

Heresy was considered a crime (a legal, societal category) because it was more harmful to the individual (as an eternal soul) than was mere harm to property or bodies. But central to both sin and crime (as seen in the distinction between mortal and venial sin in theology, or degrees of murder or the insanity defense in civil law) is the degree and nature of individual culpability. That is precisely what the Church has come to better understand through the centuries. Thus, the Inquisition was not self-understood at all as a callous act of murder or repression (as, say, Naziism or Stalinism were), but simply a just punishment, for the good of the society, just as our prison sentences are today. Civilized secular society has come to frown upon capital punishment, by and large, and torture ("cruel and unusual punishment"). It has grown in its understanding of crime and punishment, too. All of civilized society has (insofar as child-killing societies can be considered "civilized" at all), including the Church.

So the Inquisition may have been mistaken in its application or severity, due to the above considerations, but it is not murder, anymore than a civil government falsely putting an accused person to death is murder per se. It may be a grave injustice, or a travesty of justice, based on mistaken grounds or lack of compelling evidence, but the state is acting in good conscience, according to the amount of knowledge it possesses. The state is granted the power of the sword in biblical, Christian thought (Romans 13). Police have this power. They exercise it in momentary decisions, such as to shoot a person who poses a perceived deadly threat. Would you call that murder (taking into account what the policeman knew when he did it)? Sometimes it may be, but as a blanket statement, it is not.

So things have changed in both civil/secular and Christian understanding of the civil order and the good of society, crime, and what to do about it. The Church has come to realize that the rights of individual freedom and conscience are relatively more important than temporal punishment of heretics (because the causes of heresy are regarded as extremely complex and not given to harsh and swift judgment). States are almost all secular these days, anyway. They were the entities which carried out the executions in the old days, but now such a state of affairs isn't even possible, even if the Church desired to persecute heretics.

The ultimate crime now isn't heresy, but the killing of an abortionist. That deserves an immediate death penalty, as it is a direct affront to the dogmatic status quo of our radical feminist culture of death and extreme individual license - above all in matters sexual. Don't get me wrong. I don't sanction the murder of abortionists whatsoever (nor does my Church). But I find it interesting that secular society mimics the very behavior it ostensibly finds reprehensible when carried out by the Church (i.e., capital punishment), for far superior motives, by and large. We found heresy extremely threatening to the Christian society we sought to establish. The secularist today finds the killing of an abortionist the most threatening thing to its little diabolical kingdom of this world, ultimately ruled by Satan.

Not only that; the secular establishment also regarded peaceful Operation Rescue (of which I was a part) as an extreme threat, to be dealt with in the most repressive way possible legally (regarding us as quasi-terrorists). In fact, rescue was part of a long and honored tradition of civil disobedience in America, starting with abolitionism (Thoreau, the Quakers, etc.), the dissent of organized labor (Reuther, AFL-CIO et al), the civil rights movement (Martin Luther King - a Baptist pastor), and the anti-war movement (Vietnam - strangely absent during the Kosovo fiasco). But such conscientious dissent must not be allowed for a second to interfere with the unbridled "right" to sexual license and the multi-billion dollar child-killing industry.

So (forgive my digression) there have been two developments with regard to the place of heresy in relation to civil society and the harmfulness to individuals. The secularists (like you) have adopted relativism and concluded that, as there is no truth to be ascertained in matters spiritual and theological (indeed, in anything at all, closely examined), therefore "heresy" is a meaningless concept, and any belief goes, as long as it doesn't advocate harm to others (excluding preborn children, and "unwanted" handicapped or elderly). All religious beliefs have pretty much been excluded from the realm of government or "the public square" in general, by an unspoken gentleman's agreement (approved by religious nominalists and political/moral libertarians alike), and government has often improperly set itself against religion.

On the other hand, in the Church, heresy is still regarded as extremely dangerous, but it has been decided that it is not to be punishable by death, or persecuted in a coercive manner. The reason for that is as I have said: a greater understanding of the underlying causes, an ecumenical emphasis (stressing commonalities rather than differences), and the greater good of freedom of conscience and religious liberty. This was the original Christian position anyway. The other state of affairs came to be as a result of the growth of temporal power in the Church, malevolent and violent heresies such as Donatism, Arianism, and Albigensianism, and various cultural effects of mediæval thought. As all those things have faded, it is to be expected that the Church's former approach would as well.

