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Sunday Question: To Proceed with Gentlemanly Courtesy..or not

During the Reformation Pope Paul IV, a man of reputedly iron will - though in age seventy-nine at his ascension - is credited with carrying through on the demands of Trent, reforming the morals of both Rome and its clergy. He is also credited with publishing the first Index of Forbidden Books, and with resurrecting another institution to its former ferocity, the Inquisition. Said Erasmus: "An actual reign of terror began, which filled all Rome with fear." When one of his prisoners, a man named Flaminio, escaped the Inquisition by dying prematurely, the Pope bragged that "we have had his brother burned in the piazza before the church of the Minerva...Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him." When the Pope died,"Rome celebrated with four days of rioting..."

His successor, Pius IV, informed the Inquisition that they "would better please him were they to proceed with gentlemanly courtesy than with monkish harshness." This was a Pope who "kept clear of war, and reproved those who counseled aggressvie policies." He shepherded the on-again-off-again Council of Trent to its peaceful conclusion, then died after a six year pontificate.

Two men of the same Church, the same Faith, but whose centers of moral gravity were hugely different.

I've got this theory that Christian people know how they ought to behave, and always have known; that when they do evil in the name of Christ, they know they're doing it. They have found a way to justify it, but can they really not know, in their heart of hearts, that not just anything is permissible in service to God's glory? In the case of our forbears, we're often told that the circumstances of history matter, that we should not venture to judge those who took their religion more seriously than we. What seems trivial to us in the age of religious indifference was life and death to them. Their faith held their world together. Unrepentant heresy, for example, left unchecked could, like the plague, destroy it. Such heresy might, under certain treasonous circumstances, merit the penalty of death.

And this I would not deny. In treating of the Spanish Inquisition, one historian tries to see it through Spanish eyes:

We are today so uncertain and diverse in our opinions as to the origin and destiny of the world and man that we have ceased, in most countries, to punish people for differing from us in their religious beliefs. Our present intolerance is rather for those who question our economic or political principles, and we explain our frightened dogmatism on the ground that any doubt thrown upon these cherished assumptions endangers our national solidarity and survival. Until the middle of the seventeenth century Christians, Jews and Moslems were more accutely concerned with religion than we are today; their theologies were their most prized and confident possessions; and they looked upon those who rejected these creeds as attacking the foundations of social order and the very significance of human life...
I am not concerned here with the sentence of execution for its own sake, but with the cruelty of the means by which it was achieved and sometimes preceded (torture). I don't know exactly when death by burning came into fashion, but at least from the Middle Ages to beyond the Reformation, it seems to have been the method of choice. Of justifications for the pain inflicted our historian notes that
...God wished all nations to be Christian, and that the practice of non-Christian - certainly of anti-Christian - religions must be a crass insult to the Deity. Moreover, since any substantial heresy must merit eternal punishment, its prosecuters could believe (and many seem to have sincerely believed) that in snuffing out a heretic they were saving his potential converts, and perhaps himself, from everlasting hell...Often the torture so decreed was postponed in the hope that dread of it would induce confession. The inquisitors appear to have sincerely believed that torture was a favor to a defendant already accounted guilty, since it might earn him, by confession, a slighter penalty than otherwise; even if he should, after confession, be condemned to death, he could enjoy priestly absolution to save him from hell...
I should add that in noting it, he does not imply approval.

There was the rack, to which "girls of thirteen and women of eighty were subjected"; other victims were suspended by their hands which had been tied behind their backs, and still others bound and water poured down their throats to the point of choking nearly to death (nearly: the "ethical" rule of torture was that it should not permanently maim); and they were bound by cords about the arms and legs, the cords gradually constricted until they "cut through to the flesh and bone."

I'm not picking on the Inquisition in Spain, which some call a model of sanity compared to another European fever, the hunt for witches, this latter crossing denominational lines, such that Luther, Calvin and Pope Innocent the VIII all vehemently urged their prosecution, an opportunity disdained by the Spanish inquisitors, who thought such people - mostly women - more in need of pity than prosecution. Said Luther, "I would have no compassion on these witches; I would burn them all."

But why burning? Beheading or a professional hanging would have been more merciful. Even then it was known how to quickly dispatch a man to the next life. Why the need for torment in the process? Cruelty is a thing from which most of us naturally recoil. The desire to inflict it is usually reserved for objects of hatred, but even so we still know it's wrong, and most of us (I hope) would not yield to the impulse. But our ancestors did. Did they not experience a natural revulsion? They must have known it was awful; that's why they so often threatened it (more often than it was actually used). But how could they have thought that it was morally permissible?

A few possible answers:

1. It was morally permissible because they saw heresy and witchcraft as either so treasonable (as today we might execute a man for betraying his country) or so depraved as to merit both suffering and death. While today the Christian religion is a matter of opinion, back then it was understood to be true and worth suffering and dying for, as did Our Lord Himself. Suffering is part and parcel of the Christian faith, in its foundation and in its history. Redemptive in its purpose, it works to purify the sinful and to satisfy the demand for temporal punishment against the pains of hell. It can be administered without malice, and with a genuinely charitable concern for another's salvation. The Faith's adherents, therefore, had every right to insist on uniformity of belief for the sake of peace and the welfare of souls.


2. It was not morally permissible, but they were not culpable. They were prisoners of their time, and acted according to what they knew. Cruel punishments have been known since recorded history began, and it is only through a gradual enlightenment that mankind comes to know the fullness of truth. Moral doctrine, in other words, like the theological sort, "develops."

3. It was morally permissible because there is Biblical warrant for it. Something to the effect that thou shalt not suffer a witch (or a heretic) to live?

4. It was not morally permissible because they should have known better. The moral law, unlike Revelation (from the Catholic point of view), is fixed, not unfolding. This is confirmed by the fact that it is accessible to reason, while the divine mysteries require some authority, either scriptural or institutional or both, to reveal them and to elaborate upon them. Furthermore, there is no Biblical warrant. Where do we find in the example of Christ, or in the commandments given to his disciples, or even in the primitive Christian Church, any recommendation that cruelty may be employed to compel belief?

I am inclined to number 4. Perhaps other permutations are possible. I should add that I am not particularly interested in comments, or taunts (which do nothing to answer difficulties), from those who do not believe in God as lawgiver to mankind. They will be deleted with dispatch.

Comments (221)

Mr. Luse, what would the reason be for it not being morally permissible, if you are not arguing that the punishment is not proportional to the offense? This of course raises the issue whether we are capable of determining that a punishment is equal to an offense. If one believes that goods are incommensurable then perhaps no punishment is possible. But if the physical evils of pain and bodily harm do not come close to being commensurate with the moral evil of the certain crimes, then one can describe such punishments as being cruel, but it would be another thing to say that they are not proportionate because they are excessive. (This appears to be, in substance, an affirmation of #1.)

I am going to propose a 5th: it was morally culpable, but they had reduced moral culpability. They had the wherewithal to know that it was _in some degree_ wrong, but had not worked out just how gravely wrong it was. And this on 2 counts: first, part of the rationale for imposing suffering is to induce a change (deterrence). It cannot achieve that unless the suffering stands out from the norm. In those times, what with illness and accidents and war and famine and whatnot, the suffering of a "mere" hanging did not stand out from the background level of pain and suffering. Therefore, something more severe was "needed."

Secondly, a general principle of punishment is that a greater crime demands a greater penalty. Some crimes such as murder deserve death. Therefore, worse crimes like intentional and pre-meditated heretical preaching (resulting in the death of the soul) was viewed as deserving a greater penalty than merely death. No significant body of thought suggested that the state needed to restrict itself to punishments for crimes with respect to that aspect of the common good that the state has care of, and the eternal order is not it.

I am not sure I actually think this is the correct category, I am still sifting them.

Mr. Luse, what would the reason be for it not being morally permissible, if you are not arguing that the punishment is not proportional to the offense?

Let me be clear, Mr. Chan, if I was not before. I'm taking it as given that methods were sometimes used that the Church today describes as "intrinsically evil." I did not appeal to propotionality because intrinsically evil acts are never proportional for the simple reason that they are never allowed; and since they are not allowed they cannot be considered punishments.

Tony's remarks are interesting, but I'll wait till he's done sifting.

At the risk of peremptory deletion: I think that the "conversion" of Constantine I & his empire in 312 A.D. was the ultimate disaster for Christianity. The accession of Christians to positions of worldly power led in very short order to their infection by the habitually cruel attitudes & practices of their predecessors.

I suppose I'd go with 1 with a dash of 3. Different types of execution can serve to show differences in the level of crimes that warrant execution. Treason is much worse than simply murdering someone, so it warrants a heftier penalty, even if both crimes require execution.

Mind you, I'm speculating, as I have no idea what anyone thought about this in the heady days of witch hunts.

Bill, I take it as a given that you are not interested in allowing this discussion to take on _whether_ torture is intrinsically wrong. Is it OK to get into a discussion of _in what respect_ torture is intrinsically wrong? 'Cause it seems to me that this could really affect how we view the alternatives.

One of the Catholic views of just punishment - with the death penalty as well as others - is that when the criminal accepts the punishment in remorse and contrition, the punishment is itself expiatory. If a person has committed a crime worse than simple murder, the proportionate expiation would seem to require that he suffer a more severe punishment than that due for murder. This does not, itself, present a satisfactory ground for a tortuous death method, but you can see where the rationale comes from. Proportionality cannot justify something that is intrinsically wrong, but there are still some unresolved issues about what is intrinsically wrong with respect to different forms of execution. I can think of at least one argument that would suggest that lethal injection is intrinsically wrong, even though the death penalty itself is not.

I'm not aware that the magisterium has declared execution by burning to be "intrinsically evil." I think it far more likely that we simply presume that burning is torture. Whether torture is intrinsically evil is a weighty question explainable by the development of doctrine (or simply by the unconsidered dogmatic degrees of an internet personality, for instance one whose name rhymes with "Clark Weigh.")

It was definitely the case through the middle ages that the method of execution was a product of the type of crime of which one was convicted. At common law, for instance, every felony was a capital offense: most would get you hanged; beheading was for noblemen. Crimes in the nature of treason (including a wife's murder of her husband), however, garnered burning. Drawing and quartering was a particularly harsh innovation and was not, to my knowledge, ever incorporated into the law generally, remaining a tool of royal displeasure in particular cases. If you want real cruelty in execution, look to eastern Europe, where the Poles and Ukrainians learned frightful things, like staking, from the Turks and hordes (it remained frightening;y common through the 17th c.).

As for the comparative benefit of burning, I think it lies in several respects: 1) it was particularly terrible (deterrence); 2) it was a common punishment for treason, of which heresy is an attenuated species (perhaps); 3) it actually gives the condemned an opportunity to repent not merely in anticipation of the punishment, but under the influence of its pain; other slow-working methods (staking, caging, burying) either are less dependable (who knows who might come cut the criminal out of that cage), or for whatever reason simply less practiced. I can't, for instance, think of a case of a criminal (or even a military or political prisoner) being staked in Western Europe.

But really, the origin of burning as an execution method undoubtedly has some quite particular (and now quite murky) origin. It's adoption by the state for the punishment of ecclesiastical crimes undoubtedly has more to do with those origins than any given theological argument.

And finally, it should be noted that it was the state that executed people: the Church proscribed certain conduct and even conducted inquiries, but it did not have executioners. People were executed by civil authorities that assigned punishments to canonical crimes and accepted the judgments of canonical tribunals in determining when those crimes had occurred. Sometimes, as in Spain, those canonical tribunals were themselves largely directed by the state, to the extent that the bogeyman of the "Spanish Inquisition" can tell you something about Spain, but it tells you very little about the Church: principally because the Church wasn't running it.

I'll go with #4, slightly leavened by #2's acknowledgment of the historical and cultural context. We moderns have sanitized the surface of our barbarism.

Burning opponents to the stake either on a pyre of wood, or by modern air assault, is primarily done because it satisfies a lust for vengeance gussied up as justice.

All the philosophical(speaking of inflicting a gratuitous punishment)and theological rationalizations are an attempt to ennoble our depravity and silence a disturbing inner voice.

The point of torture is torture.

"I'm taking it as given that methods were sometimes used that the Church today describes as "intrinsically evil." I did not appeal to propotionality because intrinsically evil acts are never proportional for the simple reason that they are never allowed; and since they are not allowed they cannot be considered punishments."

Mr. Luse, I would hold that "cruel" punishments are not forms of torture, and torture, as it is commonly understood, is intrinsically unjust because it is not defined to be a form of punishment. Because it is not punishment, it is an unwarranted assault on another person, even if done for a "good" end. (As contemporaries who support the use of torture attempt to justify it.)

Steve Burton, there's probably something (maybe a lot) to what you say. But if Christians should not ascend to worldly power, then there can be no such thing as a Christian state. While Christians in power behave both well and badly, I'm glad that Europe was Christian rather than something else. And, as a music lover, you are too.

Tony - Bill, I take it as a given that you are not interested in allowing this discussion to take on _whether_ torture is intrinsically wrong.

I had hoped not to. Besides, there is no whether about it. The Church already teaches that it's intrinsically wrong. That only leaves the question of whether this or that torment amounts to torture, and I've been through enough of that. What I'm taking as given is that some methods were intrinsically (or otherwise) wrong: putting girls and old women to the rack ought to pass that test.

It seems to me true that punishment can be expiatory, but If a person has committed a crime worse than simple murder, the proportionate expiation would seem to require that he suffer a more severe punishment than that due for murder. I confess to not knowing what simple murder is, unless you mean that one might be more heinous than another. If a man merits death, then death should be his punishment, and death only. Leave the rest to God.

I can think of at least one argument that would suggest that lethal injection is intrinsically wrong

I'd like to hear it.

Titus says, "I'm not aware that the magisterium has declared execution by burning to be "intrinsically evil."

No it has not and probably never will. Neither has it declared the same of hanging and disemboweling, but I think we're safe in assuming that accompanying a death sentence with such intentionally inflicted torments is evil on some grounds, corrupting an otherwise just act. Your "benefit of burning," that "it actually gives the condemned an opportunity to repent not merely in anticipation of the punishment, but under the influence of its pain," puts me in mind of Dr. Johnson's adage about a man's knowledge that he is to be hanged in fortnight. Whether he repents or not is his business. Threaten to burn me and I'll probably tell you what you want to hear. (It happened often in Spain; that's why few were actually burned alive.) Besides, if extracting repentance upon threat of pain is effective, surely we can think of more horrible methods. Human inventiveness in this area is a great caution. Your most interesting remark is that "Whether torture is intrinsically evil is a weighty question explainable by the development of doctrine." Which would seem to put you in camp #2, with perhaps a bit of 1 thrown in. My reluctance to accept #2 is why I asked the question.

Mr. Chan says that I would hold that "cruel" punishments are not forms of torture, and torture, as it is commonly understood, is intrinsically unjust because it is not defined to be a form of punishment.

I am sceptical that an act can be made just simply by redefining it. But you're avoiding the issue. The Church and secular authorities sometimes cooperated in the use of torture. We know this by their own admission. The question is: how could they have possibly thought it justified by God's law?

Bill, I’m surprised you didn’t quote any of the Doctors of the Church or saints who agree with you on this issue. Oh, that’s right, there aren’t any. Never mind.

I hesitate to speak as with any kind of certitude, but it is my understanding that what is _distinctive_ about torture, and its intrinsic evil as the Church has spoken of it, is that it uses an imposed evil (pain) to induce such a state in the mind, heart, and soul of the victim that it reduces them to the level of a beast. That may be reflected either in an active sense or a passive sense: either the torturer induces this state in order to get the victim to DO something they would not otherwise do (but not as a free agent, rather as a mere instrument of the torturer), or the torturer (out of sadism) simply wants to see the victim suffer in a way that is beneath the dignity of a human being - he uses the victim as a thing. THIS, I think, is central to why we must always and everywhere reject torture understood as inflicting this kind of pain.

It would appear, then, that any form of designed infliction (I am going to stay away from calling it "torture" or "punishment" for a just moment in order to avoid the confusion T Chen might fall into) whose format is such as to induce this bestial state of affairs runs afoul of the basic moral prohibition. It would appear that the kind of extreme punishment that has this degree of pain cannot be licitly used to induce remorse and contrition before the death of the sufferer, because such remorse and contrition are inherently human acts that require human intellect and will working in an integrated fashion, and this level of pain DIS-integrates those faculties. Even though the act that the executioner (and the state) wants to induce in the criminal is repentance - and this not for the sake of the state but for the sake of the criminal and his own eternal welfare - it appears to remain true that state is using pain in order to induce the victim to DO something in such a manner that they cease to be a free moral agent, and this defeats the concept of a _human_ act of repentance.

Hence using this degree of pain that tends toward a dis-integration of mind and will is intrinsically evil even if entered into for the licit goal of just punishment. Therefore, merely saying that it is a punishment lawfully determined and rightly found to be proportionate in severity to the evil of the crime does not, itself, get it out of having the exact same moral problem for which torture is understood to be intrinsically evil.

(It may be pointed out, though, that in former times the state of philosophy suggested that this objectification of the criminal follows explicitly from their crime itself, and the state's response of treating them as an object is criminal's own responsibility. I think that the Church has rejected this particular theory, but perhaps not so clearly as to leave the matter without doubt and problems.)

Which leads to a really difficult question (different, I think) from what Bill is asking: how is it possible to resolve the apparent tension between the proportionality requirement of punishment, and the limit imposed by the objectification aspect of grotesquely painful punishments, when that proportionality is not met by death itself as a punishment.

I confess to not knowing what simple murder is, unless you mean that one might be more heinous than another. If a man merits death, then death should be his punishment, and death only. Leave the rest to God.

I confess that this reasoning leaves me puzzled. If the state really does (under God) have care of the common good within the temporal order, then it really does have as an intrinsic purpose to seek to redress justice insofar as that bears on the temporal order. It seems obvious that if I murder a man to get his money (fully and deliberately), I am due a punishment of death, such a punishment is proportionate to the evil of the crime, the evil in my will. But there are crimes that are much more grievous to the state, and much more destructive to the temporal order, than such a murder. (Assassination of a leader to start a riot, for personal gain, would do it.) And there are punishments more unpleasant to a criminal than beheading or lethal injection. It seems difficult to see why, in principle the state is forbidden to use any punishment more unpleasant than putting someone to death without (so far as can be readily achieved) any attendant pain - as long as that distress is not of such a nature as to disintegrate the mind and will. I have no problem saying that the state must stay out of the business of tortuous punishments that disintegrate the personality, but that still leaves some latitude for imposing suffering over and above death alone.

One Church Father coming up, albeit prior to the Constantinian settlement and the cultural conformity that has subverted the faith ever since;

"Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs? Shall he, forsooth, either keep watch-service for others more than for Christ, or shall he do it on the Lord’s day, when he does not even do it for Christ Himself? And shall he keep guard before the temples which he has renounced?"
Tertullian


And do you think that there are any adjustments, qualifications, or corrections to this Tertullian quote to make it sit right with Christ's full teaching, Don? Or do you adhere to it just as is?

"33. That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit." [Condemned proposition, Papal Bull Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X, June 15, 1520]

I am the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of my country, the honour of my order. None today are willing to lift a finger in defense of the Faith.

Curious Tony, do you think George R'S citation an example of "Christ's full teaching" or just another example of clerical betrayal? If it is as gross an act of treason against Christ as it appears,(Treason is much worse than simply murdering someone) do you think capital punishment a fit reward for the the traitor?

Don, I would have to read the Bull in question before I would begin to have any opinion at all. And then I would want to read the full tract from Tertullian. When I am faced with opposing teachings by those with much higher standing to speak than I do, I generally try NOT to have any opinion at all until I have acquainted myself of the full panorama of what they were saying.

Tony - seriously? Well o.k., let us know when and if burning heretics to the stake squares with the Gospels.

I am sceptical that an act can be made just simply by redefining it. But you're avoiding the issue. The Church and secular authorities sometimes cooperated in the use of torture. We know this by their own admission. The question is: how could they have possibly thought it justified by God's law?

Mr. Luse, the formality of human acts is determined by reason -- it's not simply given by the "nature" of the "physical" act itself -- Catholic moral theology, even that of Aquinas, is not some sort of gross physicalism. Torture as it is commonly understood is distinguished not only by the external act (the infliction of pain) but also by the end (to get a confession, information, etc.) which is aimed at through the intention. The intention also enters into the formality of the act -- this is why we understand torture to be a different sort of act from physical assault.

If someone cannot explain the difference between punishment and assault, then this makes all punishments morally illicit. The New Natural Law theorists have this problem, even though their reasoning is confined to capital punishment.

I haven't written about the use of torture as a juridical procedure because I would probably agree that it is morally illicit, unless it was somehow a form of punishment, not coercion. I just wouldn't lump it together with "cruel" punishments.

I hesitate to speak as with any kind of certitude, but it is my understanding that what is _distinctive_ about torture, and its intrinsic evil as the Church has spoken of it, is that it uses an imposed evil (pain) to induce such a state in the mind, heart, and soul of the victim that it reduces them to the level of a beast. That may be reflected either in an active sense or a passive sense: either the torturer induces this state in order to get the victim to DO something they would not otherwise do (but not as a free agent, rather as a mere instrument of the torturer), or the torturer (out of sadism) simply wants to see the victim suffer in a way that is beneath the dignity of a human being - he uses the victim as a thing.

Tony, the second part of what you wrote might be found in those who use "human dignity" in their arguments (but I have not yet seen it) -- I haven't seen it in any sort of Thomistic exposition on punishment. As far as I know, the poena sensus is still an accepted theological opinion regarding the punishments of Hell. Is God a sadist in that case? The attribution of sadism as an intention is something that doesn't necessarily obtain in all cases, for all judges, prosecutors, executioners. It doesn't enter into the ratio of punishment, as it is commonly defined. One of those moral agents who had that intention would be acting sinfully, but I think you go too far in your contention.

It would appear, then, that any form of designed infliction (I am going to stay away from calling it "torture" or "punishment" for a just moment in order to avoid the confusion T Chen might fall into) whose format is such as to induce this bestial state of affairs runs afoul of the basic moral prohibition. It would appear that the kind of extreme punishment that has this degree of pain cannot be licitly used to induce remorse and contrition before the death of the sufferer, because such remorse and contrition are inherently human acts that require human intellect and will working in an integrated fashion, and this level of pain DIS-integrates those faculties. Even though the act that the executioner (and the state) wants to induce in the criminal is repentance - and this not for the sake of the state but for the sake of the criminal and his own eternal welfare - it appears to remain true that state is using pain in order to induce the victim to DO something in such a manner that they cease to be a free moral agent, and this defeats the concept of a _human_ act of repentance.

Hence using this degree of pain that tends toward a dis-integration of mind and will is intrinsically evil even if entered into for the licit goal of just punishment. Therefore, merely saying that it is a punishment lawfully determined and rightly found to be proportionate in severity to the evil of the crime does not, itself, get it out of having the exact same moral problem for which torture is understood to be intrinsically evil.

In this life the first purpose of punishment is medicinal -- but in the case of capital punishment I do not think it is the punishment itself that is meant to induce repentance, but the fear of death. If this is what certain medievals actually thought in using burning (along with its attendant symbolism) and what they employed in its justification, then your criticism would be applicable. But if they merely accepted its liceity then it's a case of them not reflecting enough upon the effects of the punishment.

I should have closed italics after that second bit, after "intrinsically evil."

I would also add that while punishment is primarily medicinal, I do not think there is a mandate for the justice system to always preserve the possibility of conversion on the part of the offender. Otherwise, no capital punishment would be licit.

Tony, your 9:03 comment seems pretty solid to me; I might have a problem with something in your last paragraph but I'll have to get back to it. Work calls.

I can't follow T. Chan's 12:48 comment, and George R. is adept at quoting Popes who say what he wants to hear, and of giving greater weight to a bull of Leo X than to an encyclical of his absolutely favorite Pope, John Paul II. (Although I'm not sure he actually considered him a Pope.)

I did not want this to be a purely Catholic thing, btw. I used those examples because they are most familiar to me, but Christians of all brands have used methods that I trust would horrify most commenters in this thread should they be introduced to our own justice system.

Though I wish Mr. Colacho wouldn't consider Tony his adversary, he asks a question pertinent to what I'm trying to get at: how does burning (or torturing) heretics square with the Gospel, and how did earlier Christians do the squaring?

I may be absent for long stretches, but it's unavoidable.

Don, one of the rules for understanding what is a "condemned proposition" in the Syllabus of Errors is that the proposition is condemned with respect to its use in a specific work (or group of works). Therefore, it is condemned in a context, and the context is not always apparent in the bare words of the condemned proposition. It might be, (just for a hypothetical example, I am not putting this forward as an actual explanation) that George's nice quote comes from a work which fails to distinguish between the burning of heretics in hell, and the burning of heretics on earth. I have no problem whatsoever squaring the burning of heretics in hell with the Gospel, where Jesus speaks of the fires that do not go out. It might also be contended that the "burning" referred to at least theoretically could encompass a slight burning, not burning to death, which is NOT contrary to what Pope JPII said. If George R. wants to give us a link to the Bull and to the document that has the proscribed proposition, maybe the context can be cleared up. But I would hesitate to let this discussion become a strictly Catholic debate.

Here's the link to Exsurge Domine:

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/l10exdom.htm

I haven't seen it in any sort of Thomistic exposition on punishment. As far as I know, the poena sensus is still an accepted theological opinion regarding the punishments of Hell. Is God a sadist in that case?

I agree that the poena sensus idea is still legitimate thinking, and no that does not make God a sadist. Please note that I restricted my example to a sadist who merely wanted to see someone in pain as such, not someone who was inflicting pain in order that justice be served. A sadist who inflicts pain simply for the sake of pain alone is certainly treating the victim as a mere object.

