Posted on 02/18/2005 12:17:53 PM PST by lawdave
This is a shameless vanity for which I apologize. I am not HTML friendly. I read an article in this weeks Time Magaziner entitled "Bible-Belt Catholics," which discusses the upsurge in the number of Catholics in the Southern states. The author made one statement which I don't belive is accurate, to-wit:
Given how overwhelmingly Protestant the South was in the 20th century, it easy to forget that the Catholic Church - which, to its shame, condoned slavery - was a player there before the Civil War.
The author gives no attribution for this statement. I wanted to turn the power of the blogoshere loose on this issue, since I know from experience that there are many knowledgeable Catholics on this site. Did the Catholic Church condone slavery? Enquiring minds want to know.
And the hits just keep on coming...
I don't know, but fwiw the Democrat Party was the party of slavery in the 19th century and then Jim Crew for more half of the 20th century.
Wonder when Time Magazine will do an article about that.
But, man, I have got TONS of evidence that the Democrats have tried to keep blacks as second-class citizens from about 1850 to about 2005.
Jim Crew = Jim Crow
blogoshere = blogosphere
As early as the seventh century, Saint Bathilde (wife of King Clovis II) became famous for her campaign to stop slave-trading and free all slaves; in 851 Saint Anskar began his efforts to halt the Viking slave trade. That the Church willingly baptized slaves was claimed as proof that they had souls, and soon both kings and bishops—including William the Conqueror (1027-1087) and Saints Wulfstan (1009-1095) and Anselm (1033-1109)—forbade the enslavement of Christians.
Since, except for small settlements of Jews, and the Vikings in the north, everyone was at least nominally a Christian, that effectively abolished slavery in medieval Europe, except at the southern and eastern interfaces with Islam where both sides enslaved one another's prisoners. But even this was sometimes condemned: in the tenth century, bishops in Venice did public penance for past involvement in the Moorish slave trade and sought to prevent all Venetians from involvement in slavery. Then, in the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas deduced that slavery was a sin, and a series of popes upheld his position, beginning in 1435 and culminating in three major pronouncements against slavery by Pope Paul III in 1537....
Soon, in addition to the brutal exploitation of the Indians, Spanish and Portuguese slave ships began to sail between Africa and the New World. And just as overseas Catholic missionaries had aroused Rome to condemn the enslavement of Indians, similar appeals were filed concerning imported black slaves. On April 22, 1639, Pope Urban VIII (1623 to 1644), at the request of the Jesuits of Paraguay, issued a bull Commissum nobis reaffirming the ruling by "our predecessor Paul III" that those who reduced others to slavery were subject to excommunication.
"A second revival of slavery took place after the discovery of the New World by the Spaniards in 1492. To give the history of it would be to exceed the limits of this article. It will be sufficient to recall the efforts of Las Casas in behalf of the aborigines of America and the protestations of popes against the enslavement of those aborigines and the traffic in negro slaves. England, France, Portugal, and Spain, all participated in this nefarious traffic. England only made amends for its transgressions when, in 1815, it took the initiative in the suppression of the slave trade. In 1871 a writer had the temerity to assert that the Papacy had not its mind to condemn slavery" (Ernest Havet, "Le christianisme et ses origines", I, p. xxi). He forgot that, in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime" (magnum scelus); that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; that Urban VIII forbade it in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741; that Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade and Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, in the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the "supreme villainy" (summum nefas) of the slave traders. Everyone knows of the beautiful letter which Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed to the Brazilian bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery -- a letter to which the bishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church." (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14036a.htm)
The MSM is attacking all non-leftwing religions.
Anything to attack religion. (perhaps there is something they need to cripple religious groups before the 2006 election.)
I know, no retribution, but you know, there wasn't a lot of support for abolition out side of New England in antebellum America. So, I wouldn't be surprised if some Catholics, in the south, supported slavery. Still, some evidence of such an assertion would be welcome.
I am Catholic and I must say this: Nothing, absolutely nothing, surprises me anymore. And yes, I staying with my faith.
Oops. I meant "no attribution." Sorry.
Southern Catholic leaders largely went along with the Confederacy and Northern ones remained loyal to the Union. Most protestant denominations split either prior to, or during the war. Some denominations reunited afterwards, some didn't.
Me too. The statement I cite seems utterly gratuitous to me. Methinks the author simply could not resist adding a little negativity to an otherwise positive story.
It's not without precedent, the Catholic Church, as well as other denominations and religions, have historically distanced themselves from any controversies considered to be in its interests not to comment upon. Sins of omission are, nonetheless, sins. Silence is the last refuge for those with final judgement. Not unlike the United States Supreme Court.