In any event, the concept of "murder" as wrong and evil didn't change, which is why we are not dealing with relativism here at all. As long as civil punishment and even the death penalty continue to exist in civil society for crimes against properties and persons, it is not inconsistent at all that the Church once advocated such penalties for persons who were guilty of crimes against the soul and divinely-revealed spiritual truth, leading people to eternal hellfire. Now we have taken a different approach, more like the early Church and the Apostles, but we were no more guilty of "murder" en masse than secular societies are, in which police sometimes kill suspects, soldiers kill enemies, or the state executes serial killers. Neither the Church nor states are pacifist. All agree that there is such a category as "murder" and types of killing which are not murder. How "murder" is defined, and its parameters is a separate question, but that doesn't affect the notion that the category exists in and of itself, as part of the moral law.

That's about all I know to say about the Inquisition (and quite inadequately at that, I fear). If we pursue it further, I will have to cite others who know far more than I do. But this is how I understand it in my own mind, at any rate, and reconcile what you feel to be a self-contradiction.

What I have tried to do is to merely raise questions as to how the Inquisition is always portrayed, the motivations behind it, and why it is not a disproof of the status of the Catholic Church as a divine institution. There were bad inquisitors just as there were bad popes, bishops, and priests (though not nearly as many as is casually assumed).

I also get quite irritated at insinuations and outright assertions that there is an "immoral equivalency" between the Inquisition and, say, Communism. To me, there is an exponential difference, and I would like to hope that I would feel the same even if I weren't a Catholic, or a Christian at all (because I believe that the hard facts warrant such an opinion). E.g., even the thoroughly secular BBC put out a TV special recently whose thesis was that the crimes of the Spanish Inquisition have been greatly (indeed scandalously and slanderously) exaggerated by secular historians and the popular culture.

I agree that the Spanish Inquisition was vilified by exaggeration in Protestant publications of the time, especially in the Low Countries, where the Spanish occupation was hated for other reasons as well. But the Spanish Inquisition was only one of several. And coercion was not limited to the instrument of the Inquisitions. Before the first Inquisition was officially instituted, the Church (bishops, popes) already ordered attacks on heretics such as the Albigensians, for example. In fact, the first Inquisition was instituted a little while later to fight the Albigenses more effectively (ca. 1233). And if we took the exaggerations away, would the principles involved look any better?

This is in accordance with the above reasoning, about the harm of heretics to society. The Albigensians provide a quintessential example. I guess you are unacquainted with their beliefs and practices. For their bizarre, neo-Gnostic beliefs, see my paper: Were the Albigensians Primitive "Protestants?"

Hilaire Belloc wrote, concerning them:

But one thing the Manichean of every shade has always felt, and that is, that matter belongs to the evil side of things. Though there may be plenty of evil of a spiritual kind, yet good must be wholly spiritual. That is something you find not only in the early Manichean, not only in the Albigensian of the Middle Ages, but even in the most modern of the remaining Puritans. It seems indissolubly connected with the Manichean temper in every form. Matter is subject to decay and is therefore evil. Our bodies are evil. Their appetites are evil. This idea ramifies into all sorts of absurd details. Wine is evil. Pretty well any physical pleasure, or half-physical pleasure, is evil. Joy is evil. Beauty is evil. Amusements are evil - and so on . . . Because the Catholic Church was strongly at issue with an attitude of this kind there has always been irreconcilable conflict between it and the Manichean or Puritan . . .

{The Great Heresies, London: Sheed & Ward, 1938, rep. by TAN Books, Rockford, IL: 1991, pp. 85-86}

I would submit that these beliefs constituted every bit as much of a threat to both civil society and the Church as, say, the sanctity of life, absolutism, and sexual purity threatens the Sexual and Liberal Revolution and Culture of Death which we are currently blessed with. Beyond the strange, culture-destroying beliefs, the Albigensians were also less-than-saintly behavior-wise. The well-known secular historian Will Durant wrote:

For some time the Cathari [a variant of Albigensianism] received a broad toleration from the ecclesiastics and the secular powers of southern France. Apparently the people were allowed to choose freely between the old religion and the new. Public debates were held between Catholic and Catharist theologians; one such took place at Carcassonne in the presence of a papal legate and King Pedro II of Aragon (1204). In 1167 various branches of the Cathari held a council of their clergy, attended by representatives from several countries; it discussed and regulated Catharist doctrine, discipline, and administration, and adjourned without having been disturbed . . .