In this life the first purpose of punishment is medicinal

Well, not that I am aware of. St. Thomas, and Pope JPII, and the Catholic Catechism all speak of redress of justice as the primary purpose of punishment. This is a pretty widely established sense in the Protestant tradition as well, from my understanding.

even that of Aquinas, is not some sort of gross physicalism. Torture as it is commonly understood is distinguished not only by the external act (the infliction of pain) but also by the end (to get a confession, information, etc.) which is aimed at through the intention. The intention also enters into the formality of the act.

Oh, where is Zippy when you need him? (Not that he and I always agree, by any means.) St. Thomas and other sources like JPII, do not distinguish the act purely by the external physical activity. But they generally resort to using the expression the "object" of the act. This is different from the "intention" of the act. I find that even after many years I am not perfectly satisfied in explaining the difference. However, to make a start, the _object_ is immediately intertwined with the basic physical action, it is not something that can be separated by intervening layers. An intention, however, may indeed be separated by layers of intermediate actions. Thus, an intention to get a confession by torture can produce its result some time after the torture. In Veritatis Splendor, JPII makes it clear, I think, that although a good act (to be a whole human good act, praiseworthy) must have a good intention, what distinguishes the act itself is the object, not the intention. Thus with the old example of the guy whose daughter is being threatened to get him to rob a bank, if he chooses to rob the bank, the object of the act is to take money that does not belong to him, which makes the act stealing - even though the intention of the stealing is to save his daughter's life. In order to have a good moral act, both the object of the act AND the intention of the act must be good.

Bill, sorry, I will try to keep more on point.

Bill:

"...if Christians should not ascend to worldly power, then there can be no such thing as a Christian state..."

I agree, if only because I think that "there can be no such thing as a Christian state," period, full stop.

"...I'm glad that Europe was Christian rather than something else. And, as a music lover, you are too."

Again, I agree. On the whole, I think that Christianity was very good for Europe. But I don't think that Europe was very good for Christianity.

Tony,

In this life the first purpose of punishment is medicinal

Well, not that I am aware of. St. Thomas, and Pope JPII, and the Catholic Catechism all speak of redress of justice as the primary purpose of punishment. This is a pretty widely established sense in the Protestant tradition as well, from my understanding.

Sorry for the lack of imprecision -- what I mean, following Aquinas, is that punishment in this life is more medicinal than retributive. Both purposes are mentioned by John Paul II and the Catechism, and the medicinal purpose is used in contemporary arguments against the use of capital punishment, though not against its liceity.

Oh, where is Zippy when you need him? (Not that he and I always agree, by any means.) St. Thomas and other sources like JPII, do not distinguish the act purely by the external physical activity. But they generally resort to using the expression the "object" of the act. This is different from the "intention" of the act. I find that even after many years I am not perfectly satisfied in explaining the difference. However, to make a start, the _object_ is immediately intertwined with the basic physical action, it is not something that can be separated by intervening layers. An intention, however, may indeed be separated by layers of intermediate actions. Thus, an intention to get a confession by torture can produce its result some time after the torture. In Veritatis Splendor, JPII makes it clear, I think, that although a good act (to be a whole human good act, praiseworthy) must have a good intention, what distinguishes the act itself is the object, not the intention. Thus with the old example of the guy whose daughter is being threatened to get him to rob a bank, if he chooses to rob the bank, the object of the act is to take money that does not belong to him, which makes the act stealing - even though the intention of the stealing is to save his daughter's life. In order to have a good moral act, both the object of the act AND the intention of the act must be good.

Tony -- I deny none of this. I never said that the morality of the action is determined by the intention alone -- what I said was the intention adds to the formality or the ratio of the human act and can serve to distinguish it from other acts. Upon reviewing my notes, I should make it explicit that the difference in ratio between torture and simple assault does not constitute a real moral difference -- torture is not somehow made a good act simply because the end is thought to be good. But I do think those who argue that there is a moral difference rely upon a real distinction between the two sort of acts in their discussions, and I've tried to explain this with reference to the end.

The object of the "external action" is the term, what is brought about. The external action is external i n the sense of not being of an act of the will except by being caused by it -- being commanded/executed by the will.
The object of the intention is the end that is desired.

Having read what he wrote several years ago, I wouldn't count on Zippy for a clear exposition on the two, unless he's changed his account since then.

if Christians should not ascend to worldly power, then there can be no such thing as a Christian state

I thought there was a much more definite problem than that. If Christians should not ascend to the monarchy or the presidency on account of this, then the same basis would imply that they should not ascend to being policemen or soldiers, or magistrates. Aside from the example of St. Martin of Tours, we have St. Paul advising soldiers on how to proceed as Christians, and we have the Church upholding the licit or even proper place of (Christian) citizens in the state to take on duties in respect to the common good, i.e. offices of the state.

I think it much more realistic to suggest that the ascent of the Church herself to a position of power was the dangerous situation, if we must find something worrisome about the historical condition.

Mr. Luse -- the point I have been trying to make is that I think you are conflating punishment with torture. Reviewing the CCC on torture I can see where one could find support for this, but I don't see how that can be reconciled with traditional Catholic moral theology. It should be apparent that the reason given, that it is "contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity," is a novelty and not reducible to what was said in the past concerning the virtues of justice and charity.

what I mean, following Aquinas, is that punishment in this life is more medicinal than retributive. Both purposes are mentioned by John Paul II and the Catechism, and the medicinal purpose is used in contemporary arguments against the use of capital punishment, though not against its liceity.

If that were established with a definite argument, that would be very worthwhile to see, as well as bearing on the issue at hand. Unfortunately, my recollection of St. Thomas is that he indicates that punishments in this life are medicinal, but he does not attempt to say that the medicinal purpose supercedes justice (in this life). My impression with JPII, on the other hand, is that he simply posits the theory that the medicinal purpose supercedes justice without any attempt to develop a rationale for that thesis. It's too bad, because we could really use that here. It might help explain why in the past the Church thought it was fine to burn heretics - by contrast and development.

I think there was a fairly recent article in The Thomist dealing with the medicinal character of punishment and its deterrent purpose, and how both considerations can be used to limit the application of certain punishments. Unfortunately I do not have ready access to my issues so I cannot confirm.

I should very much like to see it. For, in contrast to this idea, St. Thomas says (as JPII and the Catechism confirm) that justice is the primary end of punishment, whereas reform and deterrence are secondary ends.

Why is that "in contrast"? St. Thomas means something very specific by "secondary" end. It does not mean merely that it is not a primary end - ends that are incidental to the primary also fit that bill. What he means is that the secondary rests in relation to the primary end. Or, to put it another way, it is only by reason of the primary end that the secondary end can either come to be, or can be an end. It is by reason of directing the action to the primary end that the secondary end may come about. In such case, it is a sheer oxymoron to speak of a secondary end superceding the primary, as if you could achieve the secondary without attempting to meet the primary.

Said Steve: On the whole, I think that Christianity was very good for Europe. But I don't think that Europe was very good for Christianity.

But that's how it will always be, wherever we find it. That's why there is a Christianity, because it good for us, not that we are good for it.

Bill Luse:
George R. is adept at quoting Popes who say what he wants to hear

If you were thoughtful, Bill, you might ask why such quotes are available.

why such quotes are available

That's why I wrote the post, George, to see if anyone could tell me. You haven't. If you were really thoughtful, you'd answer the question in the main post: Where do we find in the example of Christ, or in the commandments given to his disciples, or even in the primitive Christian Church, any recommendation that cruelty may be employed to compel belief?

I have no problem, btw, with executing a certain kind of heretic. I'm just sceptical about the rightness of achieving it by burning (or several other methods). But torture was also used, George. And you approve of it. If you were really, really thoughtful, you'd venture tell me what Christ might say about that.

Where do we find in the example of Christ, or in the commandments given to his disciples, or even in the primitive Christian Church, any recommendation that cruelty may be employed to compel belief?

Bill - glad you mercifully refrained from adding natural law to the list. The mystery of iniquity within the Church will continue to confound, but this quote by Mosignor Robert Hugh Benson (which appeared in The Magnificat's "Meditation of the Day" for today) touches on some of the issues raised by your post;

"Treat the Catholic Church as Divine only and you will stumble over her scandals, her failures, and her shortcomings. Treat her as Human only and you will be silenced by her miracles, her sanctity, and her eternal resurrections.

(i) Of course the Catholic Church is Human. She consists of fallible men, and her Humanity is not even safeguarded as was that of Christ against the incursions of sin. Always, therefore, there have been scandals, and always will be. Popes may betray their trust, in all human matters; priests their flocks;laymen their faith. No man is secure. And, again, since she is human it is perfectly true that she has profited by human circumstances for the increase of her power.Undoubtedly it was the existence of the Roman Empire, with its roads,its rapid means of transit, and its Organization,that made possible the swift propagation of the Gospel in the first centuries. Undoubtedly it was the empty throne of Caesar and the prestige of Rome that developed the world's acceptance of the authority of Peter's Chair.Undoubtedly
it was the divisions of Europe that cemented the Church's unity and led men to look to a Supreme Authority that might compose their differences. There is scarcely an opening in human affairs into which she has not plunged; hardly an opportunity she has missed. Human affairs, human sins and weaknesses as well as human virtues, have all contributed to her power. So grows a tree, even in uncongenial soil."

http://books.jibble.org/1/6/3/0/16309/16309-8/ParadoxesofCatholicismbyRobert-5.html

First of all, Bill, the Church has never sanctioned cruelty in order to compel belief, so you’re engaging in misrepresentation right off the bat. What the Church has sanctioned, however, is the use of painful methods to be employed in order to 1) punish infidelity and 2) get at the truth; for she always considered that fidelity and truth were more important than the flesh and bones of liars and criminals.

But the real question is this: how do you explain that your position has been explicitly condemned in a papal bull? Doesn’t that at least give you pause?

George, it is undoubtedly true that 14th, 15th and 16th century Europe, including large numbers of lay and clerics alike, thought that torture to "get the truth" and extreme pain to punish grave crimes were right actions. It is undoubtedly the case now that early 21st century Europe, including a great many lay and clerics alike, think both of these are (and were) immoral, and some are quite willing to say they are intrinsically immoral.

It would be easy if the people who said the first were opposed to the latter by being a different Church, but that doesn't explain it: Catholics and Protestants alike approved such harsh treatment then, and Catholic and Protestants alike disapprove of them now. It would also be easy if the difference were hierarchical, but that won't serve either. Popes back then supported it, and Popes today have decried those actions.

Whether you are Catholic or not, it still remains to present an explanation of why the change in thinking: what is it that people see today that makes them willing and ready to say of the people in 1500 that we understand their argument and still they were wrong? Even if the people of today in saying that are actually themselves wrong, they are still making an argument about the matter.

Would someone be interested in reframing this at this point? Is the issue that George believes:

"painful methods" may be justified to 1) punish infidelity and 2) get at the truth; for she always considered that fidelity and truth were more important than the flesh and bones of liars and criminals.

Whereas Bill calls this "torture," and as such cannot be justified on any grounds? Moreover, that Bill thinks if George were "really thoughtful," he'd tell us "what Christ might say about that."

I'm not sure if I've got it right. But if I do, don't we have to revisit the question of what "torture" is, that which was intentionally avoided in the beginning? Because if "torture" is defined so expansively that it can be taken to mean infliction of pain generally to punish wrongdoing and discover truth, that is what my parents did to me as a child, they found it fairly effective, and I think they'd say that Christ was fine with it. Looking back, so am I. Obviously, the role of the church has changed dramatically, but I'm unclear if the objection has to do with the role of the church, some unspecified definition of "torture," or something else.

I'm sorry if I've misunderstood the debate at this point.

Whereas Bill calls this "torture," and as such cannot be justified on any grounds?

It's not so much what Bill thinks as what the Church teaches at this moment. Burning people to death and cutting them to the bone with ropes will fit any reasonable person's definition of torture. And no it's not justified on any grounds.

that Bill thinks if George were "really thoughtful," he'd tell us "what Christ might say about that."

This was my sarcastic way of reminding George of the post's original request, which he refuses to engage.

don't we have to revisit the question of what "torture" is

No we do not. Unless you think that parents spanking a child is the same as putting him to the rack.

Tony's comment also tries to return George's attention to the issue, and is so reasonable and balanced that George probably won't be able to make any sense of it.

Bill, I really don't believe you think there is no need to specify what one condemns, so I'll just guess I'm late to the party and you're dismissing my request. At any rate, I find your snarkiness unappealing at the least.

Different types of execution can serve to show differences in the level of crimes that warrant execution.

There is a lot of truth to this. I think a rational approach would be:

1. Lethal injection for openly repentant murderers and serious sex offenders.
2. Firing squad for those who are not repentant.
3. For public officials who commit serious felony violence under color of authority, people who are serial murderers or serious sex offenders and treason: hanging. (With regard to the first one, I actually got this general idea from my parents who are both former law enforcement).
4. For those who commit heinous war crimes in the US military or against the United States: perhaps crucifixion? (I'm thinking men like those who participated in the My Lai massacre, at the very least)

* I recognize crucifixion is a very heinous way to die, but how do you give someone a punishment that properly recognizes the barbarism of slaughtering an entire village? Even hanging is arguably too merciful for such men.

Bill, you wrote:
I'm just sceptical about the rightness of achieving it by burning (or several other methods). But torture was also used, George. And you approve of it. If you were really, really thoughtful, you'd venture tell me what Christ might say about that.

With respect to burning, I say that Christ Himself said it was right, when, through His Vicar Leo X, He condemned proposition No. 33 in the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine, “That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit." Now the condemnation of this proposition is either from God or it isn’t. I say it is. You evidently think that it isn’t , but I don’t want to put words in your mouth. So I’ll ask you: was it from God, yes or no? And when I ask “Was it from God?” I’m asking, “Did God Himself condemn the proposition?” It’s a true-or-false question.

Of course, how one answers this question is crucial. First of all, it’s not too difficult, Bill, to see how that in answering this question “yes” many options are closed off to me with respect to this issue, which is the reason I hold the opinion that I do. But if you want to answer the question “no,” it’s a mystery to me how you can claim to hold the Catholic faith, since it’s the perennial teaching of the Church that the Pope cannot err when teaching from the Chair of Peter. There is, of course, a third option, which consists in refusing to answer the question one way or the other, to wit, the “balanced” approach of Tony, which you seem to be impressed with, which is just a means by which one is able to deny the doctrine without explicitly denying the doctrine, so it’s not really an option for those who want to shed light on the issue.

Where do we find in the example of Christ, or in the commandments given to his disciples, or even in the primitive Christian Church, any recommendation that cruelty may be employed to compel belief?

Luke 9:

51 As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them[b]?” 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them. 56 Then he and his disciples went to another village.

If Jesus would not even allow a clean death for the Samaritans, it's a stretch to say that He'd support abject cruelty.

33. That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.

The problem is not in the burning, but that the requirements of being a heretic has become more difficult to meet, for one thing.

Bill, you wrote:
Furthermore, there is no Biblical warrant. Where do we find in the example of Christ, or in the commandments given to his disciples, or even in the primitive Christian Church, any recommendation that cruelty may be employed to compel belief?

What say you to this:

1Cr 5:1 It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife.
1Cr 5:2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
1Cr 5:3 For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment
1Cr 5:4 in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
1Cr 5:5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

The Chicken

33. That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.

The problem is not in the burning, but that the requirements of being a heretic has become more difficult to meet, for one thing.

Bill, you wrote:
Furthermore, there is no Biblical warrant. Where do we find in the example of Christ, or in the commandments given to his disciples, or even in the primitive Christian Church, any recommendation that cruelty may be employed to compel belief?

What say you to this:

1Cr 5:1 It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife.
1Cr 5:2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
1Cr 5:3 For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment
1Cr 5:4 in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
1Cr 5:5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

The Chicken

Sorry for the double post.

The Chicken

There is, of course, a third option, which consists in refusing to answer the question one way or the other, to wit, the “balanced” approach of Tony, which you seem to be impressed with, which is just a means by which one is able to deny the doctrine without explicitly denying the doctrine, so it’s not really an option for those who want to shed light on the issue.

George, you've hit the nail on the head! Well, almost. You just have the wrong individual named. The problem seems to be that one Vicar of Christ condemned the proposition, and that another Vicar of Christ affirmed the proposition. Tony is just a little fellow trying not to defy either Vicar, trying not to poke either one.

Logically, either (1) one Vicar was wrong, (in which case the Church has fallen in spite of Christ's promise), or (2) one of the men wasn't the Vicar (in which case the Church has fallen in spite of Christ's promise), or (3) the two statements from them, a condemnation and an affirmation, are only apparently in direct contradiction. I go with the third as the best option, because I don't accept that Christ's promises are empty. It would be nice if JPII had actually laid out the resolution of the apparent conflict, in detail, but he didn't. Maybe he wanted us to stretch ourselves, work on it. That's what Bill (and I) are attempting. If you think that options 1 or 2 are better, then I suppose that you aren't really interested in what Bill is trying to do. But if a resolution is possible, then it means that it's not solely a question of (1) or (2) and make up your mind which Pontiff you want to poke in the eye.

Those of us in the trenches of the age of a theological problem don't always see the necessary distinctions that will resolve the problem. But the later age that does see those distinctions got that way by people attempting to resolve 2 claims that seemed unresolvable, but were (both) held up as valid. (E.G. Christ as true God and true man - both at the same time - took quite a while to figure out.) Surely we have a right to withhold definitive judgment of which eye to poke while in the midst of the debate, just as Christians in the 3rd century had a right to refrain from conclusive statements about Christ's nature(s).

Mike, let me ask you something. If a secondary end of punishment is to reform the criminal, to bring them to repentance, (not necessarily rehabilitation within this life) isn't it possible that lethal injection is actually a bad way to execute someone? I am thinking of the hedonistic, narcissistic, semi-agnostic hardened criminal of today (who is only "semi-agnostic" because he has never really applied himself to the problem of whether there is a God or an afterlife, not because he attempted and came to no conclusion). The sort of person made for the claim that "life in prison is subjectively a worse punishment than death."

I would suggest, at least as a possibility, that it is more reasonable and appropriate for the usual method of death to be some method by which the person actually feels the approach of death, which gives them time to at least attempt to say "I'm sorry," or "help," or something, to God, after the start of the execution, when they feel their body losing its life. I.e. when they might come to the realization in an immediate and direct way that "they" are not wholly identical to "their body".

Also, if we lighten up the method of execution to lethal injection if the person repents, then what is to prevent a person from claiming repentance at the last moment merely to get out of the worse method?

By the way, one of the standard reasons to object to certain forms of torture is that they produce pain and suffering akin to that which normally accompanies death, without actually resulting in death. If you subject a person to that kind of pain once, he might hold out on you that once without giving in. If you do it repeatedly and make it appear that you can keep on doing it indefinitely, you present him with a prospect that is beyond human tolerance. But (at least with this argument), if your whole objective is actually to execute him in a manner suited to (proportional in its grievousness) to the crime, you are not violating this particular objection against torture. You may still be rubbing up against other problems with torture.

Tony,

Option 4: personal preferences of Pontifs (as Pius IV's appears to be) are not statements of doctrine, but of practice. Both men may accept the validity of burning a heretic (say), but one may want as much sulfur as possible while the other may want the burnings to be rare. There need be no contradiction in doctrine, only application. The Church has never condemned burning, to my knowledge. Because of the sanctity of free will, one can never torture a man to the truth, but one can torture a man to a lie. The Church surely knows that torture used to extract repentance makes the repentance suspect. Heck, shot-gun weddings (a form of torture) are not recognized by the Church. I have to disagree that the threat of burning was ever really effective in causing true repentance unless another interior burning of the Spirit were also present.

The Chicken

Tony,
The only one I want to poke in the eye is whoever is responsible for this mess. But listen, I’m going to make this really simple for you. Please, just tell me, has the proposition “That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit” been condemned by God Himself or not? Here is an exhaustive list of the possible responses:

a) Yes
b) No
c) I don’t know.

All you have to do is answer “a,” “b,” or “c,” nothing more, s’il vous plait.

George, you won't corner me like that, I reject your a, b, and c, and I reject the "by God Himself".

How about I re-phrase: To the extent and in the manner that the heretics like Martin Luther condemned burning of heretics as against the will of the Holy Spirit, such pronouncements by the heretics are condemned by the Vicar of Christ. Being the Vicar of Christ, he is protected from error within the appropriate limits, but not every facet of his wording can be understood to be the perfect Word of God, as the Bible is (infallibility is not the same as the inspiration that breathes every word of the Bible), his choice of words can include obscurity, and can lack sufficiency for some concommitant truths.

MC, the Papal Bull speaks about the truth of a proposition, not about better or worse ways of doing something. I think that it has to be respected as holding forth a doctrinal claim. I agree that it is doubtful that burning is likely to cause any kind of holy repentance. Nevertheless, for God's grace it is not necessary to have perfect contrition: it is sufficient to be remorseful merely out of fear of the pain of hell. It is not clear that burning of a heretic is unable to produce that kind of change, in one otherwise hardened against the Church.

The execution of those who dissent from orthodoxy, in general, or from Rome, in particular, is murder. There's no finessing the point. It doesn't matter how you carry it out, what fine shades of intention you think you have when you do it, or what high ends you propose to accomplish by this slaughter, the practice is desperately, brutally, and incorrigibly wicked.

It doesn't matter whether it's the burning of the Anglican martyrs in Oxford or of Servetus in Geneva, this is beyond vile and beyond defense.

Michael, is the execution of those who, not only rejecting the faith of their youth, also insist on spreading pernicious lies about the Church in order to foment dissent based on such lies, "murder"?

Hardly a heretic would have been executed but for attempting to spread their belief to others. Nine times out of ten, those who rejected the traditional Christianity spread their novel ideas with false claims of what the Church teaches (a problem that remains to this day, not surprisingly).

is the execution of those who, not only rejecting the faith of their youth, also insist on spreading pernicious lies about the Church in order to foment dissent based on such lies, "murder"?


What would you call it Tony; self-defense? Justifiable homicide? Aggressive evangelization?

Nine times out of ten, those who rejected the traditional Christianity spread their novel ideas with false claims of what the Church teaches (a problem that remains to this day, not surprisingly).

Well, should we return to the rope & rack and executions? If not, why not?

Don, what do you call deliberately spreading lies about something intimately connected to the life of the spirit? And, through that, (by way of an integrated Christian society) connected to the peace of the state. Even basic libel is a crime properly punished by the state. Show me that this does not damage the state as much as other acts that are called treason.

Sorry, I've been busy. Where to begin?

How about way back up there with Mike T? I appreciate his citing of Luke 9, since it seems on point, concluding that Jesus would not condone "abject cruelty." But then he says, "I recognize crucifixion is a very heinous way to die, but how do you give someone a punishment that properly recognizes the barbarism of slaughtering an entire village?"

Well, you can't, can you? That's why we give him death, because we have no means of punishment suitable to his crime. The cruelty of crucifixion becomes no less abject because the man is guilty.

The Chicken's citation of something that appears to come from Paul (Corinthians?) seems very weak compared to Mike's. It's not at all clear that Paul is speaking of execution so much as cutting the man off from the Church. (And I'm not sure that Christians of that time had any judicial structure functioning alongside that of the ruling, and largely hostile, pagan society. Is there any record of these early Christians executing moral malefactors and heretics?) I mean, literally, how is one to "deliver this man to Satan"? Since he, Satan, is the Prince of this World, the destruction of a man's flesh "that his spirit may be saved" might only be counsel to let him wallow in his sins, but apart from Christian society.

As further example, I'd site Christ's words that "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." But since by our Faith we are forbidden hatred and suicide, is this not more likely meant to remind us that our fidelity to God must be greater than that to any other, a fidelity demanding our whole heart, mind and strength? Likewise, Christ saves a woman taken in adultery (and apparently guilty) from being stoned to death. Since he nowhere condemns stoning, maybe too much should not be read into it. Nowhere does he condemn crucifixion either, but do any of us doubt that what was done to Him was an intrinsic evil? Nowhere does he condemn abortion, but do any of us take from His silence permission to indulge it?

I would like to sympathize with Michael Bauman's comment and to welcome his support, but when he says that "The execution of those who dissent from orthodoxy, in general, or from Rome, in particular, is murder," this is simply not universally true, since particular acts of heresy (those obdurately held and perniciously spread abroad in the face of legitimate authority, possibly resulting in tumult and rebellion) might in fact amount to treason. Further, his objection to whatever "...fine shades of intention you think you have when you do it, or what high ends you propose to accomplish by this slaughter" do not hinder him from endorsing the shades of intention and the high ends that resulted in the slaughter of innocents at Hiroshima, which was "desperately, brutally, and incorrigibly wicked." So it's hard to accept his assistance on the one grave matter when he withholds it on the other.