. . . the nobles, relatively poor, began to seize Church property. In 1171 Roger II, Viscount of Béziers, sacked an abbey, threw the bishop of Albi into prison, and set a heretic to guard him. When the monks of Allet chose an abbot unsatisfactory to the Viscount, he burned the monastery and jailed the abbot; when the latter died the merry Viscount installed his corpse in the pulpit and persuaded the monks to choose a pleasing substitute. Raymond Roger, Count of Foix, drove abbot and monks from the abbey of Pamiers; his horses ate oats from the altar; his soldiers used the arms and legs of the crucifixes as pestles to grind grain, and practised their markmanship upon the image of Christ. Count Raymond VI of Toulouse destroyed several churches, persecuted the monks of Moissac, and was excommunicated (1196) . . .

Innocent III, coming to the papacy in 1198, saw in these developments a threat to both Church and state. He recognized some excuse for criticism of the Church, but he felt that he could hardly remain idle when the great ecclesiastical organization for which he had such lofty plans and hopes, and which seemed to him the chief bulwark against human violence, social chaos, and royal iniquity, was attacked in its very foundations, robbed of its possessions and dignity, and mocked with blasphemous travesties. The state too had committed sins and cherished corruption and unworthy officials, but only fools wished to destroy it. How could any continuing social order be built on the principles that forbade parentage and counseled suicide? Could any economy prosper on the idolatry of poverty and without the incentives of property? Could the relations of the sexes, and the rearing of children, be rescued from a wild disorder except by some such institution as marriage?

{The Age of Faith, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1950, pp. 772-773}

A very eloquent and accurate statement, made, remember, by a non-Catholic, even a non-Christian humanist (though I have heard that he converted to Catholicism as his death approached). This analysis gets right to the point that in this instance, the heresy very much affected the civil as well as the ecclesiastical order. Civil societies do precisely the same thing, whether it is persecution of Communists from the right (McCarthyism) or the persecution of Christian pro-life and pro-family activists from the left (today) as "homophobes" and "anti-women" and "intolerant bigots" (say, if we dare to oppose Affirmative Action on the grounds that it harms the very people it ostensibly seeks to help). But again, I submit that the Church had far more worthy and rationally and ethically defensible motives.

I know vaguely what the Albigenses believed. Same for Donatists and Arians. Again, the point is not that they posed a threat or perceived threat to the Church. They did. The point is that today, there are even more dangerous threats to the Church. But today the Church does not think that killing us off is the correct moral answer.

Correct. Obviously we are at an impasse concerning whether these facts constitute the establishment of relativism or a non-violation of absolutism. Our readers will have to decide for themselves; we haven't persuaded each other.

As to getting irritated at statements that the Inquisition is morally equivalent to Nazism or Stalinism, I know exactly what you mean. The professors at Steubenville did the opposite, namely equate pro-choice to Nazism and Stalinism. I think you do the same whenever given a chance.

I do to some extent. But note that my opinion would be that they have a common ideological ancestor: humanism or agnosticism or relativism (always contra- or anti-Christianity, by nature): not that they are entirely moral equivalents. My point is that the philosophical and ethical principles you are espousing can and in fact do logically lead to Naziism and Stalinism (as they also lead to the abortion genocide). You haven't given me any reason to believe that they don't in fact do so. I continue to await that argument from you (and we are thousands of words into this . . . ).

We shall see which side has more in common with Nazism and Stalinism in terms of approach to morality. Suffice it to say here that Hitler and Stalin thought they were absolutely right and did not need the consent or consensus of the population to enforce their morality on everybody else. That is, in my opinion, exactly what the Church did throughout the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.

And what humanists like you seek to do today (even while claiming you are not). Nowhere is this more evident than with legal child-killing. In the very act of condemning coercion and "forced morality," the secularist thinks nothing of forcing the life out of a ten-week-old preborn child, who is fully-formed, who feels pain, who is every bit genetically and essentially a human being as you or I, who has no idea why it should be subjected to such brutal savagery. The poor child's mother or father couldn't keep their clothes on or engage in sexual discipline, so the child must be sacrificed on the altar of sexual "freedom."

This is the sacrament of the culture of death; the high religious rite. And now a fully-formed child has its brains sucked out, on the grounds that it is not yet human, not having fully emerged from the womb; therefore it has no rights, and can be barbarously slaughtered by a so-called "doctor." I shudder to think at the frightful recesses of hell reserved for people who commit such heinous acts (and I refer to the butcher, not the woman - though her responsibility in this instance is all the greater, too). We need to pray for them with all vigor and compassion.

Now, the defense might argue that the Church happened to be right and that Hitler and Stalin were wrong on the contents of what they were enforcing. That is a pro domo argument that may satisfy the partisans, but it carries no weight with outside observers who happen to think that what the Church was enforcing was wrong as well.