Finally, George R., whose stubbornness only makes me care all the more, asks, "was it from God, yes or no?" To answer directly, No, I don't believe it was from God. In answering this way, George worries that I might not be Catholic, "since it’s the perennial teaching of the Church that the Pope cannot err when teaching from the Chair of Peter." But to be 'from the Chair' he would have to be teaching some doctrine of faith or morals and, further, to be teaching "with all the fullness and finality of his supreme Apostolic authority," in short claiming "to determine some point of doctrine in an absolutely final and irrevocable way." Does a juridical bull recommending the burning of heretics really rise to this level in your opinion? (I'll be sorry I asked.) Does it seem likely to you that a Pope acts infallibly when he defends a particular form of execution, anymore than you think his silence commends others which he has failed to condemn? (Of course, you are free to consult others more theologically adept than I in this area.) Though disposed against it, I'm willing to listen to an argument that burning a heretic (or anyone) is not intrinsically evil, which it must be if it is a form of torture, or evil on other grounds if disproportionate as punishment. I keep returning to torture because you keep avoiding it, after having avowed in the past your support for it. When Pius VII abolished the use of torture in his 1816 Motu Proprio, was this also "from the Chair"? (I have not been able to find the text of that Motu, but would like to have it.) When Pope St. Nicholas wrote to the Bulgarian prince Boris in 866 that - "If a [putative] thief or bandit is apprehended and denies the charges against him, you tell me your custom is for a judge to beat him with blows to the head and tear the sides of his body with other sharp iron goads until he confesses the truth. Such a procedure is totally unacceptable under both divine and human law," - was he speaking from the chair? When Father Harrison also tells us that by the ninth century "all judicial torture for the purpose of extracting confessions of guilt had at last been abolished," does this at least "give you pause?" When, in the mid-thireenth century, Pope Gregory IX "mandated the death penalty for unrepentant heretics," and we are told that this was "something the Church had never countenanced in its first 1,100 years," does this not strike you as a moral innovation if not an outright defilement of Tradition?

Well, other business calls.

Tony,

I meant that two Popes might agree with the Bull that burning a heretic may be acceptible, but impliment the policy differently - one strictly and one loosely.

What operational definition of torture are we using in this discussion, by the way, so there is no talking past each other?

Bill, I think I can find the Motu Proprio you want, but it will take a few days.

The Chicken

Yes, Tony, it's murder.
And what the church did to the Albigensians was a holocaust.


George,
The taking of lives by you and me, or by one church or another, can be murder when taking those same lives by the state and its armed forces is not.

My mistake: I said "George" when I should have said "Bill."

Michael B.,

As an historical matter, I'm pretty sure that the church (mostly) didn't execute anyone directly -- while the trial for heresy was conducted by the church, the authority carrying out the civil enforcement against the offender (jail, torture, final punishment) was the State.

To answer directly, No, I don't believe it was from God.

Okay, here’s the problem, Bill. If that wasn’t from God, what about the other 40 propositions condemned in the bull? Do you question those condemnations, too? You must. For if the one concerning burning heretics wasn’t from God, how do you know any of the other ones were? Furthermore, if you can’t say for sure if any of the condemnations in this bull are from God, how do you know any condemnations in any of the papal bulls are from God? Furthermore, since a condemnation of error is simply an affirmation of truth in another form, how do you know that any of the papal teachings on the truths of the faith are from God? Because it’s in the Bible? These are epistemological questions that I think you would have a hard time answering.

But let’s take a closer look at what else you are rejecting by rejecting the condemnation of this one proposition. Pope Leo X in Exurge Domine follows up his list of condemned propositions with this:

No one of sound mind is ignorant how destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds these various errors are, how opposed they are to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church who is the mother of all the faithful and teacher of the faith; how destructive they are of the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline, namely obedience.

We see here that if it is believed that Leo X erred in condemning the proposition in question, then we must conclude that he goes on a veritable rampage of error in this paragraph; for if the condemned proposition were not, after all, erroneous, then neither would it be “destructive, pernicious, scandalous, etc.” And what are we to say about its being opposed “to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church…”? What a scandalous error that would be!

If, on the other hand, we assume that the condemnation of the proposition is from God, as it surely is, then we are further able to learn from this paragraph how wicked and destructive the proposition really is and how it‘s opposed to everything good and true. Moreover, we are also able to learn something about those who hold the proposition to be true: that they are, alas, not of sound mind -- which is not something that I want to believe. Trust me, Bill, I have no desire to consider you to be a person walking around with a screw loose just because you reject this one teaching. But, hey, what can I do? Rome has spoken.

Further down, Leo X continues:

For, according to these errors, or any one or several of them, it clearly follows that the Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit is in error and has always erred. This is against what Christ at his ascension promised to his disciples (as is read in the holy Gospel of Matthew): "I will be with you to the consummation of the world"; it is against the determinations of the holy Fathers, or the express ordinances and canons of the councils and the supreme pontiffs. Failure to comply with these canons, according to the testimony of Cyprian, will be the fuel and cause of all heresy and schism. [emphasis added]

Whoa, this is a pretty serious charge leveled against those who would hold to any of the condemned propositions. Therefore, if Leo X (who, btw, was the pope) is wrong about any of the condemned propositions, then he is also guilty of making reckless charges of blasphemy (yes, blasphemy) against completly innocent people. If, however, the teaching in this bull is of God, which it surely is, then those who reject any part of it are (at least materially) guilty of blasphemously holding that that “the Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit is in error and has always erred.”

But all this unpleasantness can be avoided, Bill, by a simple and docile acceptance of all the popes have taught, as little children do receive good things from the hands of their fathers. Of course, it’s true that if you do so, you will find yourself at war with the entire world, but the alternative is the loss of any faith worth having, since, as we have seen, the removal of just one brick thereof causes the entire edifice to come crashing down.


Jeff S.,
It could not have been done, and would not have been done, without church command. Were it not so grossly immoral on this point, the church would have prohibited such actions and levied spiritual/ecclesiastical sanctions against those who perpetrated them.

Bill,

About Popoe Pius VII and torture, Henry Charles Lea in his Istory of the Spanish Inquisition, vol. 3, states the following:

Llorente tells us that the Gazette de France of April 14, 1816 contained a letter from Rome of Arch 31st, stating that the Pope had forbidden the use of torture in all [? can't read my handwriting] of the Inquisition, and had ordered that this be communicated to the ambassador of France and Portugal. I see no reason to doubt this, although no such brief appears in the Bullarium of Pius VII...

So, there is no Bull, but a letter. Hope this helps.

George R.

Ludwig Ott, in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, reminds us that not every pronouncement of a Pope, even in a Bull, is infallible or irrevocable. Luther was excommunicated by a Bull, but it was later removed by another Pope. The same thing happened with the penalty for modifying the Tridentine Mass. The boilerplate language you cite was common in ecclesiastical document of the period. No anathema is pronounced. The Pope cites reason as his primary guide, not revelation. This is to be given the assent of the Ordinary Magisterium, not the Extraordinary, I suspect, since Scripture, the Fathers, and the history of the Church is vague, at best on the positive use of burning of heretics. The Pope merely states that it is not contrary to Christian teaching, not that it is the best or only way to deal even death to a heretic. It may be 2 millimeters away from crossing the line and still meet his statement. Simply because it is allowed does not mean it must be enthusiastically supported from one Pope to another. This is the confusion some have with the Novus Ordo Mass. One Pope, apparently forbids a new Mass beyond the Tridentine, but another disagrees. The original Mass, while good, does not have to be supported, exclusively, by another Pope because the prohibition was not irrevocable.

The Chicken

MC, I agree that Leo X's statement does not amount to a pronouncement that burning heretics is good, and certainly not that it is necessary. What it does is it condemns a proposition as put forth by heretics. Unless we get hold of the actual claims of the heretics, how they were expressing the idea that burning of heretics was wrong, we are limited in how far we can be assured that Leo's statement was intended unqualifiedly, or perhaps in a qualified sense. It is theoretically possible that Leo's condemnation stands against the pernicious, fallacious, and exaggerated claims of the heretics against burning, but is not intended to preclude other expressions, sound and cautious and respectful of the Church, that are separately against burning. Such a construction might be placed on that passage in the Bull, even though it might be a bit crabbed as an interpretation.

Pius VII's forbidding the torture of heretics is a juridic act. Can we please get this clear here: juridic acts are not "protected" under the umbrella of infallibility, because they do not put forth a proposition. They are a command: "do this", or "do not do that". They do not make a claim that X is true or Y is false. Therefore, they are not trying to teach the universal Church a doctrinal truth, and thus they are not the subject matter of infallibility. Even Pius VII were making a propositional claim, doing it in a letter to limited parties is not an attempt to teach the universal Church. Same thing with an excommunication: it is juridic, not a teaching. Same thing with a determination of which missal or Mass to say: it is a command to do, not a teaching of truth. And the power of every Pope to address juridic matters is equal: what one forbids, another can release, because they have the same authority (no earlier Pope can prevent a later Pope to make a change on the same matter, because the earlier Pope would have to have more authority than the later, and they don't).

Catholics owe the submission of intellect to truths taught under the ordinary Magisterium as well as to truths taught under the extraordinary Magisterium. The ordinary Magisterium has infallibility under certain conditions. A Papal Bull might be juridic or it might be doctrinal, it might be local or it might be universal, it might be definitive or it might be tentative. Leo's has the appearance of setting forth truths to be received and accepted (i.e. the contradictories of the statements condemned), and seems to be doing so universally, and its form leans more in the direction of definitive pronouncement than in tentative proposal (though I would be cautious about that - in former times the rhetoric ran stronger). It is not necessary for a pope to expressly invoke the specific conditions of infallibility to be teaching infallibly.

Jeff, Michael Bauman is right that the civil authorities were not only given custody of the heretics, they were also instructed by the Church in their _duty_ to execute them, and the Church knew the method of execution, and did absolutely nothing to modify those civil laws. The bishops and Popes of the Church were surely responsible in part for such burnings.

Michael, you are telling us that the state, in executing a seditious, libelous person who foments revolution by his lies, is committing murder. Mind you, this is different from saying that BURNING such a criminal is immoral. You are making a claim separately about the mere fact of execution. Do you think that putting traitors to death is murder? Are you saying the death penalty itself is murder? If so, I am pretty sure that Bill didn't want to have that particular discussion here. The rest of the debate assumes (I think) that the mere fact of a state executing someone is not immoral on the part of the state - it was the morality of the burning, not the morality of the putting to death that is being examined.

Don, what do you call deliberately spreading lies about something intimately connected to the life of the spirit? And, through that, (by way of an integrated Christian society) connected to the peace of the state. Even basic libel is a crime properly punished by the state. Show me that this does not damage the state as much as other acts that are called treason.

Tony,
I am surprised you look to the State as a guide for how the Church should conduct her affairs. Dante's vision for handling traitors is instructive, but not as a form of church governance. While we may know the fate that awaits those who mislead His little ones, there is no such Scriptural injunction supporting the notion we are to fashion the millstones around the necks of the treacherous.

A modern day campaign to torture and execute heretics might spare Catholic colleges the financial burden of theologians and clergy who have lost their faith but not their jobs. Hard to imagine though, the life of the Spirit residing within those directing the campaign.

Don, you keep sidestepping the question. Is it BAD for the state to have laws against telling lies? Is it WRONG for the state to increase the penalties for such lies depending on the severity of the evil such lies accomplish? Is it EVIL for the state to think that lies about the Christian religion, when it is held universally and peacefully among the population in a Christian state, are lies which are especially damaging to the state, indeed can overturn the very constitution of the state?

I am surprised you look to the State as a guide for how the Church should conduct her affairs.

Nothing I have said indicates any kind of a suggestion for using the state to see how to govern the Church. You are completely mis-interpreting my comments. I am suggesting that the state stick to the state's business - defending and promoting the common good with respect to the temporal order. I am not saying that I think the Church today, or the state, should go on a rampage putting heretics to death. I don't think it. But there is a huge difference between saying it is intrinsically wrong to torture heretics (or anyone else), and saying it is intrinsically wrong to put people to death for crimes against the good of the state. The Church has never said the latter, because she doesn't think it's true. There are also several huge differences between the state of affairs in 1520 and 2011.

I am surprised that you seem willing to condone libel and slander as if they were not crimes against the civil order.

The Pope cites reason as his primary guide, not revelation.

Has it not been revealed that the Church is the Spotless Bride of Christ? That is the revealed truth against which the condemned propositons were opposed, as Leo X makes clear when he says:

For, according to these errors, or any one or several of them, it clearly follows that the Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit is in error and has always erred.

It's not at all clear that Paul is speaking of execution so much as cutting the man off from the Church. (And I'm not sure that Christians of that time had any judicial structure functioning alongside that of the ruling, and largely hostile, pagan society. Is there any record of these early Christians executing moral malefactors and heretics?) I mean, literally, how is one to "deliver this man to Satan"? Since he, Satan, is the Prince of this World, the destruction of a man's flesh "that his spirit may be saved" might only be counsel to let him wallow in his sins, but apart from Christian society.

Bill, I don't see how that argument works. I agree that in Paul's time, Christians had no authority and no structure to put someone to death. But that makes the phrase "destruction of a man's flesh that his spirit may be saved" all the more challenging if read according to the historical framework. St. Paul could not be meaning a destruction after death, because that punishment does nothing to save the spirit. He could not mean "let him wallow in his sins" because that surely does the reverse of making his spiritual salvation more possible. And besides, leaving him to his sins does not provide the "destruction of his flesh" but rather that of his spirit. I am not totally convinced that Paul explicitly meant his being put to death by the state, but "wallow in his sins" is surely a less apt explanation. In fact, since the specific context here is the sin of incest, which WAS a civil crime, the appearance seems to be that Paul is saying that you should allow such a bad Christian to be turned over to the state for the civil authorities to punish, so that, with the executioner destroying his body, the man may come to his senses and repent, for the salvation of his soul. Surely this is the most sensible reading of the passage.

Tony
The issue is not whether the State can act as an arbiter of truth or legislate laws against lying, slander or mendacity,but just imagine the size of our prison population if it enforced them.

There is no defending what some Popes condoned in the past or some Catholics did in the name of spiritual warfare. Everything raised to divert us from that basic truth only demonstrates the point.

Oh and Tony, the best thing that ever happened to the Church was her separation from the State. However, the divorce was not as beneficial for the State.

The issue is not whether the State can act as an arbiter of truth or legislate laws against lying, slander or mendacity,but just imagine the size of our prison population if it enforced them.

Does that mean that, in your thinking, the state should _never_ act to enforce laws against libel? If it should enforce some of the time, WHEN?

Please get it into your head that I am not pushing the proposition "It was good for the Church to turn over heretics to the state to be burned to death, and it was good for the state to burn the heretics to death." There are worlds and worlds of intermediate positions between that extreme position, and the position that "it was intrinsically evil for the state to burn heretics to death, and the Church in claiming that is was good, officially taught immorality as if it were moral." If you cannot see that it is possible to inhabit a middle position between these extremes, you need more assistance than I can provide.

I am happy to concede divorce was not as beneficial for the State.

George R.

With regard to Leo X's "Exsurge Domine," I am aware that the "Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique" includes it among its list of (15 or so) infallible papal pronouncements in its article on papal infallibility. Most modern theologians disagree, citing the wording of the introduction: the propositions condemned are described as "destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds," but it is not clear which propositions are merely scandalous and which are positively heretical.

You also cite the words of Pope Leo X:

"For, according to these errors, or any one or several of them, it clearly follows that the Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit is in error and has always erred."

But if Pope Leo wasn't speaking infallibly when he said that, then his assertion that the Church is in error if any of these condemned propositions are true could also be mistaken.

I see no way of reconciling the words of Popes Nicholas I and Leo X.

Tony - I'm not sure if you are simultaneously toggling and posting between different blogs, but this post is not about libel laws. I suspect a site catering to lawyers is equally perplexed by your comments regarding the occasional compatibility of heretic-burnings and hangings with the Gospels.

Don: If you want a civil discussion without irrelevant snide comments, it would behoove you to read the prior comments. See my post of 2-24-2011, 7:38pm. Protestantism spread its novel ideas with lies about what the Catholic Church teaches. The first Protestants became so by explicitly and knowingly rejecting the prior teaching of Christianity, which meets the definition of heresy. George's quote is from an authoritative Catholic source, reflecting one way the Church dealt with heretics and the spread of heresy. Is there something too obscure here?

Vincent, it seems to me that the Protestant claim that burning heretics was "against the Spirit" can be considered a pernicious and scandalous claim only if it is a false one. It might be false only in part, or only in the specific form that was being touted, or false in a restricted sense, but if it was wholly correct, it is difficult to see why calling it pernicious and scandalous would even make sense. Seems to me that calling a proposition "pernicious" means, first, that it is wrong, and over and above the error, it also leads to other defects.

By "modern theologians" do you mostly mean the modern inhabitants of the so-called "Catholic" university theology departments, a large portion of whose focus is publishing, and (as a result) have a great deal of need for novel ideas? Or do you mean the people who submit their minds and wills in obedience to the teachings of the Church in humble discipleship to the Fathers and the Doctors, even when that results in no novel ideas? These two sets intersect, but the intersection is depressingly small.

Tony,
I know what heresy is, the way it often gains strength in numbers and prestige, and how Catholics periodically dealt with it during in certain historical episodes.

My concern is the moral condition of those, like Leo X who advocated brutal, immoral measures as a response, and not the interior lives, motives or methods of those who agitated against the Church.

You so far have searched in vain for a nuanced defense of those churchmen who, when wielding the whip-hand inflicted ghastly wounds on the Body of Christ. It seems the best one can say about past wrongs, is to keep them there to serve only as cautionary tales against the snares of power, the politicizing of faith and the perennial temptation to reduce the Person of Christ to an abstract idea or concept.

Don, I have no problem with calling sins of various Popes and bishops sins. I have no problem with saying that some of the utterances of bishops and Popes were flat wrong. I do have a problem with suggesting, as you seem to be saying, that the Vicar of Christ, in teaching the universal Church, taught that an intrinsically evil act was moral. I think suggesting this cannot be separated from saying that Christ's promise to the Church is a broken promise. If this is what you are saying, then what distinguishes you from Protestants, if anything?

You so far have searched in vain for a nuanced defense of those churchmen who, when wielding the whip-hand inflicted ghastly wounds on the Body of Christ.

What I have searched for is a way of avoiding saying that Christ's promise was in vain. If you have a coherent way of doing that while also maintaining that the proposition "burning heretics is against the will of the Spirit" is wholly true, I am all ears.

The real reason why some people are so horrified by the idea of the Church advocating the burning of heretics is that they just cannot see heresy as truly evil. Let’s face it, if the Church had merely advocated the burning of those who molested and murdered children, I doubt we’d be having this conversation. But in the eyes of the Church a heretic is far worse than a child-murderer. For a murderer can only kill the body, but a heretic by his erroneous teaching can kill the immortal soul for all eternity, or so teaches the Catholic Church. And what should she think of Jan Hus and Martin Luther, who dragged whole nations into heresy? These would be considered worse than the greatest mass murderers in history. Would we think it a great evil if Hitler or Stalin had been burned? I doubt it. Therefore, it is clear that when we say that it was wrong for the Church to advocate the burning of heretics, what we are really saying is that it was wrong for the Church to look upon heresy as being such a big deal. For what we moderns are opposed to is not primarily the Church’s doctrine concerning burning, but rather her ancient doctrine concerning the eternal salvation of only those who hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate. Or rather, we reject the former because we have already rejected the latter, and the two doctrines stand or fall together. So if heretics are not necessarily damned, (and who today would want to be so crass as to suggest that they are), then burning really does seem unreasonably harsh. But, hypothetically speaking, if the Church’s teaching concerning salvation is true, as the popes used to believe it was, then the burning of heretics starts to look quite reasonable indeed. And if anyone disagrees, let him try to make this argument: even if heretics lured many into eternal damnation, they still don't deserve to be burned. And if the Church were to condemn the burning of heretics, that would be the argument she'd be making.

I do have a problem with suggesting, as you seem to be saying, that the Vicar of Christ, in teaching the universal Church, taught that an intrinsically evil act was moral.

Tony - we have had bad men ascend to the Chair of Peter and they have done terrible things and led wretched lives. Leo X is not one of the Church's illustrious sons and his papal bull, reversed by successors and out and out condemned later, was not infallible. The Church is of both divine and human natures. And it is an old saw; Christ came to establish the Kingdom of God and instead got stuck with the Church. But what should give her critics pause and you courage, is this simple fact; the Gates of Hell have never prevailed against her. There have been close calls, but her Deposit of Faith and mission have survived the human corruption that has sunk other institutions.

We break the promises we make to Christ. His is still standing. Until the end of time.

Therefore, it is clear that when we say that it was wrong for the Church to advocate the burning of heretics, what we are really saying is that it was wrong for the Church to look upon heresy as being such a big deal.

Not at all. What we are saying is, as Catholics we have all the spiritual weapons we need and they do not include torture and execution. You're position is uniformed by the Eucharist and void of hope, charity and faith. Frankly it sounds more Islamic than anything one will find in the Gospels.

The assaults sent against us have been foretold and come as tests and chastisements, your proposed responses drain the Church of her spiritual vigor.

Leo X is not one of the Church's illustrious sons and his papal bull, reversed by successors and out and out condemned later, was not infallible.

Thank you for finally putting forward a thesis that is directly on point for this discussion. I would like to know on what basis you make this claim. You mentioned, already, that later Popes reversed the bull. OK, but in order for a proposition to be reversed by a later Pope, it has to be in principle reversible, i.e. reformable. Truly infallible declarations are not reversible. What about Leo's proclamation made it such that it did not partake of the character of infallibility, such that a Catholic in 1520 would have been able to know that it was not protected by the Holy Spirit as infallible? What of Leo's approach lacked the outward forms and conditions of infallibility?

I wouldn't mind our coming to a definite conclusion that the bull clearly (even at the time) was not infallible and a well-informed Catholic could have and would have known it wasn't infallible. That would make our task in answering Bill's question much easier. But I don't see a clear way of doing it.

Don Colacho:
The assaults sent against us have been foretold and come as tests and chastisements, your proposed responses drain the Church of her spiritual vigor.

That opinion reminds me of another proposition condemned in the same Bull:

34. To go to war against the Turks is to resist God who punishes our iniquities through them.

Moreover, you have no evidence to back up your assertions. Maybe if you could produce a saint or a Doctor of the Church who also condemned burning heretics you might actually succeed in squeezing out some semblance of an argument... but I doubt you'd find one.

I would like to know on what basis you make this claim. You mentioned, already, that later Popes reversed the bull

Did Leo's pronouncement rise to the level a theological or doctrinal truth it binding on Catholic consciences and if so what was the penalty for dissent? Are papal bulls usually infallible?

I wouldn't mind our coming to a definite conclusion that the bull clearly (even at the time) was not infallible and a well-informed Catholic could have and would have known it wasn't infallible.

I suspect you will never receive enough evidence to address your concern. All we can do at this point is note; a very different ecclesial understanding shaped the Catholic response for 1,100 years prior, and with the grace of God, we have returned, or come to a truer conception than existed, intermittently for several centuries during the middle of the Church's pilgrimage through the ages. If you seek a comforting stasis on the human nature of the Church, you might want to load up on Dramamine.

I remember Remi Brague saying we are 2,000 years in and have likely only touched the surface of Christ. Do you know of a better vehicle to continue our quest to fully meet Him than the Church - ugly scars and all?

George R - you have found a place, time and personage to your liking in the fading Christendom, circa 1520, of Pope Leo X. Remain there if you must. But to be truly authentic, you must adopt the garb, diet and dentistry of the time as well. Otherwise, it is simply an eccentric pose that allows you to dissent from the all the Church teachings that offend your ideology.

Did Leo's pronouncement rise to the level a theological or doctrinal truth it binding on Catholic consciences and if so what was the penalty for dissent? Are papal bulls usually infallible?

?? Don't you know? I thought you had the information that you needed to answer these questions, because you said the bull wasn't infallible. Are you saying now that you think it was fallible, but you don't have anything to substantiate it but ex-post-facto evidence?

1. Did Leo's pronouncement rise to the level of a theological or doctrinal truth? Well, it has that appearance to me. He seems to be claiming a doctrinal truth about a theological point: whether an act is against the will of the Spirit.

2. Is is addressed to all Catholics? Yep, sure looks like it: Let all this holy Church of God, I say, arise, and with the blessed apostles intercede with almighty God to purge the errors of His sheep, to banish all heresies from the lands of the faithful, and be pleased to maintain the peace and unity of His holy Church.

3. Does it come from his Petrine authority? I would say that's the way it looks: In virtue of our pastoral office committed to us by the divine favor

and later

by the authority of almighty God, the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own authority, we condemn, reprobate, and reject completely each of these theses

4. Is it binding on all Catholics?
We restrain all in the virtue of holy obedience

5. What was the penalty for dissent? Wait, it is not the case that an infallible teaching has to have a "penalty" attached to it in order to bind the faithful: Pope Paul VI taught infallibly in Humanae Vitae that artificial contraception is inherently disordered, but he did not place any penalty for failure to agree. John Paul II, in what is probably his only DIRECTLY AND DEFINITIVELY ex cathedra statement, taught infallibly that the Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood, but he did not "penalize" dissent. Nevertheless, the full quote in answer to #4 has the penalty: excommunication. We restrain all in the virtue of holy obedience and under the penalty of an automatic major excommunication....

6. Are papal bulls usually infallible? The answer is that papal bulls usually have the character that the Pope intends to put on them. Sometimes, that includes invoking the Divine authority to lay down a teaching to be accepted by the whole faithful. That's what Leo appears to have done here.

What more is required for infallibility?

Similar language was used by Pope Sixtus V in condemning anyone who modified the Tridentine Mass, but that was a statement of the Ordinary Magisterium. The fact is that Pooe Leo cites no precidence from Scripture or Tradition for his statement which takes is out of the historical continuity of Tradition. Humanae Vitae does reference historical Tradition in making its arguments, so I can see where it is infallible by virtue of Tradition. Canon 33 looks like Ordinary Magisterium to me.

The Chicken

Don't you know? I thought you had the information that you needed to answer these questions, because you said the bull wasn't infallible. Are you saying now that you think it was fallible, but you don't have anything to substantiate it but ex-post-facto evidence?

The question was rhetorical. The Church clearly do not think it was infallible because as you say;

Truly infallible declarations are not reversible.