I have already noted the huge difference in fundamantal principle. The quantitative difference is evident (not that millions of murders particularly matter to the secularist, once his principle of the "right to abortion" is granted - hundreds of millions of legal abortions having been committed already). If you can morally murder one child, why not 100 million; a billion? a trillion? every child? The devil is consistent with his own diabolical logic and ethics.

When you dealt with the complexities of the Inquisition, you argued that we can no longer understand them unless we study history and think like people of those times. Whenever a justification requires such conditioning, by history or culture, the moral judgment involved is relative, in our opinion. Relative means dependent on circumstances of history, culture, place, local conditions etc. We wouldn’t require that conditioning if the moral principle involved were absolute, i.e. independent of such accidents of local conditions in time and place.

Again, the Inquisition was not murder at all, but rather, an application of civil justice (as then understood, in the mediæval mindset) with some flawed premises as to who should be tried as a "criminal." I sought to use analogies to show that your argument didn't fly - it proved too much. If the Inquisition was "murder," so is every "self-defense"-type shooting by a cop on the street - in other words, the use of force as sanctioned by the state. Other examples are capital punishment and killing in war. Murder itself remains the same concept in principle throughout Church history (take abortion, e.g. - that teaching has been absolutely constant, so there is your absolute).

That heresy was regarded as a threat to society is true. It is no longer so regarded today, although it is still the same threat to eternal life, I suppose, but that is the heretic’s responsibility. It’s his eternal life. At any rate, the killing of the heretic was justified as the proper elimination of a threat to society, correct?

Yes, and also to save his or her soul, just as we see in our time the attempts of clergymen to save prisoners about to be executed. There is nothing like an imminent death which wonderfully concentrates the mind on matters eternal and spiritual.

However, the understanding of “a threat to society” has changed. That changes the moral content of the justification rule, which therefore is not an absolute in our eyes.

Only as defined by the state. The Church still considers it a threat to society (that hasn't changed), but we no longer approach the heretic in the same way - taking into account factors of psychology, environment, and degrees of individual culpability. But see, this is the distinction between "discipline" and "dogma" in Catholic ecclesiology and theology. The heresy involves dogma, which can't change. But the discipline involves behavior and treatment of dissent, which can and does change. The problem of semantics here is your defining of "murder" a thing which was never self-understood as such (nor was it objectively).

The rules of chess create chess problems indeed, but those problems are purely analytical, like a problem in physics class. When you get a gravity problem, you either solve it correctly or not. Gravity does not change while you try to figure it out.

Unless you change the rules of chess, a problem of 1945 would have exactly the same solution a thousand years from now. Mate in four would still be mate in four, and the same moves would still solve the problem.

I defined "murder" for you long ago in this debate, and its definition hasn't changed in Christianity. Unless you confute my analogies of the Inquisition to the standard civil use of force, which is generally not considered murder, I think your objection fails. If you define murder simply as all killing, then you would have a point, but of course such an equation is unheard-of in either law or ethics (excepting the most purist of pacifists). I don't know if you are a pacifist or not. That would certainly have a large effect on your reasoning in this regard.

As to shortcomings, take an example from the same age we are discussing: torture. By Inquisition rules, torture could be applied in the procedure known as 'rigorous interrogation’. The idea was that the suspect was lying and the torture would make him tell the truth. Good motive, of course, but bad reasoning. Under torture, most people would admit to anything the interrogators wanted them to admit to. Reason alone would have told us, and should have told them, that the torture did not bring out truth but predetermined conclusions of the court. And in untold cases, the suspect simply lied to make the torture stop.

I agree. This is one of the aspects of the Inquisition which is pretty self-evidently false and unjust. But even this has been greatly exaggerated, with regard to exactly what methods were usually used. To this day, the police interrogate suspects, using mostly psychological methods - same thing for captured soldiers or spies. So ironically we have your civil secular states using the methods that the Christian Church is always excoriated for. We have long since ceased using those methods, but we never hear the end of it. Meanwhile, secularists and "relativists" continue the abortion Holocaust and things like carpet bombing of cities with both conventional and nuclear bombs. Of such absurdities, humanist relativism is made. But you tell me that relativism is somehow a superior ethical system . . . . .

I’m glad you mention the coercion being pointless bit. It was the original Christian position indeed. The Christians were in no position to coerce anyone anyway. They were the persecuted, under many of the Emperors.

Indeed.

As an aside, the Romans had all the reasons to persecute the Christians that you cite in defense of the Inquisition persecuting heretics. In fact, the Romans were more tolerant in many respects. The Christians did not have to stop worshipping their own God if they only acknowledged the Roman gods as well. And acknowledging the Roman gods often involved no more than burning incense in front of a dead statue. Then they would be let go in peace.

But as that was idolatry and strictly forbidden by Christianity, it was not an option. This reminds me of the so-called "pro-choice" "tolerance": "you have every right to be pro-life as long as you agree that we have the right to continue to kill the babies . . . " Of course they would actually use a self-soothing euphemism such as "terminate the pregnancy" . . . . . But I myself like to be precise in my language.

The reason the Romans insisted on that respect for Roman gods was that they thought the Christians were making the Roman gods angry by not burning incense before them. That was a threat to the state just as sure as the later heretics were a threat to Christendom. The Romans didn’t really care how many other gods you worshipped, as long as you paid your dues to the Roman gods.

But of course; aren't all secular states of this mindset? As long as you pay your taxes . . . As long as (today) you worship at the altar of "diversity" and the Sexual Revolution, and radical feminism, and the Culture of Death, and liberal political views, everything's fine. Don't make any waves, don't bring that fanatic "religious jargon" into the public square . . . . The public example of a "Christian" in today's America is the supposedly "repentant" Bill Clinton, surrounded by his lackeys from the liberal wing of evangelicalism, such as Tony Campolo. Clinton took "religion in the White House" to sublime new heights of brazen hypocrisy and shucksterism. He's about as sincere in his religion as Thomas Cromwell was . . .

As soon as the Christians came to power, however, they became the persecutors instead of the persecuted. But, as you say, that was all very understandable in those days. And that was centuries before the Inquisition.

As soon? If you date this from 313, whom did they persecute? The Donatist scourge was some 100 years later. The Albigensian heresy flourished in the early 13th century, with the Crusades in the previous century. But you say persecution began immediately. Please elaborate, if you would.

And now you’re going to accuse me of getting way off the topic, which is the theory of morality and the absolute-relative question. I agree there.

Hey, I like to see you talk history. I would like to see you try to prove your thesis by recourse to it.

I’m still having problems deciding which inner principle remained the same and which application or understanding of it has undergone positive development.

I've talked some more about that in the last three posts. If it is still unclear to you, please let me know, and I will clarify some more (but I don't know much more to say - for something I actually don't care for at all, I have sure defended the Inquisition vigorously! LOL).

The heresies remain the same, I agree. But the reaction of the Church differs. However, the question is not the heresy but the reaction of the Church, i.e. torture and killing versus either no action or excommunication. So, it seems to us, the justifications for torture and killing did change.

Yes, according to the growing understanding of culpability, the ways in which correct belief ("orthodoxy") is obtained, etc. But that is more psychology than morals - just as growing understanding in physical science isn't a moral thing per se, but simply a descriptive thing.

As one relativist once put it, we all have the truth until we find out that we didn’t have it in the past but that we have it now.

:-) Well, the Church has grown and learned many things. We would expect this of a living body, even one guided by the Holy Spirit. I just don't think its definition of murder has changed. Wasn't that the original point of your bringing up the Inquisition?

We already agreed long ago that the Inquisition had a justification. The point is still that it is no longer considered valid today.

Fair enough. On the other hand, my argument is that the Inquisition wasn't murder; therefore the wrongness of murder doesn't change (at least as pertains the Church). Though I apparently misunderstood the exact intent of your use of the Inquisition, still my treatment of it had relevance to the overall discussion (of absolute morals supposedly changing within Christianity).

I would not call it murder. I have never called the inquisitors murderers. I have only asked how they justified their killing.

Ok; point well taken. And in return I have asked how your side justifies abortion, which we do consider murder, as you well know.

Just the fact that the justification for the killing is dependent on the period and the culture tells us that we are dealing with a relative concept.

Yes; in the peripheries; not the absolutes themselves.

In our outlook, absolutes don’t change. If killing heretics was justified in AD 1600, it was also justified in 600 BC and it will be justified in AD 3045.

"Killing heretics" isn't an absolute; "killing" is. When will you comprehend that? You don't have to agree with it, but I wish you would grasp that it is our position.

Nazism was particularly bad because it singled out certain ethnic groups for persecution.

Since abortion murders all without discrimination, therefore it is good.

However, if truth be told, the Inquisition did that too in its days. Correct, the Inquisition was protecting its religion, and Jews who converted were left alone, in principle. In practice, they were subject to invasion of privacy, even after conversion, just to make sure that they were not practicing their Jewish faith secretly at home. But you know all that.

What's more an "invasion of privacy" than a butcher coming into your mother's womb to slaughter you?

Saying that we are for abortion is one of those slogans you don’t want us to use against the Inquisition.

Oh, we were for the Inquisition. We don't have to play games with words and put up a false pretense the way you do.