And yet, please explain the status of Leo's pronouncement today. It is viewed as an embarrassing episode, rejected by the Church, no? Which leaves you in an untenable position and explains your excursions into odd analogies about libel laws.

Do you think the Spirit leads us to burn heretics in certain time periods, but not others? If not, then surely the practice should be revived, but you have already negated that option. Infallibility should stand the test of time and it doesn't appear to have done so in this case.

You seem to have taken an ultramontane position that leaves you at odds with natural law, the Gospels, dissenting from the Church, and Popes you presumably like, such as JPII and B16. It seems it is you adopting a Protestant-style posture towards the faith.

I can't deal with everything here. Briefly:

I will admit that Tony's alternate understanding of St. Paul's words is reasonable considering the offense involved (maternal incest, no less). I had meant to get back to the gravity of that offense but forgot. For lesser offenses, allowing the transgressor to wallow in his sins would be reasonable since we've all heard of the Prodigal Son. Still, Paul's words cannot be taken to mean: "He must be put to death, and cruelly at that."

But I will disagree with him mightily on the infallibility of Leo's error #33, and not merely because it puts him too much in George's camp. I think I'm seeing too expansive an understanding of Papal Infallibility (against which the Chicken makes some good points.) Everything within a Papal document is not guaranteed that charism, such as every element of reasoning brought to bear, or any conclusions based on historical contingencies, or "the possibly unworthy human motives that in cases of strife may appear to have influenced the result." He must be defining some doctrine of faith or morals intimately tied to the Deposit of Faith and the deliverances of natural law. Everything infallible need not be explicitly revealed, for "there must also be indirect and secondary objects to which infallibility extends, namely, doctrines and facts which, although they cannot strictly speaking be said to be revealed, are nevertheless so intimately connected with revealed truths that, were one free to deny the former, he would logically deny the latter and thus defeat the primary purpose for which infallibility was promised by Christ to His Church."

It does not seem reasonable to me to think that a proposition defending a particular form of execution, the burning of heretics, can possibly meet this requirement, anymore than - as I said before - the failure to condemn certain other forms constitutes an endorsement of them. The Pope, quite frankly, has no competence to bind our consciences on a means of execution, unless, invoking his full authority, he finds such means flatly anathema to Church moral teachings, in which case he might say so, though I would expect such occasions to be extremely rare, and usually reserved for cases involving murder of the innocent (e.g., abortion and euthanasia). Here we have the case of a Pope not so much recommending (except by indirection) a form of execution, as claiming that it is not against the disposition of The Holy Spirit. (How he could claim such a thing is beyond me. George R will employ the Catch-22 response: he knows it because he is guided by the Holy Spirit.) If he had stuck merely with the execution of heretics, I'd have said, "Okay, we already knew that anyway." But he is defending burning them, a decree (as Chicken points out) not at all in line with former tradition prior to Innocent IV. Until I see evidence that burning a man to death is not a means of combining torture with execution - the circumstances of its being carried out corrupting an otherwise just penalty - I am free to hold that opinion. And to remain Catholic.

Similar language was used by Pope Sixtus V in condemning anyone who modified the Tridentine Mass,

No, no, a thousand times no. This is not even remotely parallel. Chicken, I know that you are better that this comment. Are you ill this weekend?

First, Sixtus was condemning anyone altering the mass who doesn't have authority. Since he (and Pius V before him, who used the same language about the mass) reserved authority over the mass to the Pope, that leaves everyone ELSE without the necessary authority, and so Sixtus was saying everyone but the pope is condemned for making changes.

It impossible for one pope to bind a later pope on a juridical matter. He can't do it because in principle his authority does not exceed that of the later pope. Changing the mass is a juridical matter. Sixtus had no intention whatsoever of binding his own successors, preventing them from making changes to the mass.

Secondly, there is no such thing as infallibility about juridical matters, because (by definition) juridical matters are not about doctrines, they are about which practices are commanded, permitted, or forbidden. It is easy to see that an act may be forbidden for more reasons than because it is intrinsically immoral. Therefore, a juridic act by the pope to condemn someone for changing the mass is has nothing to do with doctrinal matters, and does not amount to a claim that the act of making a change to the mass is in itself an immoral act.

Chicken, I think you are right to point out that Paul VI's Humanae
Vitae relied on tradition to some extent. So, that suggests that there are 2 ways a pope can point out a teaching that is infallible; he can bring it forward as being already taught universally by the Church, or he can lay it down as definitive in his own right, in his own plenary authority to teach. Nobody thinks that Leo was applying the first method. But why do you discount the second method?

And yet, please explain the status of Leo's pronouncement today. It is viewed as an embarrassing episode, rejected by the Church, no?

I thought that was your job. That is, you are the one claiming that Leo's pronouncement is condemned today. Please provide the proof of that, I would like to see it. George asked for it too, and it has not been provided.

Oh, and by the way, Don, I did notice that you made no attempt to refute that Leo's declaration seems to meet the conditions needed for a pope to speak infallibly. But I am not infallible. If I have made a mistake about those points, please show me so that I may learn. All you have done so far is to say "but we know your argument MUST be wrong because we have already rejected the conclusion."

Still, Paul's words cannot be taken to mean: "He must be put to death, and cruelly at that."

Bill, I agree. His words probably meant: let the state do with him as the state has set forth, and let God use those means for the man's good (as God does with all things). Doesn't imply anything about the form of execution being torture as if that made it better.

He must be defining some doctrine of faith or morals intimately tied to the Deposit of Faith and the deliverances of natural law.

I don't seem to recall that condition being one of the conditions for a pope to speak infallibly. I thought that the critical point (along with teaching the whole church, and intending to be definitive and require acceptance by all) was that the teaching be about faith and morals. Is there some way of making out "burning heretics is against the will of the Spirit" is not about faith and morals? The heretics apparently were claiming that such an act was immoral, and the Pope was condemning that claim. THAT's about morals.

Admittedly, the popes these days don't get into nit-pics with tiny little details about morals in doing definitive pronouncements that teach in such a way as to require assent. But there is nothing about their authority that precludes it, and I think you will find that many of the popes and councils in medieval times set forth quite vigorously fairly nit-picky truths with anathemas attached. The power and authority is there, whether they use it that way or not.

The Pope, quite frankly, has no competence to bind our consciences on a means of execution, unless, invoking his full authority, he finds such means flatly anathema to Church moral teachings,

That's a really extensive claim. How would you support it? I mean, a pope can say something like "hanging as a form of execution may be prudentially wrong in some cases, but is not in itself an immoral form of execution." This would neither be telling us that we have to use hanging, nor telling us that we must never use hanging, and still leave us with our own judgments to make in particular cases. But it would still bind our consciences, in such a way that we would be obligated to shut up about the other guy supporting an "intrinsically immoral act." This is surely within the Pope's competence.

(By the way, this is very similar to my best guess as to the right reading of Leo's pronouncement: "The heretics' arguments about burning heretics are false arguments, and thus THOSE CLAIMS are unfounded and heretical. There may be other, separate arguments that show that burning heretics is (a) sometimes bad, or (b) always immoral, but since the heretics were not making THOSE arguments, this condemnation isn't touching them.")

Regarding Pope Suxtus V, I meant to show that the constructive language was common for the period - the harsh threats for not following what is clearly Ordinary Magisterial teaching. One cannot use the harsh language of Pope Leo to determine its status as an infallible document.

Popes are not free to make declarative infallible statement de novo. The statement must reference the deposit of Faith via Scripture or Tradition. The Pope, for instance, could not infallibly declare that the earth is the center of the material universe, even if he believed it, because Tradition is all over the map on the question. He must reference Tradition.

Sorry for the spelling errors and compressed writing. I am not sick, simply typing on a Kindle, which, while easier than an iPad, has almost no editing facilities.

The Chicken

Hi everyone,

I've been digging around, and I've found an interesting article by Fr. Brian Harrison (whom I knew many years ago, back in the early eighties) on the Church's teaching on torture and corporal punishment. It's well worth reading. Here's the address:

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html

It makes the point that Pope Nicholas I's condemnation of torture as contrary to divine and human law, while not ex cathedra, is weighty - certainly weightier than the disciplinary decrees reversing it in the thirteenth century. As for Leo X's "Exsurge Domine," Fr. Harrison writes:

"Pope Leo X’s condemnation of the proposition, "Burning heretics is contrary to the will of the Spirit" (cf. B6 above) is clearly a doctrinal censure. However, just what kind of doctrinal status the Pope intended to give this condemnation is not clear. No precise theological note is attached to this proposition. Like any other among the 41 censured in this Bull, it could be assigned an 'iniquity-level' as grave as "heretical", as mild as "offensive to pious ears" or "seductive of simple minds", or anywhere in between ("scandalous" or "false"). For at the end of the document, the Pope simply makes a general declaration that all of the preceding propositions merit one or more of these censures. However, he adds that in any case they are all in one way or another "opposed to Catholic truth" (veritati catholicae obviantes), and so "condemn[s]", "reprobate[s]", and "absolutely reject[s]" them all.50

Now, a pope’s condemnation of a proposition that may – for all he has told us – be no worse than "scandalous", "offensive to pious ears", or "seductive of simple minds", can certainly not qualify as an ex cathedra definition. For all those three lesser censures clearly involve the kind of judgment that might turn out to be reformable; whereas infallible definitions, of course, are by their very nature irreformable." (End of quote.)

Fr. Harrison is a highly respected theologian, and a conservative one at that. I hope that settles the matter.

So, Tony, are you telling me that, if I deny that the burning of heretics is not against the Spirit, I would be denying something "so intimately connected with revealed truths" that denial of the former amounts to denying the latter? It's absurd on its face. Unless someone can give me, as originally requested, evidence from the New Testament or the teachings of the early Church that would indicate Leo's assertion is intimately connected to revealed truths.

I don't seem to recall that condition being one of the conditions for a pope to speak infallibly.

Well it is.

Is there some way of making out "burning heretics is against the will of the Spirit" is not about faith and morals?

Almost everything a Pope says touches on faith and morals. That is not enough to invoke infallibility.

That's a really extensive claim.

Not nearly as extensive as a claim that burning heretics is in accord with the wishes of the Third Person.

How would you support it?

I did, but apparently it didn't strike a chord.

This is surely within the Pope's competence.

Your hanging example only tells us what we already know about the licitness of the death penalty. It does not tell us about the licitness of the means to that end. The point of burning a man is a means of doing something else to him other than killing him.

There may be other, separate arguments that show that burning heretics is (a) sometimes bad, or (b) always immoral, but since the heretics were not making THOSE arguments, this condemnation isn't touching them.)

Oh. So the Pope might have been defending something that is always immoral, but since the heretics used the wrong arguments, the Spirit's protection is assured. Wow.

In 1 Cor. 5: 5, “the destruction of the flesh” does not mean “execution,” whether by the church or by the state. The sinner is given over to Satan so that Satan can do with him, under the providence of God, whatever he wishes. Because God can bring good out of evil, the net result here intended is restoration. Satan is the subordinate agent by whom this task is carried out. The suggestion that “Satan may refer to a human ‘public prosecutor’ can scarcely be taken seriously” (Ellingworth and Hatton, A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, p 99).

In other words, Satan might do to this man the sorts of things he did earlier to Job, the sorts of physical maladies mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, such as 2 Cor. 12: 7 and Luke 13: 16. Notice that in Job 2:6, Satan was expressly prevented from killing Job.

Satan’s malignity toward us is overreached and overturned by God’s wisdom and mercy. Political/ecclesiastical execution is not in view and is not mentioned. We are talking about “the idea of a bodily chastisement, of which Satan is to be the instrument” (Godet, Commentary on First Corinthians, 253). The grossly immoral and hideous practice of the medieval church handing over heretics for execution by the state cannot be established by this passage -- not to mention that trying to do so connects the work of both church and state to Satan.

Tony - George R's argument at least has the benefit of being coherent. Woefully wrong of course, and ossifying away during a shameful part of Christianity's history, but easier to follow than your convolutions.

You are claiming Leo's Papal bull is infallible, a point of doctrine binding us all and taking greater primacy over Scripture and the Church's historic mission.

You and George R. face a choice. You can set-up a card-table outside the sacristy and handout pamphlets announcing the bad news; we must bring back the rack or face a terrible judgment for infidelity to Exsurge Domine, or follow the Spirit and lead of John Paul II;

"Hence it is appropriate that as the second millennium of Christianity draws to a close the Church should become ever more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and His Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of her faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal. Although she is holy because of her incorporation into Christ, the Church does not tire of doing penance. Before God and man, she always acknowledges as her own her sinful sons and daughters."

"Another painful chapter of history to which the sons and daughters of the Church must return with a spirit of repentance is that of the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.

It is true that an accurate historical judgment cannot prescind from careful study of the cultural conditioning of the times, as a result of which many people may have held in good faith that an authentic witness to the truth could include suppressing the opinions of others or at least paying no attention to them. Many factors frequently converged to create assumptions which justified intolerance and fostered an emotional climate from which only great spirits, truly free and filled with God, were in some way able to break free. Yet the consideration of mitigating factors does not exonerate the Church from the obligation to express profound regret for the weaknesses of so many of her sons and daughters who sullied her face, preventing her from fully mirroring the image of her crucified Lord, the supreme witness of patient love and of humble meekness."
http://www.cin.org/jp2ency/tertmill.html

"... we cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions."
John Paul II - Day of Apology

Vincent, thank you for a truly worthwhile addition to the discussion. Fr. Harrison's work on torture is extremely carefully thought out. Though some in the blogosphere think he is too far this way and some too far the other, I tend to give his arguments a lot of weight.

I had noticed the same facet of Exsurge that Fr. H notices: that the disapproval is listed in several categories: "scandalous", "offensive to pious ears", or "seductive of simple minds", which are not automatically "heretical". I thought initially that this meant that the condemnations are not intended to be definitive. The construction gives "OR" as the connective: theses or errors as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, and thus it could be read as saying some of them might be heretical, and others might be offensive to pious ears (but not heretical). But then he follows by saying " AND against Catholic truth." Here is the whole quote:

and reject completely each of these theses or errors as either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, and against Catholic truth. By listing them, we decree and declare that all the faithful of both sexes must regard them as condemned, reprobated, and rejected . . .

If we give the construction the meaning that would be normal for that kind of word usage, in the concluding "and" he is saying that they are all against Catholic truth, and thus condemned as false. If this is the correct way of reading the "and", then the earlier uses of "or" would indicate a list of errors, some of which are scandalous, some of which are offensive to pious ears, some of which are seductive to simple minds, but they are all errors. That is to say, the "or" here is a non-exclusive conjunctive, not an exclusive conjunctive: some are errors and scandalous, some are errors and offensive, some are errors and seductive. To support this point, take a look at the phrase that starts the list: "theses or errors". Leo certainly cannot mean that some of them are theses, and the ones that are not theses are errors - that would be silly, they are all theses, of course. Given that they are all theses, perhaps he also wants us to believe that they are all errors - and this is confirmed when he says that they are all "against Catholic truth." Thus, all of them are wrong, and in addition to being wrong, some of them ALSO are offensive to pious ears, and some of them scandalous etc. The list of categories gives additional evils over and above being wrong. It is even possible that the same error could be wrong, AND offensive to pious ears, AND scandalous, AND seductive of simple minds. The "or" is non-exclusive.

My last point about this passage: If a thesis is, at one and the same time, TRUE, and "seductive of simple minds", then the pope cannot demand of the whole body of the faithful that they "reject completely" such a truth. The studied and the learned, the doctors, have every right to consider things that might seduce simple minds, and yet the truths like this to be understood are - being true - a further display of God. No pope could ever say that the entire faithful must reject them even though true. It seems to me that what Leo was doing here was saying that each and every single one of these theses are to be rejected completely, because they are all against truth, and in addition many of them _also_ cause scandal and are offensive and seductive.

That is the reading I had from the passage. I will admit that it is somewhat of a difficult passage to parse out and from which to obtain certainty of one's conclusions. I do not feel absolutely certain of my conclusions. I welcome correction. Maybe the original Latin does not render perfectly into English. I feel sure that if the condemnations in the bull are not to be understood as definitive, it must be possible to show this from the internal evidence, and I don't see that as being shown yet.

You and George R. face a choice. You can set-up a card-table outside the sacristy and handout pamphlets announcing the bad news; we must bring back the rack or face a terrible judgment for infidelity to Exsurge Domine, or follow the Spirit and lead of John Paul II;

Don, did you know that you are being incredibly offensive and obnoxious? For the last time, I believe that the current teachings of the Church are true. I do not reject what JPII has said. My intent is to be faithful to EVERYTHING that the Church has taught on this subject, including the recent teachings. A true Catholic wants to be always faithful to the entire body of her teachings. What I am doing is saying that her later teachings cannot contradict earlier teachings, if both were definitive. Given that there is no contradiction, then there is a way of reconciling them. JPII had this unfortunate tendency to be willing to pronounce new teachings that had the appearance of being inconsistent with some earlier teachings, and doing so without necessarily providing the tools necessary to do the reconciliation. That means that the task is left for us, not that no reconciliation is necessary because we should just accept the new teaching and ignore the older one.

Another alternative is that ONE of the two teachings is definitive and the other is not. If that is the case, then it must be possible to show which one is laid down as definitive, and to show that the other one was not so given. That is, basically, another method of doing a "reconciliation" of the two. But you cannot simply POSIT that the older one was not definitive, you have to actually demonstrate that. And so far I have not seen it. Maybe someone in the 18th or 19th century already did that, I don't know. I certainly have not read all of what is out there. But for you to assume that the newer teaching is the RIGHT one and therefore supplants the older one would have landed you in exactly the wrong position back when Leo came along with an apparently new position to supplant that of Nicholas. If the Church could go from teaching aright when Nicholas was pope, to teaching erroneously when Leo was pope, then it is just as possible for her to go from teaching aright when Leo was pope and teaching erroneously when JPII was pope. You cannot make the assumption that JPII's teaching was meant to be definitive and intended to reverse a prior reformable teaching: if JPII didn't lay it out as definitive, then it might NOT definitively reverse Leo's even if Leo's was wrong.

When two teachings appear to be opposed, saying that the newer one is true and the older one is simply wrong is easy, but it does rather tend to make hash of the principle of infallibility (if the older one had been understood to be infallible). But since there is inherently other options than this for "resolving" the opposition, we are obliged to not assume that this is the right solution. Instead of assuming that I have rejected JPII, why don't you reflect on whether you have too easily overlooked the work involved in the resolution that maintains ALL of the Church's standards of construing her teachings.

Tony:

Thanks very much for your response. If I read you aright, you are suggesting that "Exsurge Domine" does in fact meet the conditions for being an ex cathedra pronouncement, and that Catholics are therefore obliged to believe that it is sometimes right to not merely kill, but actually burn heretics.

I won't waste your time saying why I find this unacceptable, except to say that the old argument that heretics are destroying people's souls is flawed: nobody can damn your soul but you. If you choose to be influenced by someone, that's your decision. I might add that burning is a cruel and unusual punishment, which nobody deserves. That should be self-evident. I've been to Auschwitz, but I don't think it would be right for anyone (even acting on behalf of the State) to pour kerosene over Hitler (were he still alive) and set him alight. How much less would it be right to burn someone merely for saying what he sincerely thinks.

What I find much more scandalous, however, is that if you are right in your reading of "Exsurge Domine," then Catholics are in fact obliged to believe something (viz. that it is sometimes OK to burn heretics), which 99.99% of them (including the Pope himself) would currently regard as false, heretical and downright evil. (Ask around, if you don't believe me. Ask your priest and bishop, too.) I would regard this as a reductio ad absurdum. I put it to you that it would be contrary to Divine Providence to suppose that God could allow the Church to be so badly misled. I would also argue that if you were right, a non-Catholic would have just cause for not becoming a Catholic: "What! I'm obligated to join a Church and accept a proposition which in fact belongs to its teachings, but which the Pope himself would regard as false?" Even uncertainty on the question of whether "Exsurge Domine" is a dogma would suffice to undermine the obligation, in the wake of Vatican II: "What! I'm supposed to accept papal infallibility, but you can't even tell me whether the permissibility of burning heretics is a dogma or not? How can I take you seriously?" Uncertainty over the issue might have been acceptable in the 19th century, but there is now a settled ecclesiastical consensus that the Inquisition was wrong in principle, not just in practice. The Church has to move on.

Tony: I don't seem to recall that condition being one of the conditions for a pope to speak infallibly.

Bill: Well it is.

Whelmed, I'm sure. Gee, I was sort of hoping for something with a little more persuasive than an "I said so." Perhaps something like this, from Vatican I:

We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that
when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA,
that is, when,
in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians,
in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority,
he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church,
he possesses,
by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter,
that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.
Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.

I think that this would be a pretty authoritative description of what an infallible declaration has to be like, when it is infallible on account of the specific Petrine office. Do you see a comment about the ex cathedra statement having to be

defining some doctrine of faith or morals intimately tied to the Deposit of Faith and the deliverances of natural law.

as you put it? I can't locate that. But even if it is implied, the connection to the Deposit of Faith does not have to any stronger than something implicit in the Deposit. As for natural law, if the pope is, effectively, saying that burning heretics is not intrinsically contrary to the natural law, then it is obviously tied to the natural law. You may well object that the pope does not SHOW how the conclusion can be derived directly out of natural law. This would be a valid complaint. But all you might get out of this is a conclusion that the pope SHOULDN'T have defined a teaching in this manner, not a conclusion that he DIDN'T define a teaching. And, in the same vein, JPII did exactly this sort of thing himself: he overturned 2000 years of natural law teaching when he taught that the death penalty must not be used except in the rare circumstance that if you don't the criminal is a danger to society, and then did not bother to give the explicit development of this conclusion out of the deposit of faith and natural law.

Oh. So the Pope might have been defending something that is always immoral, but since the heretics used the wrong arguments, the Spirit's protection is assured. Wow.

Bill, I don't claim to know for certain that this is an acceptable way of reading the bull. But I do know that there was an explicit rule in interpreting the Syllabus of Errors: although the Syllabus gave a short, pithy description of the error condemned, the full meaning of the error being condemned was the error as found in a specific book or set of works. Thus it was understood that the expression in the Syllabus of Errors was a kind of shorthand reference to a more fulsome developed theory. As a result, the short, pithy statement "condemned" in the Syllabus was not itself taken to be absolutely a total condemnation of every and all possible meanings of the given expression. Let me give an example: One condemned error is this:

Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true

This statement would APPEAR to contradict the statement of religious freedom that is given in Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II. But in fact, what is condemned was the use of that expression as it came forth in certain works by certain false philosphers. In those works they appear to give countenance to the "free to embrace" phrase such a construction that the light of reason is not obliged to respect the honest, valid, and reasonable proofs for Catholicism, that Dignitatis Humanae insists (along with many other CHurch documents), are available to the open mind; instead, the freedom thus professed by the false philosophers is one of autonomy from any higher duty or obligation outside of the individual man and his will. THIS is the error that is condemned, and the Church in putting forth religious freedom in DH was not rejecting the syllabus on this point.

I submit, as at least a possibility, before we ASSUME that the Church now thinks that Exsurge was definitely error, is that the precise kind of "burning is against the will of the Holy Spirit" theory that is condemned in one single short pithy phrase cannot be known clearly without resorting to the sorts of theories and ideas that the heretics were professing at the time. Especially because Leo clearly was listing things that the heretic Protestants were claiming, and he did it by giving a kind of laundry list of short sentences, he can be understood (as with the Syllabus) of doing a kind of shorthand reference to the fuller arguments of the heretics that are condemned. Some other meaning of the phrase than the meaning that the heretics were using would not, then, stand as condemned. I am not saying that this HAS to be the way to read it, but it is at least possible. It would provide a possible avenue for (1) admitting that the Church now thinks burning heretics is bad, and (2) allowing that Exsurge appears to meet the requirements stated in Vatican I for infallibility, and (3) not defying the very principle of infallibility. Don apparently thinks we can stop at (1), George seems to think that we can look at (2) and ignore (1). I think that ignoring either is inadequate.

What I find much more scandalous, however, is that if you are right in your reading of "Exsurge Domine," then Catholics are in fact obliged to believe something (viz. that it is sometimes OK to burn heretics),

Vincent, read my response to Bill at 3:19. I agree with the Church's current teaching. I am proposing that what was actually condemned was a specific theory that the heretics were using that ended in a conclusion that could be summarized as "burning heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit."

You, on the other hand, would appear to have potential converts be willing to convert to a Church that claims infallibility, but whose "infallible" teachings can only be known in retrospect by the Church not deciding to reverse them YET. If Vatican I was right, then an infallible ex cathedra pronouncement can be known by the form and structure of it, not by a retrospective look at whether the Church still agrees with it. Given that Vatican I (the first formal declaration of the ex cathedra authority) came centuries after Leo, it would not be surprising if his ex cathedra declaration were not an absolutely pristine, picture perfect, utterly unambiguous model of an invocation of that petrine authority. Do you think that all such invocations prior to Vatican I are, therefore, suspect, or even just plain reformable? That prior to V-I the ex cathedra authority could not have been used because there was no explicit set of conditions laid down for using it? That would surely get Bill awfully upset: a newly discovered innovation after 1870 years of doing without such a power, claimed without (a) any EXPLICIT reference in the deposit of faith, and (b) not derived from the natural law.

On a simple first reading, it is more than obvious that Leo's bull maintains that the 41 theses are just plain wrong, and it is more than obvious that he wants all Catholics to hold to that understanding. A somewhat more thoughtful reading presents possible avenues for re-considering whether they are "wrong" so much as just objectionable for one reason or another, which is what Fr. Harrison suggests. I gave reasons for thinking that these avenues for re-consideration don't actually pan out, and that the first sense of the document is correct. A couple of people here have suggested that 'the church no longer accepts Exsurge', but nobody has actually given documentation that the Church actually repudiated the document itself. Nor has anyone offered an official document (or even an unofficial one) that actually attests to the claim that Exsurge is not to be considered ex cathedra. What has been maintained, instead, is that the Church now thinks something different than " 'burning heretics is against the Holy Spirit' is condemned." All I am saying is that agreeing (as I do) that the Church now thinks something different is not INHERENTLY contradictory to holding Exsurge to be ex cathedra, and therefore does not constitute direct evidence that the Church herself considers Leo's bull to be reformable. If you cannot show that the bull is reformable internally, and you haven't shown that the Church actually repudiates it specifically, then you must confront the possibility that it really is irreformable. Which leaves the alternative of coming up with a reading of the condemned proposition that is conformable to the current teaching.

I'm wondering if there's an infallible interpreter of the infallible interpreter -- and if there's an infallible interpreter of that?

You guys sound like Baptists fighting over the Bible, minus the Bible.

I was sort of hoping for something with a little more persuasive [sic] than an "I said so."

I was trying to avoid copying and pasting just such long definitions because I assumed you were familiar with them.

I can't locate that. But even if it is implied, the connection to the Deposit of Faith does not have to any stronger than something implicit in the Deposit.

Did you read my earlier comment in which I quote the Encyclopedia, to the effect that to deny the former (burning heretics is in accord with the Spirit) is to deny the latter (revealed truth)? You never answered my question: ... are you telling me that, if I deny that the burning of heretics is not against the Spirit, I would be denying something "so intimately connected with revealed truths" that denial of the former amounts to denying the latter?

Do you see a comment about the ex cathedra statement having to be defining some doctrine of faith or morals intimately tied to the Deposit of Faith and the deliverances of natural law?

Yes: "infallibility is not attributed to every doctrinal act of the pope, but only to his ex cathedra teaching." (And my position is that Leo's thing was not ex cathedra.) Further: "...it must be sufficiently evident that he intends to teach with all the fullness and finality of his supreme Apostolic authority, in other words that he wishes to determine some point of doctrine in an absolutely final and irrevocable way, or to define it in the technical sense...Finally for an ex cathedra decision it must be clear that the pope intends to bind the whole Church. To demand internal assent from all the faithful to his teaching under pain of incurring spiritual shipwreck..."

in the same vein, JPII did exactly this sort of thing himself: he overturned 2000 years of natural law teaching when he taught that the death penalty must not be used except in the rare circumstance that if you don't the criminal is a danger to society, and then did not bother to give the explicit development of this conclusion out of the deposit of faith and natural law.

This was a noninfallible counsel. So if Leo's assertion is in the same vein, it is likewise non-infallible. What would have overturned 2000 years of natural law was an assertion that all use of the death penalty was against the Spirit.

Michael, I realize that as a heretic you have nothing but contempt for Papal Infallibility. But if you can say the Nicene Creed without blushing, I won't return it in kind.

I am sorry, however, that this devolved into a discussion about that Infallibility. I wanted it to be something both Prots and Caths could contribute to.

Michael, how droll. Yes, we are almost as argumentative as New Agers about whether crystals are more effective than incense in becoming "one with the universe.'

Vincent: but there is now a settled ecclesiastical consensus that the Inquisition was wrong in principle, not just in practice. The Church has to move on.

Vincent, for your information there is absolutely NO eccesiastical "consensus" that the Inquisition was wrong "in principle." Let me give a small historical note; the inquisition's origin was in giving people an alternate source of judicial authority than the sheer will of the local lord / baron / laird etc, among other tasks such as dealing with canon law issues. There is nothing wrong "in principle" with that - every source of law has measures to deal with violations. Somewhere along the way, the popes gave to the inquisitorial offices a great deal more emphasis on questioning heresy. Again, there is NOTHING intrinsically wrong with the Church dealing with heresy, and there is no ecclesiastical theory that there is. The infamous "Spanish Inquisition" was a curious amalgamation of Church and monarchic authority, so was a bit of an anomaly in the Catholic world.

Bill, I respect what you are saying in general, but I don't see how your points advance your position in the particular. For example, the encyclopedia gives a rationale for which infallible decrees can extend beyond the things explicitly in the deposit of faith - to things which, were they denied you must end up in denying the deposit - but (a) it does not actually PRECLUDE the possibility of a decree doing something else, and (b) it does not supercede the authority of the defining statement in Vatican I. In other words, the encyclopedia passage proves that there must be one reason for going beyond the deposit of faith, but does nothing to LIMIT it to that and nothing else. I don't think the Church herself ever set out that this rationale for going beyond the deposit of faith intrinsically limits the exercise of infallibility.

You give a good long quote that infallibility is not attributed to every doctrinal act... I agree wholeheartedly. In Exsurge, I see fairly strong evidence that the pope intends fully and completely all of the things that your quote says must be there. He does invoke his supreme apostolic authority, he does apply his teaching to the whole church, he does set these down under pain of eternal shipwreck. The only POSSIBLE area of disagreement, it seems, is whether he is actually defining all 41 theses to be WRONG, or simply to be rejected (even if not wrong). I have given a rationale for settling that point, though you may find it an unsatisfying argument.

I don't think that any good can come of further discussion, unless someone uncovers either a church document that explicitly repudiates Exsurge, or a church document that explicitly says that "burning of heretics is intrinsically immoral" to be understood with the same sense as Leo's statement, with a stronger claim to infallibility than Exsurge has. I have already indicated that I agree with current formal doctrine.

Take a joke, Tony. And stop defending the indefensible. Heresy is not a capital offense -- though murdering human beings for it ought to be. Still, I notice that you did not respond to the content of the joke, which implies that you and the Protestants are in the same boat. Infallibility doesn't mend the matter at all, whether you lodge it with the Bible or with something or someone else.

Not a heretic at all, Bill. I subscribe to the content of the ecumenical creeds. But not to worry, your reckless bandying about of the label "heretic" is not something for which you'll get burned alive, even though others who have borne that title have been executed for bearing it, sometimes quite falsely. Heavens, you folks have even dug up the dead in order to burn them. I can't imagine that's what the gift of fire was for. Perhaps I lack imagination.

I believe that the doctrine in question was infallibly taught in Exsurge Domine, and I think that Tony has done a good job in explaining why this is the most tenable position. However, that the teaching was ex cathedra was never the thrust of my argument. The main point I was trying to make was the teaching was already the teaching of the Church, and already believed by all Catholics everywhere. Catholics in 1520 would have read Leo's condemnation of #33 and would have said, "Well, duh." This is the real “scandal,” to use VJ Torley’s term. Leo X was not teaching anything the entire Catholic Church did not already believe – and if anyone wishes to gainsay me on this point, let him produce any evidence of Catholic dissent on the issue. Furthermore, we know that the teaching in question was the teaching of the Church, since the practice contain therein had been conceived of, advocated, promoted, and already openly employed by the Church for centuries. In other words, we know that the Church taught that burning heretics was not immoral simply by the fact that she burnt heretics. And there’s where the condemnable error comes in; for it's de fide that the Church can never conceive of and practice wickedness.

I think, also, the VJ Torley really comes close to touching on the nub of the matter when he writes the following:

What I find much more scandalous, however, is that if you are right in your reading of "Exsurge Domine," then Catholics are in fact obliged to believe something (viz. that it is sometimes OK to burn heretics), which 99.99% of them (including the Pope himself) would currently regard as false, heretical and downright evil.

How true.

Now couple that with the fact that in 1520, 99.99% of Catholic, including all the popes, believed that burning heretics was ok, and what do you have? A doctrinal meltdown, that’s what. Tony speaks of reconciling these two positions, but it seems to me that he’s trying to jamb a square peg into a round hole.

That's "jam."


Heavens, you folks have even dug up the dead in order to burn them.

Ah, those were the days.

Michael, I don't understand your position at all. Heresy is not an intellectual defect (i.e. "error") that a person accidentally falls into when they happen to be simply mis-informed about the truth. It is a moral failing as such, that is, it is a sin of the will. A person cannot become a formal heretic without both having an error in the intellect, and also willing obstinately to adhere to that error in the face of God's revelation saying otherwise.

Thus people were not put to death merely for holding an intellectual error, but first of all for the sin of obstinately defying God's grace and revelation, and secondly for trying to spread that error. The former might be a sin without being crime, but the latter certainly can constitute a civil crime. I fail to see why you insist that the latter, at least, cannot even in principle be a capital crime (unless you hold that there is no such thing as a capital crime).

Having been out of town, I've not been able to comment on this thread. FWIW, I think that burning people alive is intrinsically wrong, whether they are heretics or not. On the infallibility/Catholicism issue, I don't have a dog in the fight and won't pronounce. As for how and why people thought otherwise, I think that way, way upthread Tony pretty much spelled it out: They believed they were saving souls by burning heretics--both the souls of those terrified away from heresy and possibly the soul of the heretic himself. I think that's a crazy and warped way of thinking, but human beings in all ages have convinced each other to think in crazy and warped ways. Moreover, the social pressure to think that this is "necessary for souls" probably provides _some_ mitigation of the act, though frankly, when it comes to the actual, graphic reality of what one is doing, I think that someone who actually saw a person tortured on the rack or burned alive would have to do a lot of conscience-squashing to justify it much less to do it.

Something similar is true of contemporary justifications of torture to get needed information. People are told again and again that sometimes this is necessary. Thus they are convinced. This is some mitigation of their support for the practice. On the other hand, if they were actually confronted with it, one would hope that the visceral reaction to what was being done would cause the conscience to break through.

This all does bring up an interesting point: Contemporary discussions of torture and condemnation thereof have often focused on the fact that it is an open-ended process for purposes of getting information rather than being a limited, pre-determined sentence enacted for punishment. While I think those considerations are relevant and that there could be acts that are not wrong as sentences but are wrong as attempts to elicit information, when it comes to the cruel imposition of extreme bodily pain, I don't think the distinction makes a difference--that is, burning someone or racking him is wrong whether done as a punishment after sentence or as an attempt to get him to give information.

Welcome back. I like your comment, needless to say.

May I now declare this thread officially moribund?

Contemporary discussions of torture and condemnation thereof have often focused on the fact that it is an open-ended process for purposes of getting information rather than being a limited, pre-determined sentence enacted for punishment. While I think those considerations are relevant and that there could be acts that are not wrong as sentences but are wrong as attempts to elicit information,

Lydia, I think your right in overall direction, but I would tend to walk cautiously in this thicket. As I said above, I think that what is distinctively wrong with torture is that the pain inflicted is such as to disintegrate the rational human person so that he ceases to be capable of acting so. I agree with you that this would be wrong to inflict as a limited punishment just as it would be wrong to inflict it for obtaining information - making a beast of a human is just bad.

But at the same time, if you look at the sort of thing that goes on when a human personality disintegrates (at least, as I gather from general sources), there is some basis to doubt that even quite severe pain, if short enough, will really do that. For example, one classic form of torture is to cut off a limb: maiming is always included as one of the things that is "torture." Yet, a couple years ago we had an example of a mountain climber, stuck in rocks by his arm, who (after a couple of days of hoping for help to come, I think) pulled out his knife and sawed through his arm and walked away. I know someone who a while ago had major abdominal surgery, and through a mess-up in communications, 12 hours later had effectively no pain killers at all for about 2 hours - and who came through the ordeal intact. The stories of battlefield (non-fatal) injuries, too, are of severe pain, but are not ordinarily such as to destroy the personality. I have suspected (without feeling the list bit sure) that in the disintegration of personality there is always more than a little bit of a feed-back response mechanism in the mind that looks at the current pain and projects that forward in fear to it being extended, and that it is precisely that projected forecast that is so daunting that it unhinges one. If this is somewhat true (and I don't push it as certain, by any means), then it provides one reason to doubt that a somewhat short period of even fairly severe pain could harbor the moral evil that is specific to torture, if the person knows for certain that it will be short. (It might be bad for another reason besides this specific evil though. And it might be that I have not quite nailed what is precisely wrong with torture as such.)

I fear that we wimpy Americans, shielded from physical pain almost our whole lives, might be somewhat imperfect judges of what is a reasonable stance about pain. I am quite sure that other cultures don't feel the same way about moderate degrees of pain that we do. So, as I said above, this is an area where I would tread cautiously.

Well, Tony, I'm not sure that I agree that the "total disintegration of personality" or even aiming at that is what is wrong with torture or is the proper analysis of torture. I never have responded all that positively to that analysis. If that were it, then it would not be wrong (or at least would not be torture) to put Joe on the rack if you knew that Joe would retain his dignity because he's a real mensch but would be wrong to put Jim on the rack and do the exact same things to him if you had good reason to believe that Jim would collapse into a mind-lost mess in the process. Something seems misguided about that to me.

Bill, you can declare it moribund any time you like. You're da' boss of the thread.

Tony,
Willful sins of the intellect are not capital offenses properly to be punishable by death.

As an example, in his Areopagitica (and elswhere), John Milton argued that only Catholicism could be considered a heresy because it was a willful rejection of the grace and truth of God in the face of Scripture. Unlike you, however, he did not think that those who committed such serious errors -- Roman Catholics -- ought to be burned alive for their willful sins of the intellect. Milton was not opposed to capital punishment. Indeed he wrote at length twice in defense of regicide. But he knew what some Catholics, even today, do not: Even willful theological sins of the intellect are not offenses that rightly merit execution. We are to refute serious theological errors; not burn alive those who hold them.

Your defense of infallibility has reduced you to barbarism.

Michael, is there a special reason you ignored the point of my question, which was about the willful spreading of the willful adherence to errors to others?

Like you, I would not kill heretics. Like you, I think that willful adherence to error is wrong. Unlike you, I think that willfully and intentionally spreading grave errors can be a civil crime. I am willing to hear arguments that show that such a willful damage to the state intrinsically cannot be such as to merit death. So far I cannot imagine a good one.

Bill, whatever you say.

Lydia, I am willing to be led to a better understanding of just what it is about torture that is wrong. What I posted is the best I have seen that makes sense of the reasons people are revolted by it morally as well as viscerally , without sweeping too widely and gathering in (as wrong) stuff that traditionally is considered OK, like basic corporal punishment. It is difficult to identify a principle that permits the intentional infliction of moderate pain as discipline or punishment, but does not allow using severe pain, without identifying something that makes severe pain other than simply different in degree. If there is something, over and above the mere fact that it is simply pain, that makes us cry out against using severe pain as punishment, that something should also explain why it we call it "inhumane" and we say it is "against human dignity". Saying it opposes humans using their rationality does exactly that.

I don't think it has to be a total disintegration of personality, by the way - partial melt-down would be sufficient for it being immoral.

Tony, I think that continuum arguments are probably overrated in many ways and that looking for something to break the continuum or to get away from the continuum problem is probably a mistake. As you probably know, some people argue that torture cannot be wrong precisely _because_ something extremely minor (like, say, tickling someone in an annoying way) can be put on a continuum with tearing out his fingernails as far as the amount of pain and discomfort caused.

I realize that that isn't your argument, but I still think perhaps the continuum issue is bothering you too much in that it's causing you to reach for the "disintegration" concept.

Look at it this way: A Victorian mother might legitimately send a child to bed without a meal as a form of punishment. Somewhere between that and actually starving the child a line has been crossed--probably pretty quickly after making the child miss one meal. But that doesn't mean that we have to find some decisive phrase or concept, such as attempting to cause the child to lose his use of rationality, in order to draw that line. We rely for these things on common sense, on a careful attempt to be humane, and (as Christians) on the Holy Spirit informing our consciences.

Something similar, of course, is true of many other issues such as the evaluation of what counts as pornography.

That, I've come to think, is the nature of life in a messy physical world. We can always slowly "morph" one thing into another--mere discomfort into pain, modesty into immodesty, and so forth.

You may be right about that Lydia. I will consider the idea in more depth. The initial idea that strikes me is that things that are wrong in great degree but not wrong in minor degree are precisely the sorts of things we avoid calling intrinsically disordered (i.e. disordered according to the species of the act itself). Would it be OK to walk away saying "torture is wrong because it consists in carrying to an extreme what is licit only in moderation", and then say that by that very fact you cannot lay out what constitutes "the extreme" in universal terms that always and everywhere apply, so that you cannot make a general rule that X is necessarily torture? That's the sort of thing we tend to say about a virtue and its opposed vices, where the virtue lies as the mean between extremes, but where the actual mean lands in the concrete depends so much on circumstance that you cannot say beforehand that X amount or Y amount is too little or too much.

Tony,
There was no evasion at all: I said it was wrong. I also said it was not rightly a capital offense. For example, Marxism, a political and economic heresy, is deeply damaging to the nation. The evidence against Marxism is overwhelming. But advocating it in the face of that evidence, and in light of its gruesome track record, is not properly punishable by death. Neither is denying the Trinity. I say so even though I oppose both Marxism and Arianism, and have written books against them both. As Christians, we refute serious errors (whether political or theological); we do not burn alive those who spread them, no matter if they do so willingly or ignorantly.

The initial idea that strikes me is that things that are wrong in great degree but not wrong in minor degree are precisely the sorts of things we avoid calling intrinsically disordered (i.e. disordered according to the species of the act itself).

Right. That's what I used to think. I've come to think it's not correct. Again, consider punishing a child. I think we should agree that there are degrees of isolation of the child that are intrinsically wrong for a parent to carry out. But sending him to his room for two hours obviously isn't. Something can be intrinsically wrong even if doing "it" (or doing something that could be called "doing it") in a different degree is not intrinsically wrong. To put it another way, a difference of degree in the physical nature of an act can make a difference of kind to the type of act.

This is obviously true. Tapping your wife gently on the shoulder is not wrong. Beating the tar out of her is. I see no reason to withhold the term "intrinsic" from the wrongness of wife-beating simply because we can think of it as being on a continuum with some other physical act that isn't wrong.

Heresy is not a capital offense -- though murdering human beings for it ought to be.

But he knew what some Catholics, even today, do not: Even willful theological sins of the intellect are not offenses that rightly merit execution. We are to refute serious theological errors; not burn alive those who hold them.

Now that is my kind of ecumenism! Well said Michael Bauman, even though it shouldn't have to be said.

Your defense of infallibility has reduced you to barbarism.

Well, Tony has built a rhetorical Tower of London defending Exsurge Domine as infallible while retroactively dissenting from it. He is a provocateur, not a barbarian. Though I dare say, his nuanced explorations of torture risk giving license to rougher souls.

Western history has taught us to avoid peeling off our protective garments;When he is stripped of the Christian tunic and the classical toga, there is nothing left of the European but a pale-skinned barbarian.


Robert Louis Stevenson' dictum has much merit here: "If your morals make you dreary, depend on it: they are wrong."

I declare this thread resuscitated. Temporarily.

Something can be intrinsically wrong even if doing "it" (or doing something that could be called "doing it") in a different degree is not intrinsically wrong. To put it another way, a difference of degree in the physical nature of an act can make a difference of kind to the type of act.

Lydia, do you remember that last post I wrote on torture at my place (you're the only one who read it)? That some acts not intrinsically wrong can "tip over" into that sort of thing, but that others, e.g. the rack, cannot, since their "fullness of being" is manifest from the outset. Something like that. The mark of torture is cruelty, and the cruelty is undisguised by a continuum.

Here's that post. It was good to review it:

http://wluse.blogspot.com/2009/07/hurts-so-good.html

Yes, I think that it's confusing to speak of the rack as on a continuum with minor physical discomfort. That's why I try to say "can be regarded as" on a continuum. I think the confusion arises from use of a really broad phrase like "corporal punishment" or "physical discomfort." Having a man receive four whacks with a cane (I think they did six in Singapore years ago to an American who committed vandalism) just isn't the same kind of thing as the rack. For that matter, I think it isn't the same kind of thing as the horrible sentences of "a hundred lashes" and the like in Muslim countries.

That some acts not intrinsically wrong can "tip over" into that sort of thing, but that others, e.g. the rack, cannot, since their "fullness of being" is manifest from the outset. Something like that. The mark of torture is cruelty, and the cruelty is undisguised by a continuum.

Intrinsically wrong acts have no tipping point. They are wrong, per se. Intrinsic means belonging to the essential nature of a thing. The wrongness resides in the act, itself. There may be intensifying circumstances, but the act itself is already enough to send you to Hell. For instance, there is no tipping point for abortion. There are no subspecies of being dead.

There is something no one has commented on that might clarify the issues of buring a heretic and torture. In any authentic torture, there is always a response sought by the torturer from the one being tortured. Be it a confession, a revealing of facts, or just the response of escalating pain, the torturer always pauses to observe what the torture is doing. Thus, attempting to solicit a confession by threat of burning would, by this aspect of torture, be genuine torture, but simply buring to kill would not.

One may kill a person by giving them a glass of Valium-laced milk at bedtime or make them drink hot hydrochloric acid. The end result is death in both cases, but no intermediate response is sought in the first case, but the pain response is sought in the second. In other words, the intent to torture resides in the torturer, not the nature of the method, per se. The burning of a heretic is not torture, just a particularly painful and defective (from a humanistic point of view) way to kill someone. There is a defect in the method, but not the intent. The only thing one looks for in the pure buring a heretic is that they die.

So, the burning of a heretic can be torture or it can be simply execution. It depends on the circumstances. Thus, the burning of a heretic, the pure buring, without intentionally seeking any responses during the process, is merely a defective means of capital punishment. It does the same thing, essentially, as the electric chair, only slower (so does accidental electrocution). Even Christ was not tortured on the Cross, (by his executioners - the crowd is another matter) and he was offered a palliative. If the crucifiers had given him death by a thousand cuts, that would have been a method of execution which is intrinsically torture, since there is a pause after each cut to examine the effects and to give the person being tortured time to respond. Torture looks for more than one instance of satisfaction. Execution, only one.

Thus, there are different species of buring as applied to a heretic. Some are torture, some are not. It is perfectly consistent for Pope Leo to say that the proposition, “That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit” is condemed, if, by burning, he means the pure burning of a heretic, not the use of burning for purposes of torture. He may, in fact, have agreed that burning a heretic in a torturous manner is opposed to the Holy Spirit, but that is not what his proposition refers to. The pure burning a heretic is a painful means of execution, but not fundamentally opposed to other methods and since capital punishment is not opposed to the will of the Spirit (JP II's admonition against the death penalty was not absolute), neither is buring a heretic.

The Church can find that certain methods of execution are both execution and torture, but some are not. Thus, there is no contradiciton between a condemnation of torture, properly defined (has the Church ever infallibly defined what torture is??), by the Church, and the acceptance of the burning of a heretic, assuming the circumstances of the burning do not have the extra intention of torture, but merely execution.

In other words, I reject the notion that the burning of a heretic is torture, per se, only accidentally, at best. One can create any definition of torture one wants, but in examining torture in the act (one the ground, so to speak), one sees the important distinctions of intentionality and multiple points of satisfaction in torture, but not in execution. Intensity of the act is not sufficient, in itself, to define torture, no matter what the UN would have one think, since mere execution can be painful or not, depending on what one has at hand to do the job. A mob hit man can kill in many ways, some torturous, some not. Dead is dead, but how one gets there determines whether or not torture is done. Burning a heretic is both a means of execution and symbolic of the further punishment that awaits, but it is a means at hand. One need not choose the easiest way to put a man to death in order for it to be relatively moral, otherwise, only death a la the movie Soylent Green, with technocolor nature scenes and glorious music would be not torture. We have been using the phrase, "burning a heretic," in equivocal ways, not realizing that distinctions can be made. Both Pope Leo and Pope JP II can be right.

Hope this helps.

The Chicken

Well, you can't, can you? That's why we give him death, because we have no means of punishment suitable to his crime. The cruelty of crucifixion becomes no less abject because the man is guilty.

I agree. I was musing about the conundrum there.

I do think though that society can choose between certain forms of execution that are not inherently cruel and use them to set a distinction between various levels of murder. Hanging is probably the only appropriate upper limit; it would be appropriate to hang someone if they have murdered several people.

I think the reality of it is likely that no punishment could actually deter most of those individuals who are sufficiently hardened to kill without just cause. Their nature perverts their reason to the point that even if we crucified them and burned them simultaneously, it wouldn't deter the majority of them.

One of the downsides to this cruelty is that it also makes its potential recipients see those dishing it out as individuals unworthy of mercy. That invites violence and even gives it a sense of moral legitimacy because it is very difficult to argue that a torturer is anything less than a truly heinous felon.

But he knew what some Catholics, even today, do not: Even willful theological sins of the intellect are not offenses that rightly merit execution. We are to refute serious theological errors; not burn alive those who hold them.

Depending on how society sees it, heresy is a form of sedition. Certain levels of sedition are indeed worthy of execution. Yes, execution. If you are the imam who gives a firey speech to your congregation specifically advocating the overthrow of the US Government or your state, advocate that members take a specific violent action toward the same and then they do, you belong on the gallows next to them. Likewise, one has to give the Catholic Church some understanding here in that in many areas it faced a similar scenario since during these ages it was part of the system of governance and was essentially targeted by what were regarded as seditious revolutionaries.

The only real barbarism involved was the actual punishment.

I don't think I could agree with that, MC. Christ's total treatment certainly was torture, even on your own basis: they wanted to get some change from him by scourging him, for example. As far as the form of execution goes, I would submit that a form of execution that both takes hours and hours (normally, when you haven't first nearly killed him beforehand), AND applies 2 or 3 different forms of excruciating pain, cannot be free of at least some degree of looking for something from the victim - begging for mercy, etc. You could not possibly choose such a method if purely death alone was the object of the act.

Something can be intrinsically wrong even if doing "it" (or doing something that could be called "doing it") in a different degree is not intrinsically wrong. To put it another way, a difference of degree in the physical nature of an act can make a difference of kind to the type of act.

Lydia, I think this just brings us right back around to the beginning of the circle. If you want to say that intending THIS degree of pain in the act is intrinsically wrong, then what you must mean by that is that if you choose the act that you know involves THIS degree of pain, the act you are choosing is a different species of act because you cannot be willing THIS degree of pain for the same object that you might have had using a moderate degree of pain. It is a different species because the object of the act is different. I am OK with this, but it would imply that we ought to be looking to identify the specific difference that sets off torture, that is necessarily implied when excessive pain is chosen. I don't think it is possible to say that the sheer difference in degree, ALONE, is precisely what constitutes the specific difference. That is not intelligible.

There was no evasion at all: I said it was wrong. I also said it was not rightly a capital offense. For example, Marxism, a political and economic heresy, is deeply damaging to the nation. The evidence against Marxism is overwhelming. But advocating it in the face of that evidence, and in light of its gruesome track record, is not properly punishable by death. Neither is denying the Trinity.

Michael, thank you for a partially clarifying answer. OK, we agree that intentionally and willfully spreading errors is wrong.
What you have not said is whether doing this can constitute a civil crime. We both agree that it can damage the state, that's clear. I think that, under certain conditions it is not only a sinful act that damages the state, but an act that is a legitimate field for the state to legislate against. In those conditions, it could be a civil crime.

Let me expand: St. Thomas makes it clear that not every sin should be a matter for legislation and civil punishment. One principle for limiting it is that you don't legislate against minor peccadilloes that cannot be avoided by most, you only legislate against things that most people have the strength of will to overcome the temptation to. But grave vices, that are indeed things that all or nearly all people have the strength to overcome, are fair game.

In a fully Christian country with settled Christian customs, including the common virtue of using the teaching Church to inform one's conscience about Revelation, nearly all people have the ready ability to avoid the grave sin of willing to adhere to heresy, and (even more so) avoiding intentionally spreading it. There is no doubt that the spreading thereof can gravely damage the state. Seems to me that this makes it fair game for civil law. (This does not mean that it is necessary in all cases for the state to legislate about it - circumstances differ.)

The second issue is whether it can be a capital crime. If the severity of the offense is based on the degree of damage to the state, it certainly can be capital. Revolutions and civil wars were fought about this. It is a grave enough matter. (This does not mean that it is necessarily an excellent thing to execute a heretic - converting him would be much better. I see no reason to disagree with Michael's comment that We are to refute serious theological errors;. That's fine. But refuting them is not necessarily the state's activity, and it does not preclude that other activities by the state to deal with the crime may be necessary.)

Don, is there a special reason you feel it necessary to call me names? Let's see, I am dissenter and a provocateur. THANK GOODNESS I am not also a barbarian, I am so relieved. Though apparently I give aid and comfort to the barbarians. Woe is me.

And this advances the argument....HOW? Why don't you civilly argue the case, instead of trying to win smack-down points? In this thread we find Bill, Lydia, Masked Chicken, Vincent, and myself, all at some degree of disagreement with each other, when we normally see at least 80 to 95 % agreement. Seems to me that there is plenty of room for a brilliant flash of enlightenment for what is OBVIOUSLY a very difficult subject. Civility and, well, rational arguments will get you much farther in this venue.

For instance, there is no tipping point for abortion. There are no subspecies of being dead.

I think the confusion regarding "tipping points" really just arises from the fact that we're talking about physical acts. To whack someone on the neck with your hand won't (probably) kill him. To hit him on the neck with a sharp ax will. To say that one is "reaching a tipping point" when harming someone enough to kill him may cause a certain amount of confusion, but the fact remains that we rightly treat hitting a person a single time differently from beating him for an hour.

When we talk about the "nature of acts" we're talking not just about the physical act but also about both intent and knowledge. For example, you know that shooting someone in the head is likely to kill him but shooting him in the leg isn't. This makes a difference to whether or not you can honestly say that you "weren't trying to kill him," and that will in turn be relevant to judgements of, say, murder vs. manslaughter or murder vs. mere injury. (One can even imagine circumstances where you might deliberately shoot an innocent person in the leg to prevent him from hurling himself off a cliff, thus saving his life.)

Similarly with the wrongness of acts of causing pain. You know that burning someone is going to cause intense pain. Thus to say that you were merely executing him is disingenuous. You were _trying_ to cause him intense pain in the process of executing him. This may be intrinsically wrong as an act. The act in that case is "trying to cause intense pain in the course of execution," or something of that kind. Putting it on a continuum with simply whacking the guy a couple of times ("corporal punishment") only confuses matters, because that just isn't the same type of act. A physical continuum of discomfort doesn't make for a continuum in the nature of the act, any more than shooting someone in the leg is on a continuum of intentional acts with shooting someone in the head.

A physical continuum of discomfort doesn't make for a continuum in the nature of the act,

Perfectly true. That's why, when we examine not only the physical (external) act, but also the knowledge and the object in the mind and will, there will be a difference between "I put him to death" when I injected him, versus "I put him to death" when I crucified him. Those are two different sorts of acts, aren't they? You cannot undertake all of the extra work, planning, and people involved to do an execution by crucifixion if your object is, specifically to "put him to death" and nothing else. The second act is different in species because the object intended was something more than merely "I put him to death" in the most available manner at hand.

On the other hand, let's take a real example from English history: a death sentence for one person might carried out by beheading, whereas another person would be given execution by hanging. I don't believe either one of these forms of punishment constitutes torture. (Hanging can be used in torture, but only by being careful to (a) not jerk the victim forcefully, and (b) take him down fairly quickly. The evidence seems to be that for a normal adult, the weight of the body against the rope cuts off circulation of blood to the brain so quickly that the person is no longer aware of anything after 60 seconds, or less.) But it is certainly the case that hanging was used for, and intended to be, a worse punishment. Based on this, I think that there is no way to preclude from the penal department a (limited) range of methods of execution, for different sorts of capital crimes. Always, of course, staying away from what is intrinsically disordered.

But the sheer intent to induce more pain than the least necessary to induce death is not, of itself, disordered. If one capital crime suitably deserves beheading, and another suitably deserves a worse punishment than the first crime and so we choose hanging, the whole point of the difference is that in choosing the latter punishment we intend more punishment than simply death itself. This MAY BE unwise, it may be fraught with moral and civil dangers, but it is not of itself disordered.

If that's so, then it is not merely the "more punishment than death alone" that makes crucifixion to be disordered with respect to its object. There has to be something more determinate than that.

Thus to say that you were merely executing him is disingenuous. You were _trying_ to cause him intense pain in the process of executing him.

Is that really what the Church was trying to do - cause intense pain? That would seem contrary to charity and make the executioners nothing more than sadistic brutes or clueless as to even basic moral theology. That does not seem likely. It seems more likely that the pain was an accidental of the method, not the intent (assuming the burning was not being done by a sadist in clerical garb).

In any case, the contradiction:

burning = torture = bad
burning = remediation = not torture = good (or at least neutral)

cannot be possible if any Christian moral theology is to be consistent. Contained in the promise that the Church cannot err is that the Church cannot contradict itself on moral issues, since then, truth would be indeterminable. Either the definition of torture is incomplete or the morality of burning a heretic is incomplete. Russell's barbershop doesn't actually exist, you know, whereas the Church does. A house divided cannot stand. The Church cannot be divided against itself, so there is some misunderstanding, somewhere. I suggest the vagueness in the definition of torture.

My question remains: has the Church ever infallibly defined what constitutes torture?

The Chicken

P. S. Lydia, sorry for your loss. For what it's worth, I remembered it at Mass, today.

The Chicken

I just checked. Leo X's pronouncement on burning heretics is listed as #773 in Denzinger's Sources of Catholic Dogma ( which is online), so like it or not, it seems to be an infallible pronouncement. I have yet to find an infallible document defining torture, however (don't cite 2278 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church).

Still doing research.

The Chicken

Should be Catechism 2298.

For background, I did a word search on torture from the Catechism:

2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity.
Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.90

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

2148 Blasphemy is directly opposed to the second commandment. It consists in uttering against God - inwardly or outwardly - words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward him in one's speech; in misusing God's name. St. James condemns those "who blaspheme that honorable name [of Jesus] by which you are called."78 The prohibition of blasphemy extends to language against Christ's Church, the saints, and sacred things. It is also blasphemous to make use of God's name to cover up criminal practices, to reduce peoples to servitude, to torture persons or put them to death. the misuse of God's name to commit a crime can provoke others to repudiate religion.
Blasphemy is contrary to the respect due God and his holy name. It is in itself a grave sin.79

2282 If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal.
Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.
Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

None of these canons have a reference to prior documents. This is very disheartening. More searching...

The Chicken

Is that really what the Church was trying to do - cause intense pain?

Well...if it weren't, there were quicker and less painful methods of execution. It seems that the painfulness of burning had to have been part of what was intended by those who did it (perhaps to some other end, like forcing the person to repent or deterring others), or they would have done something else, such as beheading or even hanging. To my mind, to say, "I intended to burn this (conscious) person alive but did not intend to cause him intense pain" is as disingenuous as, "I intended to shoot this little girl in the left temple through the brain but did not intend to kill her."

As a Protestant, I'm not going to get involved in the infallibility issue per se. But if a Pope taught that it's morally legitimate to burn people alive, I'm going to say that he was wrong.

(Thank you, Chicken, for your kind words and prayers. Feel free to write to my e-mail, if you would like to.)

I just read Fr. Harrison's comments on torture in relationship to Church dogma. It seems matters are unsettled and since I doubt I can add anything new or substantial to the discussion without much work, I will bow out of the discussion and only say that these matters apparently are not for us to decide.

The Chicken

The Catechism gets a little cagey when it says

In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture.

It doesn't quite tell you WHICH practices are the ones we are talking about, and it doesn't tell you whether the "prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture" means that Roman practices were just subsumed into use by assuming they were not torture, or whether what the Roman law explicitly declared to be torture and thus off limits was subsumed into applicable practice. You cannot make out whether the fault of the Church lay in this or that negligence of examining on its own authority whether the Romans were right: whether they intended to exclude torture, though maybe were misguided as to the particulars, or whether just plain didn't pay any attention to whether it was torture or not "because the Romans did it". Rather cagey, in my opinion.

In any case, Chicken, included in the act punishment is the intent to inflict something contrary to the will of the criminal, i.e. an evil. Outside of punishment having a formal object of inflicting evil would be an evil act as such. But within the context of punishment, the formal object of the act is justice, and the pre-condition is that the criminal has - contrary to law - satisfied his own will to the detriment of the common good. The corrective to restore justice is, then, to impose - by law - something that is proportionately contrary to his will, proportionate to the evil involved in his choice, which cannot be completely separated from the degree of evil that the crime brings to the common good (or the degree of evil brought by defying the law made for the common good). This is what St. Thomas teaches. You do in fact will to employ pain or suffering of some sort when you impose a punishment. You do not thereby become an evil person because the formal object of the act is justice, for which the evil imposed constitutes a restorative.
(It can be viewed in the way giving a medicine X that, for a healthy person would introduce an imbalance, but for a person sick because he has too little X, giving the otherwise overdose of X is actually a corrective.)

Hence I agree with Lydia that using burning to execute implies an intention specifically to cause intense pain.

But it is not on account of willing more pain than is necessary to execute that it would be disordered. Otherwise we would ALWAYS be obliged to execute painlessly (hemlock has been around for thousands of years), and nobody thinks this. Most people who support capital punishment in principle also accept that some painful forms of it are acceptable.

I agree that there remains a lack of determinateness in Church teaching about how to speak about torture and punishment. It is clear enough that imposing severe pain outside of the context of legal punishment for a real capital crime is gravely wrong. And it is clear enough that even inside of the context of punishment (by the state), there are limits beyond which the use of such severe pain is gravely immoral. It is not yet sufficiently clear that the 2 limits arise from precisely the same principle, or that the 2 limits are indeed in the same place.

Most people who support capital punishment in principle also accept that some painful forms of it are acceptable.

I would be perfectly fine with always executing criminals in a painless way. I don't hold pain to be an intrinsic part of the good of capital punishment (which I do regard as a good and on which I consider myself fairly hawkish). I tend to think of the painfulness of some form of capital punishment as unfortunate and to be minimized. Hemlock was not always available in the Old West, but a bullet into the back of the head was and is extremely quick.

By the way, we might as well not get bogged down in an ordinary language ambiguity on the term "torture." In ordinary language the term is used both for pain used to extract something and for pain given without such an intent. If a criminal burned someone to death and simply watched, the ordinary man would call that "torture" even if the criminal didn't try to get the victim to say or do something by means of the pain. I understand that the term has a more technical usage. We might as well just disambiguate those and admit that in ordinary language the imposition of severe pain except, perhaps, in cases where it is literally necessary to the _physical_ well-being of the person himself (e.g., field surgery without anesthetic) counts as torture.

would be perfectly fine with always executing criminals in a painless way. I don't hold pain to be an intrinsic part of the good of capital punishment

So, would you view the state attempting to use different forms of capital punishment (some painful) for different degrees of evil crimes to be just a plain bad idea altogether? And if so, "bad" in the sense of "intrinsically wrong" to use more pain that necessary to achieve death, or just a bad idea prudentially, given how it impacts other people and such?

Do you think that hanging, even in a world where beheading is readily available, is necessarily a degenerate way to execute, or even just plain wrong?

What do you think is the way to explain stoning as the preferred Mosaic punishment for about 39 sins?

In ordinary language the term is used both for pain used to extract something and for pain given without such an intent...We might as well just disambiguate those and admit that in ordinary language the imposition of severe pain except...

Doing so would presuppose away the entire ground I laid out as at least a potential avenue for difference: even though hanging someone for half a minute (and then cutting them down) outside of the context of punishment, (whether for information or for sadism or other reasons) counts as torture, I don't think that it counts as torture to hang someone by the neck until dead as a punishment for a capital offense. I think it is necessary to at least _leave room_ for there to be real difference of acts here, not closing off further debate on it. And your "disambiguate" method would leave no such room: both acts would, perforce, be torture. Do we really want to say hanging inherently is torture?

Don, is there a special reason you feel it necessary to call me names? Let's see, I am dissenter and a provocateur.

Now, now Tony someone who says; I fear that we wimpy Americans, shielded from physical pain almost our whole lives, might be somewhat imperfect judges of what is a reasonable stance about pain, should have a thicker skin. You have spent days claiming ED is infallible while announcing your dissent. Has your position changed, or have you found a novel loophole that reconciles the burning of heretics with current formal doctrine?Anyone familiar with popular entertainment and the savage dehumanization of our prison system knows moral fastidiousness regarding violence and cruelty isn't much of a cultural problem right now.

I am quite sure that other cultures don't feel the same way about moderate degrees of pain that we do. So, as I said above, this is an area where I would tread cautiously.

Fascinating. Do you often use other cultures as a reference point for issues like this? If anyone should tread cautiously it is you. Christianity has been bedeviled by moral cretins like Pinochet, who wield crude instruments of torture in one hand, while blasphemously waving a crucifix in the other. Your discourse too often sounds like the lawyerly parsing one expects from a defense counsel at the Hague. Why? Are you afraid of acknowledging sinful wrongs are a part of our religious patrimony? We are called to offer prophetic witness, not tendentious alibis for past evils.

Instead of an internet forum, pretend you were speaking before your family, friends and fellow communicants after Mass. I doubt you would employ the same reasoning and rhetoric as you have here. All done in the service of sparking a brilliant flash of enlightenment. See if when revisiting this thread, you don't find moments when it can occasionally read like an intellectual flirtation with darkness.

And your "disambiguate" method would leave no such room: both acts would, perforce, be torture. Do we really want to say hanging inherently is torture?

I'm just saying that the term is, in fact, used in both ways. If we want to restrict ourselves only to a technical sense, we should admit that this restricted sense is somewhat different from the ordinary language sense.

I don't think the ordinary language sense automatically encompasses hanging, because by your own account it's quite quick when done correctly even if a bit longer than beheading (if done correctly--beheading can be botched, done with a dull blade, etc.). The ordinary language sense has to do with a degree of severity and prolongation that wouldn't automatically include smoothly-performed hanging but that could include methods of execution simply qua methods of execution--e.g., burning.

My suspicion is that hanging was sometimes preferred as being less horrifying in its own way both to bystanders and to the person himself in prospect--it didn't involve taking the head off of the body. This point comes up in the movie "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness." Gladys Aylward is portrayed as accidentally witnessing an execution by beheading in the marketplace in China and running home crying to the elderly lady missionary she is helping. "To cut off his head!" she sobs. "Well," answers the old lady with some asperity, "we hang people in England."

It doesn't seem to me that the difference in pain and swiftness between them is all that great, even on your own account, if both are done as humanely as possible. I've read that the British empire sent "hanging trainers" about to the colonies to teach native hangmen how to execute criminals very swiftly by breaking the neck.

I still think the bottleneck is in a deep understanding of torture. People have been driven to suicide by the spiritual/psychological pain inflicted by well-meaning pastors. To me, this is a much higher form of torture than mere burning at the stake which is over and done with in a short time and most pastors are clueless that they are even torturing their advisee. Improper spiritual direction or improper discipling can lead to a Hell on earth where one is in a constant fear of displeasing God. One can torture without even the intent to inflict pain. Spiritual abuse is not well understood, but it is real torture and yet does not meet any of the criteria established for torture so far in the discussion. These people, mostly innocent, would gladly suffer burning as mild punishment by cmparison to the crushing torture they endure every day. There are horror stories on the Internet of discipling in some church groups gone horribly wrong leading to death.

We are far from a comprehensive understanding of torture.

Don Calocho,
Tony is trying to honestly grapple with the apparant contradiction between Leo X and JP II regarding torture. That the Church has made mistakes in disciplines is one thing, but, this can't happen in the teaching of faith and morals, so an answer must be sought. I see no straightforward solution. Do you have one?

The Chicken

But Chicken, the pastors who do that are not trying to cause the pain in question. That is more like an example of medical malpractice based on faulty medical information.

I don't think you're seriously going to say that no one intended to cause pain when burning someone to death. Yet obviously the pastors you are talking about did not intend to cause that kind of horrific psychic pain and did so only by accident, by bumbling. They did not know that it would happen.

Do you often use other cultures as a reference point for issues like this? If anyone should tread cautiously it is you. Christianity has been bedeviled by moral cretins like Pinochet . . .

There is nothing wrong with using other cultures "as a point of reference." To do so is to reference reality. Ironically, you seem to acknowledge this in referencing the culture of Chile in your reply.

Your discourse too often sounds like the lawyerly parsing one expects from a defense counsel at the Hague. Why? Are you afraid of acknowledging sinful wrongs are a part of our religious patrimony? We are called to offer prophetic witness, not tendentious alibis for past evils.

Far from a tendentious alibi, I have really appreciated Tony's thoughts on this. Some here don't seem to grasp that naming something 'torture' doesn't really advance the debate. I think the term is hopelessly ambiguous as normally used, and limiting it to certain acts for an attempt at clarity doesn't help because the term has too much emotional baggage to make that possible. I'm also very unsatisfied with defining torture in terms of physical pain. It seems obviously inadequate to me. I think Tony is doing a good job to describe how certain concepts map reality, or what we know to be true. To take this serious attempt to be a defense of past evils is quite misguided.

I think it would be a lot better if this debate we're continued without the term 'torture' altogether, and I don't see a reason why it couldn't be. After all, the issue isn't whether something is torture, it is whether something is morally justified or not. There isn't any way to escape this question, and as far as I can tell Tony is trying to tell us that.

This leads to the question: who decides if an act is torture? I assure you, bumbling or not, the spritually abused are suffering real torture, if only by virtue of the impossible demands from their own misguidance. St. Thomas calls this passive scandal of the weak, whereas burning, if it is torture, would be called active scandal. If spiritual abuse were akin to medical malpractice, burning would be executorial malpractice, no?

Doesn't the victim have some say in identifying if he is being abused or tortured? There were three crosses on Calvary, but only one person thought he was being unjustly punished. The second suffered it as a just punishment; the third counted it as the Father's will heedless of the shame. There may be intrinsic torture, but cannot love modify the act and transform it? Two of them did not complain about the torture. If torture is a form of scandal, St. Thomas points out that those perfected in love cannot be scandalized. A method of execution might be intrinsically, objectively torture, but to those who love, they, themselves are not tortured by it. I don't think the relationships between the objective and subjective dimensions of torture have been well analyzed.

The Chicken

If spiritual abuse were akin to medical malpractice, burning would be executorial malpractice, no?

Well, no, if we can take it that the former is unintentional. The latter obviously isn't. It's not as though the people burning people at the stake came from an alien race and didn't know what would be suffered by those burned. It's a lot easier to make genuine mistakes about psychological matters.

There is nothing wrong with using other cultures "as a point of reference."

I'm wary of multiculturalism coinciding with an appeal for tolerance as it usually means expanding our moral boundaries. Pinochet's rule was a repugnant reality, made possible by right-wing moral relativism and a flagrant betrayal of Church teaching. Do you agree, or do you find the moral ambiguity of it all too vexing?

I think the term is hopelessly ambiguous as normally used, and limiting it to certain acts for an attempt at clarity doesn't help because the term has too much emotional baggage to make that possible.

Can you give examples of the term being used in a way that is confusing to you. We ought to place ourselves in the middle of Christ's Passion when considering this issue. See if greater clarity doesn't result after that meditation.

That the Church has made mistakes in disciplines is one thing, but, this can't happen in the teaching of faith and morals, so an answer must be sought.

Masked Chicken - I'm afraid the resolution will not come in the form of a luminescent bridge joining Leo X, a man of his times, to JPII, a man anchored in eternity. Infallibility should have the nature of the latter, not the faded mark of the former, and we know now, there is one proposition in ED that fails this test. We know it in our hearts and to the core of our being.

That is the best I can give you.

I'm wary of multiculturalism coinciding with an appeal for tolerance as it usually means expanding our moral boundaries.

Me too. But using other cultures as an example isn't doing that, as you've admitted.

Pinochet's rule was a repugnant reality, made possible by right-wing moral relativism and a flagrant betrayal of Church teaching. Do you agree, or do you find the moral ambiguity of it all too vexing?

I would agree that the Pinochet government did things that were repugnant, obviously.

Can you give examples of the term being used in a way that is confusing to you. We ought to place ourselves in the middle of Christ's Passion when considering this issue. See if greater clarity doesn't result after that meditation.

I don't need to give examples when this whole debate began and continued on the understanding that no definitions would be given. Why was that? I understand the limited nature of Bill's intent, but I was never satisfied that limiting the discussion as he did really works when the term 'torture' is used, and indeed it keeps turning to practical questions that revolve around what it is. That is evidence enough that my skepticism that discussing something without any attempt to say what it is is warranted.

What I'm saying is that the definition of torture, so far, has been a political one and not a realistic one. In fact, I would say the Church has an adequate theology already in place if they would adapt it. If torture is defined as, "scandal producing or involving intense pain ," then the whole apparatus of the theology of scandal can be brought to bear. By this definition, there can be active and passive torture, but not unjust torture. Burning a heretic, being an act of justice and if not motivated by the desire to delight in the pain of another (which would make it scandal and, thus, torture) would then not be seen as torture, but merely a defective way to put a man to death. Then, unintended abuse, if caused by incompetence or negeligence would be passive torture.

The Chicken

Mark - what can other cultures teach us about "moderate degrees of pain" and which ones do you recommend we learn from?

It seems odd that you would jump in and criticize folks for discussing torture, a term you describe as vague and "emotionally loaded", yet refuse to offer any defintion of your own.

This thread started out as an attempt to explore why a people and Church sealed by the sign of the Cross could, after 12 centuries, sanction and apply some of the same brutal methods previously used against their spiritual ancestors, to their religious opponents. The consensus holds burning heretics to the stake to be a moral abomination. Yet, there is much tensison caused by a papal bull which included 11 words defending the punishment as the will of the Spirit. Christian history includes shameful episodes of inexplicable atrocities committed in His name and so there are strained attempts to offer a comforting context. At this point we should be very open to the fact there isn't any.

I'm afraid the resolution will not come in the form of a luminescent bridge joining Leo X, a man of his times, to JPII, a man anchored in eternity. Infallibility should have the nature of the latter, not the faded mark of the former, and we know now, there is one proposition in ED that fails this test. We know it in our hearts and to the core of our being.

As I said above, the rejection of Leo’s teaching on the burning of heretics is predicated on the rejection other dogmas of the Catholic Church. For example, consider the first two lines of the dogmatic Athanasian Creed:

1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; 2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish for eternity. [emphasis added]

Does anyone believe this today? Does Don Colacho? Does Bill Luse? Did JPII? I see plenty of reasons to doubt it across the board. And if I’m right, on what grounds can we consider the church which does believe this doctrine to be essentially the same as one that doesn’t? Now if the dogma is true, wouldn’t the denial of it be intrinsically wicked? And if it’s false, how is the Church not thereby proven to have been a lie? Moreover, wouldn't the acceptance of such a terrible doctrine tend to lead one to consider the burning of an occasional heretic to be nothing to get worked up over?

I’m just laying out the facts. Don’t shoot the messenger.

What I'm saying is that the definition of torture, so far, has been a political one and not a realistic one.

The Masked One nails it.

Mark - what can other cultures teach us about "moderate degrees of pain" and which ones do you recommend we learn from?

You're telling this story. I've already said I don't think that defining torture in terms of pain is helpful at all. Using examples has the virtue of decreasing the abstraction. I'd recommend, as many others have, of learning from Nazi Germany, among others. You don't? You seem not to realize the difference between accepting a culture as a norm (which no one here has, or is foolish enough to do,) and of learning from real-world examples, including negative ones.

It seems odd that you would jump in and criticize folks for discussing torture, a term you describe as vague and "emotionally loaded", yet refuse to offer any defintion of your own.

I didn't just jump in. I was assured that it was not necessary to try to even describe what it was, though I was always doubtful. I don't think the term is useful for reasons I've already said.

As far as a definition, I think the best we'll be able to do is describe the nature of the line we cannot cross. There is a line, what is the line? Bill has said the line is cruelty, I'd say the line is better stated as one of dignity, where cruelty often plays a role, but not necessarily. I think that is highly problematic to define public evils primarily in terms of an actors intents or other psychological factors.

This thread started out as an attempt to explore why a people and Church sealed by the sign of the Cross could, after 12 centuries, sanction and apply some of the same brutal methods previously used against their spiritual ancestors, to their religious opponents. The consensus holds burning heretics to the stake to be a moral abomination. Yet, there is much tensison caused by a papal bull which included 11 words defending the punishment as the will of the Spirit. Christian history includes shameful episodes of inexplicable atrocities committed in His name and so there are strained attempts to offer a comforting context. At this point we should be very open to the fact there isn't any.

I'm well aware of how it started out, and I'm well aware how it has strayed from those limits at various points, as now.

I should have said I wasn't defining 'torture,' but the line that matters in permissibility of actions generally, which is the only real line I think can be applied in many of the cases relevant to the debate.

Does anyone believe this today? Does Don Colacho? Does Bill Luse? Did JPII?

Well, that's a very interesting question, George. Did St. Thomas Aquinas believe it? Yes, _of course_ he did. Except, when he didn't, that is. St. Thomas explicitly taught that a person (even though not baptized, and even though not raised knowing Christianity in any explicit way at all), if, when he reached the age of reason, he "willed a due end" in conformity with God, then as of that moment God would grant him sanctifying grace. At that moment, he was free of original sin, and if he died right after, he would go to heaven, SAVED. This is in the Summa Theologica. So, what is St. Thomas teaching? Why, that the requirements "to be saved" allowed situations where explicit knowledge of Catholicism was impossible: but not impossible were acts that were consistent with faith in God, and consistent with acceptance of Catholicism, but not intrinsically requiring, in every case, actual explicit faith in the Catholic Church. St. Thomas was neither rejecting the quotes you set forth, nor permitting those points to be understood in such a narrow and literal fashion that abominably guaranteed that all peoples before Christianity were damned of necessity. That, therefore, the points you made are true, but also have caveats, distinctions, and nuances. If you reject those, you reject the Catholicism that gave rise to them.

Mark, you should realize that Don seems more interested in telling us that discussing this issue is, of itself, degrading behavior, than in explaining anything using an argument that would convince someone other than his ideological clone. I wouldn't hold out hope of a useful reply from that direction.

I think that anything that can be usefully said in advancing the understanding of what is wrong about torture can be said using the root concepts that lie within torture, to get around the confusion and emotional baggage that the word carries. To that extent, I agree with you, Mark. Yet we cannot leave off using the term altogether: we must always keep in mind that the term is used to signify a concept, a collected universal that is, at least conventionally, recognized to be a collection of acts having relationship to each other. The conventions might be defective, but they still are the origin of how we speak about these matters. We cannot separate ourselves from that completely.

Masked Chicken, I think that although torture would always be a matter for scandal, it is distinct from scandal generically: there are plenty of things that ALSO cause scandal that are not in the least bit connected to torture. Consequently, there is most likely something specific to torture as a sub-class of "that which may cause scandal" that sets it off separately. Indeed, almost every sin that can be observed (in its external manifestation) can be a cause of scandal. We do not simply subsume every sin under the category "causes scandal" and leave it at that, we distinguish them by species - adultery, immodesty, abortion, jazz music...(caught you, didn't I?)

Also, the fact that a sinful act may cause scandal to one person and not scandal to another does not in any way constitute the species of the act. The act takes its nature from, especially, the object of the act, by which the act is usually named. Although torture causes scandal, its specific object seems to be pain imposed in a peculiar excess. I say peculiar, because it is not merely that the pain is excessive to the proportionate rational need: if a parent decides that 3 wallops to the bottom of the disobedient child is the punishment to be given, but 1 is more suited, the excess does not constitute torture even though the parent is wrong. I would submit (and I know some people would object) that even if the reason the parent is wrong is due to (a) anger misguiding judgment, and even (b) anger due to some hurt feelings, it is STILL the case that 3 wallops don't constitute torture. It is, rather, that the degree of pain intended is in a special way unsuited to the very constitutive make-up of a human being. The issue is, how to identify that "unsuitedness" that is not too narrow, and not too broad.

Lydia, do you think that hanging is (a) just a bad way to do capital punishment, or (b) intrinsically wrong because it exceeds the pain needed for putting someone to death?

I might agree that hanging might be a bad way to do it, in many circumstances. But I don't think I can see clear to the idea that the very fact of it causing pain unneeded in order to cause death makes it automatically wrong.

For one thing, that would get us into a (probably insoluble) dilemma of subjectivism: If a particular criminal would rather be put to death than be put in prison for life, is the "pain and suffering" of a life sentence, for him, and immoral way to punish him, precisely because it is more painful that that necessary to put him to death?

But even aside from that, it would make an unnecessary moral tangle out of a multiple of punishments, of which death was the last. It would make it intrinsically wrong, for example, to impose a sentence of a bread and water diet for 1 day, and THEN death, because it imposes more suffering that than needed merely to put the person to death. But nobody thinks that imposing a bread and water diet for 1 day (alone) can possibly be wrong because it is _torture_.

Far more difficult than these, is the task of explaining the Mosaic preferred punishment of stoning, which is certainly very painful, (and shameful), and probably lasts for more than a mere few dozen seconds of physical awareness of pain. Some people would be perfectly willing to say that we don't need to "explain" this, it was the "nasty OLD Testament", which we no longer go by. I would differ on many grounds, but the simplest is this: many of these are the same people who say that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong and we shouldn't follow the Old Testament in support of that nasty old habit. I don't have any hankering to return to stoning, but simply assuming that it was intrinsically wrong because it was torture is a really dangerous way to proceed in understanding God's Word. Just as assuming that Abraham was doing something intrinsically wrong in trying to kill innocent Isaac would be a very faulty way of understanding Abraham.

The death penalty is reaffirmed in the New Testament, Tony. "The sword" is the term used there.

If hanging, done right (breaking the neck instantly), is no more painful than I think it is, it isn't wrong because inflicting that degree of pain for that short of a time isn't that big of a deal. I never said anything about inflicting "more pain than necessary to bring about death." I think you're making a bigger deal than is reasonable about the alleged differences between hanging and beheading.

Yeah, stoning is a problem. There are several things I don't know what to do about in the Old Testament. I wouldn't even start with stoning. I would start with God's alleged orders to put to the sword all the women and children down to the newborn infants in certain populations. Stoning as a method of execution can go into the mix. I'm "fazed" enough by a couple of other things that worries about stoning aren't going to faze me much more. I'm even more certain that cutting babies' throats is intrinsically wrong than I am that stoning an adulterer to death is intrinsically wrong.

Do you think it would be fine for us to start stoning criminals? Would it be right? Would you do it?

And it is easy to find morally wrenching horror stories in the Old Testament. That's fine if (returning to my original request for the 10th time) one can provide evidence from Christ's own living witness, or in His commandments to His disciples, or in the practice of the early Christians, that these practices - quite deliberately cruel means of execution - would be in accord with those commandments, and thus not against the Spirit.

And no, hanging is not "a bad way to do capital punishment", nor is it intrinsically wrong.

Tony,

My definition of torture is scandal producing or inflicting pain (re-read what I wrote). It means there are two components: scandal and pain. Your objection was not to the complete definition.

The Chicken

Tony, St. Thomas never taught any of those things. It’s not in the Summa. I really don’t know where you’re coming up with this stuff.

If hanging, done right (breaking the neck instantly), is no more painful than I think it is, it isn't wrong because inflicting that degree of pain for that short of a time isn't that big of a deal.

Lydia, the last time this topic came up, I read up some on hanging. It turns out that there are roughly 3 "methods" of hanging: short drop, medium drop, and long drop. It is only with the long drop that the broken neck and virtually instantaneous death is highly probable.

With the short (or no) drop, the person may die by strangulation, but actually it is more common that they die by lack of blood to the brain because the rope cuts off carotid artery and jugular vein. In the latter case, unconsciousness is caused as quickly as a few seconds, on up to a minute generally, though apparently in rare cases it takes as long as 3 minutes.

It is not the case that the long drop method is the "normal" method around the world - it only became common after 1850 with some studies of the mechanics and stuff. Short and mid drops are still used in various places, apparently.

I was not making the assumption that the hanging would result in a broken neck, since throughout most of history that was a less common result. Yes, if a hanging breaks the neck instantly, then the amount of pain perceived will be comparable to that of beheading, and the difference will be negligible. I was allowing for other methods of hanging.

Chicken, I guess I did not really understand your definition. Doesn't the "scandal producing" have to be on some rational basis? In other words, the wrongness of there being scandal resulting from some visible act is only a sin in the agent if the scandal results from some kind of reasonable response in the one being scandalized. If the person who takes scandal does so because he is being irrational, then the one whose action is the instigator of the scandal has not committed any sin.

But this means that "scandal producing" has to reflect a rational basis. And that means that there has to be some principle upon which a person can legitimately say "this act of inducing pain is somehow out of order" on that rational basis, before you can call it "scandal producing". There has to be a measuring rod independent of whether scandal happens.

Tony, St. Thomas never taught any of those things. It’s not in the Summa. I really don’t know where you’re coming up with this stuff.

Wow, that's breathtakingly direct. What you probably meant to say, George, is that you never read any of those things in the Summa. But then, maybe you just didn't read the right parts like I have. Please go and read I-II (Prima Secundae), Q. 89, and then direct your attention to article 6. You will find in the respondeo this direct quote, speaking of the moment when a child reaches the age of reason:

And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin:

Pretty much what I said he said. It is clear from the context of the question that St. Thomas can only be speaking of someone who has not been baptized, and further that he is speaking generically, so that the conclusion applies just as well to someone who was born in deepest Africa 1000 years before Abraham and could not possibly have heard of Christ. So, if the person died right after that "remission of original sin" he would go straight to heaven, saved, without ever receiving Christianity outwardly.

Of course, Abraham and all the Patriarchs are accounted saved, even though they weren't baptized either. This was taught be ALL of the Fathers and Doctors. I hope that doesn't create any problem for your notion of the extent of "the saved".

I would start with God's alleged orders to put to the sword all the women and children down to the newborn infants in certain populations... I'm even more certain that cutting babies' throats is intrinsically wrong than I am that stoning an adulterer to death is intrinsically wrong.

Now that's odd, Lydia, because I had sort of thought that all of the cases of God telling people to kill others in the Old Testament were capable of being resolved in the same way that Abraham & Isaac's case is resolved. (And Abraham's is NOT resolved by saying God stopped him before he could actually kill Isaac. If it was intrinsically wrong in spite of the fact that God told him to do it, then Abraham should not have tried to kill Isaac, because he should have known that no true God could command something intrinsically evil, and thus the command must have come from a demonic counterfeit.)

No, the solution in Abraham's case is that God is the author and master of every life: it BELONGS to God to determine, not only how long a person shall live, but how he shall cease to live. When an illness or an accident kills a baby, it only happens on account of God permitting it - that is universally recognized. But since the event occurs without any other intelligent agent willing it, it is really necessary to say that God is, Himself, the cause of the 'accident' or illness just as much as if He made it happen by direct action: it happens because God wills that it happens. His sovereignty is absolute. But if God, within His goodness, can use natural instrumental means to effect the death of a baby, then He can also use human instruments for the same end. He can do either or both of these because, unlike us, HE OWNS that baby's life, every single instant of it, and He can will that it should cease as of this very moment without "taking away" anything that doesn't belong to Him. Thus, when God ordered Abraham to kill Isaac, God was instructing Abraham to become the human instrument in God's own hands to bring about a death that God rightly could have caused in any of 1000 ways, all within His perfect goodness. Well, if that applies to innocent Isaac, it can equally apply to all the Canaanite babies and children. God could, and did, have the perfect right to shorten their lives by means of the Israelites' swords, just as much as by an earthquake.

Stoning might be a little harder, I don't know: God clearly was not establishing a GENERIC AND UNIVERSAL law, when he told the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. But He appears to have been forming Law in the regimes of rules and punishments under what is called "Mosaic Law". Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that He was setting out something that is more aligned with the principles of justice as they pertain to human nature. I would be uncomfortable making the claim that "well, since God can take anyone's life in any manner that He decides", He can do it by telling us to stone adulterers as the justification in Leviticus. This might possibly be valid, but it certainly would have no application outside of Judaism, and I doubt that it is supposed to operate even within Judaism as a special case that only works specifically because "God said" and for no other reason. Given the freedom God had to establish the Mosaic Law, it seems more than a little troubling to suppose that the Author of the 10 Commandments was unable to cause Moses to produce a law of punishment that stayed within the bounds of the natural moral law, and then allowed such a punishment to be applied to about 30 different crimes.

But if God, within His goodness, can use natural instrumental means to effect the death of a baby, then He can also use human instruments for the same end.

That's the proposition I disagree with. But I'm quite sure that Bill doesn't want this thread to go into a discussion of that.

Hell, I've given up trying to contain the direction.

I will say that a baby's dying by natural calamity and being murdered at the hands of a fellow human are two different things.

Did Tony answer the question about stoning: Would it be right? Would you do it?

Tony,

Scandal is the sin of one which causes another to sin. Now, sin is inherently unjust and, therefore,unreasonable, just as any act of torture is unreasonable. Sin is not enough for scandal to be torture, because fornication can be scandelous if it proceeds from seduction, but throw pain into the mix and one gets the deliberate, disordered infliction of pain because of the sin of another who acts unjustly. That sin causes the other person to sin by revealing something he shouldn't or make a false statement, or depair of life. There are various species of scandal in the classification of St. Thomas, so if this definition is useful, there should be several species of torture. Thus, while burning produces pain, if it is ever a true act of justice (debatable, but possibly), then, just in that situation, it is not torture. If one takes sinful delight and burns someone, it is torture. Thus, Pope Leo might be referring only to just burning. If this definition is useful, then there may even be a prudential range of opinion on when sinful delight takes place, so Bill's two Popes's opinions might both be tolerated

Bill,

Hope this comment is in bounds.

Hi Lydia,

Here's my take on "Biblical atrocities", for what it's worth:

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/whybelieve6.html#bible-atrocities

I hope it resolves some of your difficulties, as the issue troubled me for many years.

Vincent,

The simplest response to the "atrocities" is, as you pointed out, to point out how unspeakably evil they were. Incest, beastiality, child sacrifice by fire. The modern mind cannot conceive of such a depraved society. If exposed to it, I dare say modern American would not advocate anything different than the Old Testament for handling it. In fact, I think the violence that would be unleashed on that cult (if the state wouldn't prosecute them) would greatly exceed what the Israelites meted out.

I will say that a baby's dying by natural calamity and being murdered at the hands of a fellow human are two different things.

Bill, is that a lot like Isaac's being (nearly) murdered at the hands of Abraham?

Murder happens when a human being takes a life that doesn't belong to him, takes a life unjustly, where it is unjust because it doesn't belong to him. That's what happens externally. What happens in the soul of the murderer is the person willing, as the object of the act, to kill even though he knows he has no right to take this life. Thus, the murderer and the executioner may make the same external act of killing, but inwardly their souls are different because the object of the act is different: the executioner's object is to kill a person he has the _right and duty_ to kill. Abraham had the duty to kill Isaac, a duty given to him by one who DOES have the right to take Isaac's life, and Who had the right to command that Abraham act as instrument thereof. Therefore, it is wrong to speak of the object of Abraham's act as "taking a life that he has no right to take." Abraham was no murderer. I fail to see why that rationale doesn't apply to the Canaanites.

I suppose, Lydia, you would object to the above by denying that God had the right to command Abraham to become the agent of taking Isaac's life, presumably because being such an agent is contrary to human nature?

That sin causes the other person to sin by revealing something he shouldn't or make a false statement, or depair of life.

If I understand you, Chicken, I would add "or despair of hope in God's mercy" as an even graver form of scandal.

But this is not enough: in order for imposing pain to be reasonable, one must have an independent scale by which to measure whether the pain imposed is reasonable, because you cannot know for sure, beforehand, whether imposing a punishment of X severity will lead the recipient to sin. It must be that "going too far" in degree of pain is a sin because it can be expected to cause the sin in another, and not merely be because it actually did in this case, but not actually a sin in another case because the same degree of pain failed to cause the recipient to sin.

That independent scale of what it means to "go too far" is the crux of the matter.

Did Tony answer the question about stoning: Would it be right? Would you do it?

Bill, I have tried to avoid drawing a conclusion about this. It is clearly more painful than hanging, and probably a lot less painful than burning to death. I view hanging not to be torture.

Would I do it? If I were in ancient Israel, and I heard Moses tell people that this is how we deal with murderers, I probably would have. Not today, of course, but today the circumstances are so different that saying "No, I wouldn't do it today" is not all that enlightening, is it? I wouldn't elect to become an executioner, either. Would you?

Pretty much what I said he said.

No, not pretty much what you said.

Here’s what St. Thomas said:

And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin:

And here’s what you said he said:

St. Thomas explicitly taught that a person (even though not baptized, and even though not raised knowing Christianity in any explicit way at all), if, when he reached the age of reason, he "willed a due end" in conformity with God, then as of that moment God would grant him sanctifying grace. At that moment, he was free of original sin, and if he died right after, he would go to heaven, SAVED. […] So, what is St. Thomas teaching? Why, that the requirements "to be saved" allowed situations where explicit knowledge of Catholicism was impossible: but not impossible were acts that were consistent with faith in God, and consistent with acceptance of Catholicism, but not intrinsically requiring, in every case, actual explicit faith in the Catholic Church.

Now I ask you:

Where does Thomas say that God will grant him sanctifying grace or the remission of original sin AT THAT MOMENT?

Where does he say that if he died right after, he would go to heaven, and be saved?

Where does he say that the requirements to be saved allowed situations where explicit knowledge of Catholicism was impossible?

And where, pray tell, does he say that explicit faith in the Catholic Church is not required?


This is why I said that Thomas didn’t say any of these things, and I was right. All the things you claimed he said were merely (heterodox) inferences that you, for some reason, were pleased to draw from what he actually said. The problem is that you are attempting to understand theology without first subjecting yourself to the infallible doctrine of the popes. Until you are willing to do the latter, who should not attempt the former.

What did St. Thomas really mean by that teaching? Well, as he quotes the prophet Zachariah speaking the word of God at the end of the Article “Turn to me… and I will turn to you.” If a man turns to God, God will turn to him. It simply means that if a man disposes himself to receive sanctifying grace, he will, by the grace of God, surely learn the Catholic faith and be baptized; for these are the only means to receive it.



George, jump in a lake. That article was pointed out to me by one of the most careful Thomists I have ever run into (and I have run into a lot). It clearly meant to him exactly what I pulled out of it: the remission of original sin implied in

he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin

is intended to mean right there, at that very moment. The passage makes no sense without the grace being conferred at that moment. Read it again and see if he could have meant "will...receive" down the road a few years. The answer is, no way, the rest of the article depends on there being no delay.

Further, the Catholic Church always and everywhere has taught that there is only one way to receive the remission of original sin, that is by sanctifying grace. There is no other. To be relieved of the specific defect we receive through Adam is, EXACTLY, no other than to receive a share in God's own life, which is the content of the expression "sanctifying grace". Therefore, yes, St. Thomas was in fact teaching that at that moment you receive sanctifying grace.

St. Thomas and all of the scholastics, and indeed all of the Fathers and Doctors, agree that a person in God's grace, if he die in God's grace, goes to heaven. If you want to debate whether the person would go immediately instead of by way of purgatory, it is totally irrelevant because either way, such a person is saved.

I won't take this matter up again, as it is a complete side-track from the main issue. I suggest you show that passage to any priest or theologian capable of reading St. Thomas, and see if he concludes that Thomas was saying what I expressed. There is no reason to argue it out in THIS combox.

I wouldn't elect to become an executioner, either. Would you?

Not as a life's work. It isn't my calling. :-) But in an individual case, certainly I might, assuming the method of execution to be within the bounds of what I consider to be sufficiently humane. I can imagine circumstances in which I would agree to shoot a heinous criminal, duly convicted and sentenced, in the back of the head.

It must be that "going too far" in degree of pain is a sin because it can be expected to cause the sin in another, and not merely be because it actually did in this case, but not actually a sin in another case because the same degree of pain failed to cause the recipient to sin.

There are three things that affect the gravity of a sin: intention, environment, and the act. Since environment and intention are subjective influences, the scale is not objective, except (sometimes) with regard to act. Thus, one can seduce a virile male, but not a eunich. Likewise, one can torture someone with sensitive skin, but the same torture would have no effect on someone with leprosy, who has no nerve receptors left. There are objectively torturous act, where the sin resides, inherently, in the act, but there are some acts which are so modified by environment and intention (include defects in knowledge in this) that the act, which would be torture for some, is not torture for others or ceases to reach a level of torture in a particular circumstance. This neatly solves the problem in that there are some cases of inherently torturous acts, but leaves the discernment of other acts to a tribunal, as it should. Torture is a sin. I do see why you would not think that it inherits the same conditions as modify other sins.

St. Thomas in the Summa (Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 43) defines scandal as:

I answer that, As Jerome observes the Greek skandalon may be rendered offense, downfall, or a stumbling against something. For when a body, while moving along a path, meets with an obstacle, it may happen to stumble against it, and be disposed to fall down: such an obstacle is a skandalon.

In like manner, while going along the spiritual way, a man may be disposed to a spiritual downfall by another's word or deed, in so far, to wit, as one man by his injunction, inducement or example, moves another to sin; and this is scandal properly so called.

Now nothing by its very nature disposes a man to spiritual downfall, except that which has some lack of rectitude, since what is perfectly right, secures man against a fall, instead of conducing to his downfall. Scandal is, therefore, fittingly defined as "something less rightly done or said, that occasions another's spiritual downfall."

In an objection in article one, he explains what I am trying to say:

Reply to Objection 4. Another's words or deed may be the cause of another's sin in two ways, directly and accidentally. Directly, when a man either intends, by his evil word or deed, to lead another man into sin, or, if he does not so intend, when his deed is of such a nature as to lead another into sin: for instance, when a man publicly commits a sin or does something that has an appearance of sin. On this case he that does such an act does, properly speaking, afford an occasion of another's spiritual downfall, wherefore his act is called "active scandal." One man's word or deed is the accidental cause of another's sin, when he neither intends to lead him into sin, nor does what is of a nature to lead him into sin, and yet this other one, through being ill-disposed, is led into sin, for instance, into envy of another's good, and then he who does this righteous act, does not, so far as he is concerned, afford an occasion of the other's downfall, but it is this other one who takes the occasion according to Romans 7:8: "Sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." Wherefore this is "passive," without "active scandal," since he that acts rightly does not, for his own part, afford the occasion of the other's downfall. Sometimes therefore it happens that there is active scandal in the one together with passive scandal in the other, as when one commits a sin being induced thereto by another; sometimes there is active without passive scandal, for instance when one, by word or deed, provokes another to sin, and the latter does not consent; and sometimes there is passive without active scandal, as we have already said.

Since causing unjust pain is active scandal, it becomes torture either by the nature of the act, of by virtue of the passive scandal caused in the other person.

Scandal does admit of degrees, just as most sins do. Note, an act may only appear scandalous to the receiver if he does not understand the context. As St. Thomas points out in discussing whether or not heretics ought to be tolerated (II II Q. 11 art. 3):

On the contrary, The Apostle says (Titus 3:10-11): "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted."

I answer that, With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.

On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but "after the first and second admonition," as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death. For Jerome commenting on Galatians 5:9, "A little leaven," says: "Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but one spark in Alexandria, but as that spark was not at once put out, the whole earth was laid waste by its flame."

St. Thomas counts putting a heretic to death (after admonition) to be an act of justice. An act of justice, properly done, cannot be sinful and hence, cannot be torture, even if it may appear so to the receiver. A defect in the administration of justice can be of such a gravity as to be sinful. Thus, if burning is a defective method of justice, it becomes sinful because of the pain inflicted on the other (passive torture) or the joy in the pain of the other (active torture) and hence scandalous. The question is, how much pain passes the barrier of sin? That depends on the individual experiencing the pain and must be decided in a tribunal. Thus, burning is not, necessarily, inherently torture, but may be torture in certain cases. The matter should be settled before the administration of the burning so that if it is torture for that individual, another method may be substituted. For instance, burning may not be torture to Adrian Monk, but poisoning that induces vomiting might be.

I contend that physical pain is not the only way to torture someone. Psychological pain is real pain and can be both worse and ongoing. If these can be called torture, then there must be some objective and some subjective elements in deciding whether or not different psychologically-induced pain can be called torture.

I am using the scandal angle because there is no exact theology of torture on the books as far as I know and scandal comes as close as I can find as a genus. If it works, then one can import a lot of clarification and classes.

The Chicken

P. S. I think this post changes the subject a bit. Bill - am I still within bounds?

Tony, I can see how someone could draw the inferences you and your “careful” Thomist friend have. I mean, just considering the sentence on its own, I would consider him to be saying the same thing as you. However, we must judge all things in the light of Catholic doctrine. For instance, if we were to say that original sin is remitted by simply turning toward God, then we would have to conclude that baptism does not remit the original sin of catechumens. For if original sin is remitted by turning to God, and catechumens by seeking to enter the Church have turned to God, then the original sin of catechumens is remitted simply by the fact they are catechumens. Therefore, their eventual baptism will not effect the remission of original sin, since there would be no longer any original sin left to remit. But this is absurd, because it is of faith that the principle effect of baptism is the remission of original sin. Therefore, unless you want to say that Thomas was in error, you have to interpret his words to mean something like I said they mean.

You see how it works?


Btw, I know you didn’t mean it when you said, “Jump in a lake.”

Btw, I know you didn’t mean it when you said, “Jump in a lake.”

Seems like a veiled reference to baptism to me : )

What does this ex ecclesia nulla salus matter have to do with the topic of Bill's post?

The Chicken

Chicken, it has nothing to do with it, that's why I said I would no longer get into that issue here. Sorry I brought it up. Fortunately, I would never say, for example, that original sin is remitted by simply turning toward God,, and none of the worries George had would apply anyway.

I can imagine circumstances in which I would agree to shoot a heinous criminal, duly convicted and sentenced, in the back of the head.

So can I - if law and order broke down, for example. I can also imagine hanging someone in that circumstance, as well, since I don't believe hanging is torture, not even close. I would also crawl off my death bed to do before I let a wife and mother perform a needed execution merely because nobody else had stepped up to the plate.

since I don't believe hanging is torture, not even close.

Neither do I, not even if we use "torture" in the ordinary-language rather than the technical sense. It even looks to me like the shorter-drop examples that you discussed above would be within the pale.

What does this ex ecclesia nulla salus matter have to do with the topic of Bill's post?

Well, it does have something to do with it if you consider it with respect to my Athanasian-Creed excerpt above. But then Tony got me all side-tracked with his theories on inhabitants of the pre-Abrahamic Congo and his misreading of the Summa, so the logic of the connection was partially obscured.

It was not my intention to defend the EENS doctrine on this thread. I merely wanted to introduce it as a hypothetical doctrine: meaning that assuming it were accepted as true would naturally lead to things like burning heretics; whereas rejecting it would naturally lead to things like -- oh, I don’t know -- kissing Korans.

Now I there are a lot of people who are against koran-kissing. I would just like to ask them, "Well, how do you feel about burning heretics?" -- because I think we're dealing with an either/or situation here.

I'm going to risk Bill's wrath and perhaps start a flame war, apropos the subject matter. George R. is the last person who should be anxious to start burning heretics, seeing as how he is determined to spit on the Ring of the Fisherman rather than treat it's owner with any respect.

More and more, I get the sense that George R. is an *agent provocateur*, out to discredit the Church by pretending to defend discreditable episodes in her remote past.

He writes: "Catholics in 1520 would have read Leo's [approval of burning at the stake] and would have said, 'Well, duh.' ... Leo X was not teaching anything the entire Catholic Church did not already believe – and if anyone wishes to gainsay me on this point, let him produce any evidence of Catholic dissent on the issue. Furthermore, we know that the teaching in question was the teaching of the Church, since the practice contain[ed] therein had been conceived of, advocated, promoted, and already openly employed by the Church for centuries. In other words, we know that the Church taught that burning heretics was not immoral simply by the fact that she burnt heretics."

I mean, c'mon. Stuff like this would easily fit into an anti-Catholic rant by some raging atheist. And I'm supposed to believe that, in this thread, George R. is *defending* Catholicism?

Tony - I'm curious what you'd say about the burning of Thomas Cranmer.

Did he knowingly spread heresy? Did he more or less deserve it?

George R. isn't defending Catholicism against anti-Catholics. He's defending burning heretics to his fellow Catholics on the basis of their and his shared respect for Catholic tradition and, in the course of doing that, hinting that sedevacantism is correct.

Lydia - had to look up sedevacantism - 'cause I'd never heard of it before.

Fascinating.

So if George R. is on the up & up here, he really does think that he's "more Catholic than the Pope."

Steve, I know only a smattering about Cranmer. Certainly not enough for me to speak about him as a particular case. Is there a reason his case is distinct for one burned as a heretic? I suppose, as a bishop, he should have been one of whom one might have said that he really does know what the Church taught before Luther & his crowd came along. But I know absolutely nothing at all about the manner in which he came to cease to accept what the Church taught, so I really can't say what went on.

Certainly, I think Cranmer taught heresy. I have a suspicion, though no more than that, that his early movement of thought was based more on politics than on anything theological. Was his eventual defiance of Roman thought ever noted for any kind of deep theological or Scriptural penetration?

Abraham was no murderer.

Well, it's hard to be a murderer if you didn't kill anyone. But of course there still remain those other instances. That's why I asked earlier that people stay away from the Old Testament massacres. We can't reconcile them with current teaching that condemns annihilation of the innocent. The only people today who use the "God commanded it" rationale are terrorists and paranoid schizophrenics. If there were anything in your Christian moral intuition telling you that Jesus would not approve such methods as burning and stoning, would in fact rebuke us for considering them, then I assume you would give it precedence over anything that came before. That's also why I asked George (or anyone) for evidence that barbarous methods of executing heretics formed any part of the first thousand years of Christian history (and by history I mean practices deriving from the teaching authority of the Church, from Christ onward.)

Bill, I have tried to avoid drawing a conclusion about this. [re stoning, or burning]

Well, you can't be forced to do so. I'm just not sure what you're trying to protect by not drawing one. The infallibility of #33 in Leo's bull? The sensitivities of long-dead Israelis who were told by Moses to stone adulteresses? And what would Benedict the XVI (yes, George, he's a real pope) say today were we to stone and burn our death row prisoners? It seems we have a choice to make.

If I were in ancient Israel, and I heard Moses tell people that this is how we deal with murderers, I probably would have. Not today, of course, but today the circumstances are so different that saying "No, I wouldn't do it today" is not all that enlightening, is it?

Actually it is. Let me take a wild guess: the circumstance that would prevent you from doing it today, the only circumstance that matters, is that you think it would be wrong to subject a human being to such agony, let alone be pointed to as the man who put the torch to the faggots. You would not want that responsibility on your conscience because you're not sure your conscience could bear it. (Keep in mind I'm just guessing.)

I wouldn't elect to become an executioner, either. Would you?

I'm not sure what squeamishness has to do with it, but I don't like killing animals, either. Forthrightly, though, I would have no trouble putting Khalid Sheik Mohammed (or anyone who harmed my family) to death by burning, stoning, or slowly impaling his innards with red hot pokers, and doing it myself...except for the fact that I believe it forbidden by God.

Chicken, if I may say so, your method of figuring out what torture is seems just another way of saying we can't figure out what it is. To which I say phooey. Yes, you're still in bounds.

Steve - And I'm supposed to believe that, in this thread, George R. is *defending* Catholicism?

You're supposed to believe that George believes that he's defending Catholicism.

what you'd say about the burning of Thomas Cranmer. Did he knowingly spread heresy?

Yes, he knowingly spread it, but in good conscience (I must presume). He waffled when Bloody Mary came to the throne, but finally saw More's logic and held his own hand to the fire, saying, "This hand hath offended," and died bravely. He also tried to save More from the executioner during the later interrogations, but wasn't smart enough and failed. But he tried, and lived long enough to write a beautiful prayer book, which some of us Catholics still use today. No, he shouldn't have been burned.

Thomas Cranmer did not spread heresy. He rightly dissented from the errors of Rome. To execute him was a tremendous evil, as was the execution of Hooper and Ridley. All three of the Oxford martyrs were skillful and acute theologians, who deserved far better than they got from their theological inferiors. There's no justifying their murders.

Michael, the only thing I know about Cranmer is what is in the Wiki article that Steve linked. Based on that, which is clearly written by a Cranmer supporter, it is rather obvious that Cranmer's early ideas on "reform" were far more driven by politics and Henry's "need" for a son than anything driving him to dissent with Rome as such. His reforms all seemed to come out of non-theological needs. Why would that be, if he were 100 % sincere in rejecting Rome's "errors" and an "acute theologian."

Bill, I submit that any person with Cranmer's education should realistically know of the Catholic's obligation to allow his conscience be developed in accordance with Christ's Word and the Teaching Church He left behind, saying "he who hears you hears Me". At least in the early stages of being a "reformer", Cranmer should have been well aware that what he was doing was being dishonest with respect to the obligation to form his conscience properly, and as a result he was out of line is speaking out on so-called problems that already had good answers in the Church, and out of line in impatience in speaking out "to the simple" on scholarly matters that had yet to be resolved but could still be resolved by further study. A good Catholic cannot pass into being a formal heretic without willing to adhere to things that he knows the Church herself says are error, and interiorly he cannot do so without deciding to set himself up as in judgment on the Church's teaching, ie with pride. I don't believe that it is fully just to call this "sincere" and "in good conscience".

That's why I asked earlier that people stay away from the Old Testament massacres. We can't reconcile them with current teaching that condemns annihilation of the innocent.

But that's not how the Church Fathers thought that the Old Testament ought to be dealt with. St. Augustine's "On Christian Doctrine" for example does not go along with this approach: the Old Testament prepares and informs the New, and the New grows out of and explains the Old (without eradicating one single iota of it). More generally, the inerrancy standard for Biblical interpretation (held by both Catholics and Protestants) is pretty uncomfortable with the idea that the Old Testament can be thought of as telling us something erroneously about God, but more than that, both parts are necessary to each other to understand either properly.

If there were anything in your Christian moral intuition telling you that Jesus would not approve such methods as burning and stoning, would in fact rebuke us for considering them, then I assume you would give it precedence over anything that came before.

My moral intuition suggests to me that Christ's example with the adulteress was meant by Him not to set a principle of law, but an example of a way to act out higher ideals than the law commands, especially useful for those who can grant the grace of forgiveness & conversion directly and thus guarantee that when He says "sin no more" the sinner really will do just that. Given that, His refusal to actually condemn the law (as he showed He was quite willing to do explicitly in the case of divorce and remarriage), suggests to me that Christ did not intend for us to think of stoning as inherently disordered. (Just in passing: the fact that Christ would not cast the first stone has nothing to do with any implicit disapproval for the law: under the law, the witnesses were required to be the first casters. (Presuming that Christ was not an eye witness of the adultery), Christ or others could only have participated in the stoning by following up on throwing after one of the accusing witnesses did so. If the accusers all walk away, the non-witnesses have nothing left to do.)

So, Tony, if I have you correct: As far as you can tell from what you've read, you _would approve_ of burning Cranmer at the stake? Would it make a difference if you believed he was sincere? (Gotta say, sticking his hand in the fire first out of guilt for having betrayed his conscience in fear sounds pretty sincere to me.)

Tony,
The primary author of the English prayer book, a man who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, knew the Bible, theology, tradition, spirituality, and politics quite well. There's no burning him, Hooper or Ridley without the executioners themselves pouring enormous guilt on their own heads.

Really, you must stop defending the indefensible. When your team, so to speak, commits a horrific blunder, you must admit it. Just suck it up. Go forward determined never to make that terrible mistake again. Burning the Oxford martyrs was desperately wicked. The point can't really be finessed.

No, no, no, Lydia and Michael, I said nothing about burning Cranmer. I said I think he qualifies as a heretic. Is there anyone here who sees a difference between "dealing with heretics" and burning them at the stake? Surely there is something in between ignoring heresy and burning them?

I have no doubt that at the end of his life truly believed in his "reformed" faith. I have minimal doubt that before he got that way, he chose, about some initial matter of dispute that he had considered, to settle on "the Catholic Church is wrong" rather than "I cannot see how what the Catholic Church is right", and that choosing is, in essence, the formal sin of heresy. Christians from the earliest times would have said of such a declaration that it would be just about as wrong-headed as saying "we read that Jesus taught X, and Jesus is wrong" instead of saying "I don't see how Jesus is right". The former declaration is to set oneself up in judgment, the latter is to say I have a defect in myself and I choose to leave my mind in abeyance until further clarity comes my way.

Thomas Cranmer did not spread heresy.

Come now, Michael. The evidence is difficult to square with that statement. First of all, Cranmer reversed himself during his own career on some issues. He had to have been in error part of the time. Second of all, he became one of the ringleaders of the historical and theological support for the argument that the king exercised supreme jurisdiction within his realm , especially over the Church. Nobody thinks that's true anymore: nobody even in the Church of England thinks that Queen Elizabeth exercises supreme jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters, or ought to. It was a mistaken theory that tied, quite politically to a political theory of governance with a politically motivated team consisting of Henry and his cronies. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a false theory of the Church. Yes, it was heresy.

I had to laugh a few years ago, in the Anglican Communion uproar over ordaining gay bishops, that the good Archbishop of Canterbury was reduced to saying (almost word for word) that the Anglican Communion consists of whoever I say it includes. I gather he didn't quite realize the double irony of his claim of plenary authority.

That phrase - "desperately wicked" - where have I heard it before?

Tony,
Cranmer spread heresy only if you mis-define heresy -- and you do. You think separation from Rome is heresy. Sometimes that separation is a move into the light, a move for which human beings ought not to be slaughtered. Darkness looks like this: Burning Jan Hus alive, and digging up the dead body of John Wycliffe in order to burn it. These actions are unspeakable and indefensible, yet you keep speaking in defense of them.

Steve,
Yes, I've said before that executing human beings for their theology is desperately wicked. I'll have to keep saying it until the barbarians stop defending the indefensible. That looks to be no time soon.

That phrase - "desperately wicked" - where have I heard it before?

http://bible.cc/jeremiah/17-9.htm

If there were a "like" button here, Step2, I'd push it several times.

The thing is, though, Michael, that I think the question of _whether_ X or Y teaching is heresy is kind of a red herring. Obviously, I agree with you that in leaving Roman Catholicism and leading the English Reformation Cranmer wasn't teaching heresy. But it shouldn't matter. I can think of lots of seriously false teachings vaguely related to Christianity--Mormonism or Jehovah's Witness teaching, for example--or even just Arianism, and while I'm quite willing to call all of these heresies that has no connection at all to my wanting to treat those who promote them as _criminals_, much less kill them, much less burn them.

The real thing to ask our Catholic brethren here is this: Waiving the question of whether these men were or weren't teachers of heresy, what do you think about what was done to them, and what would you be willing to do or to countenance for such people?

Cranmer spread heresy only if you mis-define heresy -- and you do. You think separation from Rome is heresy. Sometimes that separation is a move into the light, a move for which human beings ought not to be slaughtered.

Michael, if I defined heresy the way you think I do, I might think slaughtering heretics a good pastime. But since you seem to be almost intentionally mis-interpreting what I say about heresy, I will give it to you point blank.

Heresy is not having an error in the intellect. Heresy is a sin, and therefore it signifies a defect in the will. Heresy is the sin of willing to adhere to an idea or a proposition that is contrary to what the rule of faith demands you to adhere to.

Faith is belief, above the acceptance of things seen by the natural light of the intellect, that is called forth from our mind and heart and will, by God. Faith comes to us not by our merit, but by God's free gift. As such, it imposes on us an obligation to believe in the things God's testimony reveals to us. Once having had faith, a willful rejection of the belief in the things God's testimony reveals to us is heresy.

Michael, above where I pointed out specific things that Cranmer supported that indicate his errors, I did not point to "he rejected the Catholic Church" as the specific thing. I pointed to things that must be considered error EVEN IF YOU ALSO reject the Catholic Church. For example, if I can see through the thicket of specifics properly, early on he did nothing about receiving communion under both species. But later on he helped change and formulate the rule that receiving both the bread and the wine is the only correct way, and the old Catholic way was wrong. Yet the current Anglican theory, so I understand, is that

The preferred alternative to the Chalice is to take Holy Communion in one kind only, without wine. Clergy should emphasize that while communion in both kinds is the norm in the Church of England, in faithfulness to Christ’s institution, when it is received only in one kind the fullness of the Sacrament is received none the less.

as reported here. So Anglicanism seems to be a bit schizophrenic on just what the official "doctrine" really is, and not surprisingly Cranmer seems to have been also. But it cannot be true, at one and the same time, that receiving under the species of bread alone is an OK method, AND that Catholicism is wrong because it allows people to receive under one species alone.

Lydia, you ask a much fairer question. I do not think that the the force of the state should have been used against anyone who inadvertently thought wrong things.

On the other hand (at the other extreme), it is quite clear to me that there were, in some instances, "reformers" who advanced their at least partially sincere beliefs at odds with the Church by using arguments that relied on mis-representations of what the Church claimed. Sometimes these definite mis-representations were so severely at odds with the Church's real teaching that using them could not BUT have amounted to fraud, and often they amounted to willful negligence with regard to the truth. These actions do constitute crimes against which state force was a legitimate option. Normally, we do not think the crimes of deliberate fraud and libel ought to be punished so severely as with death. Today, it is essentially impossible for fraud to have the kind of extensive damage to the state as to warrant a truly severe punishment, like death. However, in a single-religion Christian state, where the state recognizes Christianity officially, and where deliberately mis-representing the truth can realistically be viewed as sedition or incitement to civil war, that kind of crime really would warrant a grave punishment. No matter how wrong the Catholic Church might have been (by hypothesis), it is unlikely that God wanted a reformer to conquer those errors by intentionally mis-representing the Church and inciting war.

In between these extremes, there were the vast majority of people who landed at odds with the Church: they ended up disagreeing with the Church for a multitude of reasons which (as a Catholic) I think were formally insufficient, and some significant share of those reasons would be held insufficient by a goodly number of careful Protestants today - especially those based on the false representations (like that Catholics worship Mary, or that the Pope cannot sin). Most of these people were badly taught. I don't think that the state as an organ of force should be used upon people whose initial problem was bad catechesis, as a normal method of conquering error. Even though not one of these people holding error would have become formal heretics without a defect in the will, the path by which they arrived at such problems speaks to limits on what the state could undertake.

So, what would you have done to Cranmer, Tony? If we assume that you would think that he falls into your former category? Executed him more mercifully than by burning? Imprisoned him without the option of writing letters (lest he lead more astray)? Something else?

Lydia, as I say, I don't really have a clue as to WHY he chose to reject the Church's teaching, nor do I have any clue as to whether, in his attempts to teach differently, he also used false claims about Catholic teaching. But beyond that, since he did it in an environment where he had the support (indeed, the urging) of the monarch (initially), I don't think it is appropriate to describe what he did as teaching error in a wholly Catholic country where the government officially recognized Catholicism, so the basic conditions for the most egregious offenses against the state don't seem to be present, at least not to me. Given that, it doesn't seem realistic that death would have been an appropriate punishment. Actually, given the unstable state of the official religion, (i.e. what Henry was expecting of people) it seems impossible to rightly hold anyone to a criminal penalty. How can the state tell people it is wrong to teach error when the state itself is busy changing its mind about what constitutes error?

Tony,
I was referring to your comments up thread, not simply to your comments about Cranmer.

So let me put it another way: Your defense of these atrocities is rooted in what Charles Williams called "the whole claim of the papacy to be supernatural -- to be different and to judge differently," and I'm saying that the historical record is often so fully against it. All too frequently it's been wicked persons doing wicked things in God's name to people who deserve better. The things done to Wycliffe, to Hus, to the Oxford martyrs, to the Albigensians, and even, on a lesser scale, to blind Galileo, are all cases in point. One might mention the Inquisition as well. Foxe's Book of Martyrs is replete with such failures.

I also will say that being a supremely well-trained Catholic theologian from Cambridge, and an archbishop, Cranmer was not distorting the church's teaching. I am saying that you might wish to re-consider whether or not you are.

MB - Sorry, I wasn't complaining about you repeating yourself. I was just really struck by that phrase, "desperately wicked," and was trying to remember where I'd heard it before.

And along comes Step2 and finds it in Jeremiah, 17.9 - which would resolve my puzzlement, were it not for the fact that I've never read Jeremiah all the way through...

Fortunately, a little poking around in my library reminded me of Eliot's 5th Chorus from 'The Rock', which begins:

"O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

"Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian: were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.

"Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gain: and from the friend who has something to lose.

"Remembering the words of Nehemiah the prophet: 'The trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster.'"

Turns out Eliot cribbed most of his best line from Jeremiah.

I should have known.

Michael, obviously this is not the place to re-hash the entire Church argument about the way in which Christ promised to keep the Church, and His vicar on Earth, on the right track. It is ridiculous of you to pose the state of THIS question in such terms. But I will not let you get away with this:

I also will say that being a supremely well-trained Catholic theologian from Cambridge, and an archbishop,

There is nothing in Cranmer's record before his embroilment in politics that indicates that he was "supremely well-trained" in any special sense. He was certainly well educated. He was well-enough trained to be desired as a teacher. But that is true of hundreds of people around Cambridge and Oxford. He also appears to have been someone whose faith was, to a certain degree, more pliable to political conditions than one likes to think of a saint being, for example. As for his being an archbishop: there is absolutely no way in the world that anyone thinks he would have risen to that high chair were it not for his politics, rather than his ecclesiastical capacities and piety. He was certainly no Augustine in terms of archbishoply piety, and he was certainly no Thomas More in terms of integrity in the face of political pressure.

I've read this blog (and occasionally commented) on and off for a while now, and I know they conversation here is all but dead, but I have to say this.

What I've read in the comments here has literally made me sick to my stomach. George R. here is the only person who is even REMOTELY Catholic in his thinking and beliefs. I'm disgusted that, in the face of what is CLEARLY an infallible declaration by Pope Leo X in Exsurge Domino, virtually no one has listened to a word of it!

Some of you at least attempted to provide a legitimate justification of your denial by trying to reconcile it with other views, but most of you simply dismissed it out of hand. Even if it were dismissed on the grounds that it were "not infallible," you still don't address that it was Church practice for centuries and openly supported by the entirety of the hierarchy.

The document in question, however, unequivocally meets the requirements of infallibility. Any decently well-informed Catholic could tell you that. If anyone Catholic saw as much, that should have been the end of the issue. Instead, I see people berate Leo X, warp the issue and twist it beyond the breaking point, blatantly deny its infallibility, and so on, and then go on pretending to be Catholic.

It's upsetting in the extreme, especially on what is supposed to be a largely Catholic site. I won't be coming to this site anymore (save possibly to check what responses I get to this comment, if it's even posted, and most of which I expect to be hostile). A site that calls itself after the works of Chesterton, that claims to exist for the defense of Christendom, is openly contradictory to the one person here - George R. - who is defending it.

George R, I salute you as a fellow brother in the Holy Catholic Faith. The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves, and you've lost at least one reader on account of it.

You're right about one thing: George R is remotely Catholic.

I'm disgusted that, in the face of what is CLEARLY an infallible declaration by Pope Leo X in Exsurge Domino, virtually no one has listened to a word of it!

d_senti,

I pointed out, in one of my comments, above, the reference to Exsurge Domino as being infallible from Denzinger, The Dogmas of the Catholic Church. What more do you want? The problem is in reconciling Pope Leo's pronouncement with the large attitude differences that Pope Paul IV and Pope Pius IV showed, as well as the seeming conflict between Pope Leo's pronouncement and Pope Benedict's and Vatican II's pronouncements on torture. Each seems to be infallible, but they seem, on the surface to be at odds. The discussion, from my perspective, was to do exactly what Canon Law calls for Catholics to do in this situation - try to understand the situation from both the letter and the historical interpretation of the law. Did you read Fr. Harrison's article? The situation is far from clear. Even the Catechism seems to berate earlier uses of torture and although they don't mention burning at the state by name, it is implied. I fail to see exactly what you can take umbrage at with people trying to resolve the matter. George came in like a stormtrooper citing Pope Leo, but completely ignoring any other historical data. That does not make him more Catholic than anyone else, simply more narrow in his approach to understanding the situation. Can you explain the proper way to resolve the seeming conflict (many commentors have said that there can't be a conflict, in truth, only in appearance until more is understood, which strikes me as the correct Catholic attitude to approach the problem).

I am sorry that you think the commentors have waffled, but the theology of torture is not finished and there are difficulties in reconciling past and modern views. George, from what I remember, seems to want people to focus only on Exsurge Domino while skirting past the other problems. If this is not the case, he can correct me (I won't be able to respond as today is my last day for reading blogs until after Lent, but he should have his say). I appreciate his commitment to the Church and I don't think I have ever disparaged him, but matters do not seem to be as straightforward as he claims and a discussion is warranted. If I have ever insulted George, then I certainly, for my part, apologize, but the issues Bill raises cannot simply be waived away with, Roma locuta causa fini, as George would like. If they could, the issues would be easy to resolve. They are not, unless you are a person who believes that Vatican II was an invalid Council.

So, it is one thing to take outrage at how you think zgeoerge has been treated, but it is another to dismiss the issues or to acknowledge that people get caught up in the debate and say things that they wish they hadn't.

I have to go. I hope my response was charitable and I hope you don't give up on the blog, but realize that passions are aroused on the issuevof torture.

The Chicken

Should read:

So, it is one thing to take outrage at how you think George has been treated, but it is another to dismiss the issues or to fail to acknowledge that people get caught up in the debate and say things that they wish they hadn't.

I have to go. I hope my response was charitable and I hope you don't give up on the blog, but realize that passions are aroused on the issue of torture.

The Chicken

Chicken, thanks for your response to d_senti. Right on.

D_senti, even if one accepts Leo's statement at total face value, that statement does nothing at all to establish when and under what conditions it is appropriate to use the state to deal with heresy, and it does virtually nothing to establish the suitable principles that explain limits on punishments in general. Therefore, it advances the state of the discussion about torture very modestly indeed. Taking what Leo says, together with everything ELSE the Church says about punishments, does present enough to work with to advance the discussion, but poses challenges of compatibility. You cannot claim to rest on Church authority in THIS debate without recognizing those challenges. The same Holy Spirit that guides the Church, and the same Church that Leo led, has had other popes who said additional things about punishment beyond what Leo said.

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