Wow, maybe next they can run a story on how liberal media supported communists governments responsible for the deaths of over 100 million in the last century.
http://www.catholicshrineatlanta.org/History/history_of_shrine.htm
According to this site, the Bishop of Atlanta was also a Confederate chaplain.
I am not a Catholic but am catholic. This is just another of the liberal hit pieces schemed to divide the Christian church so that they can make headway for the Democratic elites whose policies would enslave black, white and purple.
Are you people paid to promulgate the Commintern avowed goal of bringing division to our Nation? Or are you just paid to puff Time?
I think the reality is Catholicism "fits" into whatever culture where it's practiced. One can look at that in two ways:
The negative view would be the "do nothing" negatives of the specific culture (don't forget about the controversy of Catholics and the Nazis).
The positive view would be that the Catholic Church is dynamic and very tolerant.
link?
The so-called controversy of Catholics and Nazis is a fabrication in my view. Catholicism probably did fit into the culture of the South. Most of the Confederate soldiers did not own slaves yet they fought for their particular states. I think that fighting for state self-rule and condoning slavery are 2 different things.
Wish I knew how. Can somebody help?
Misrepresents history. Yes the catholic church was more promenant in the south than the north prior to the civil war. But that really has nothing to do with anything. Slavery, in its many forms, has been the most common situation of humanity throughout most of recorded history. The last 200 years, in the english speaking world anyway, has been quite transformational.
The Bishop of Savannah was probably the most militantly pro-Confederate of the Southern Catholic clergy. Father Gannon of St. Augustine, Florida, has written a book on him called Rebel Biship, if I remember correctly.
Here's a link to the Time article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1025176-2,00.html
Does that mean the Democratic Party should pay reparations?
There is Nothing publishe din Time--or Newsweek can be
taken as Truthful without multiple independent sources to
verify their pulp fiction.
The relevant quote is in the third paragraph
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1025176-2,00.html
thanks
Christianity Today seems equally corrupted as Time and
Newsweek.
Sounds just like Time Magazine. Trying to marginalize Christians.
If Time was going to do an honest expose, they'd mention Joe Kennedy and his Hitler connections.
The author of the article is just engaging in some gratuitous Catholic bashing. The Episcopalians were very pro-Confederacy, Bishop Polk served as a General (albeit a bad one) in the CS Army. Savannah and other Southern cities, especially along the Mississippi River and coasts, had sizeable Jewish populations that were pro-Confederate, yet the author does not take a gratuitous swipe at them. The pro-union antislavery divide in the South was largely geographic and economic. Unionism and antislavery sentiment was strongest in the Appalachians where slavery wasn't as dominant economically and in port cities where trade with the North exerted a stronger influence.
I agree but time will tell if Catholicism is able to survive as a "background-fit in" religion given the "more progressive" western religions and the Middle East passions inspired by religion. Catholicism is dying a slow death in Europe as the people are looking for "religion-progressiveness" and less "conformity without opportunity".
the link is not much help...
not a subscriber so one cannot read the entire article
without documentation the piece sounds like another anti-Catholic smear job...
It what sense? I just excerpted the article.
It's true. Honest.
The only government to recognize the CSA was the Vatican, under the infamous Pious IX. Pious also had regular correspondance with Jefferson Davis, who was Roman Catholic.
One of the Lincoln assasins did escape the USA, and for a while was given quarter by the Vatican. In fact, most of the conpiritors were also Roman Catholic.
I'm not putting these facts on the same par with the recent "Nazi" allegations, which I don't believe are true. In addition, I don't buy into the consipracy theories that expound on the facts I've stated.
Condone? They weren't abolitionists, --- i.e., they didn't campaign against it, but condone is something else entirely. As I recall, the official position was to take no position as it could have fractured the US Catholic Church into regional sections as happened with several Protestant denominations.
And overall, in 1860, the Catholic Church had little influence in the wide society, and tended to keep a low profile since many people, North and South, hated Catholics as much as they hated blacks.
No offense Dave, but not worthy of a thread.
There may be other ways to inclued a link in a new thread.
What I do is:
1. left click on the address; it should highlight the address in color
2. Press Ctrl + C
3. Click in the Source URL bar on the Posting new thread site.
4. Press Ctrl + V
Thanks. I thought it was worth a discussion. Certainly as much as what Wacko-Jacko is faking today.
This hack never picked up a Bible. Christ doesn't condemn slavery, either. He didn't CONDONE it - but He advised slaves to be obedient to their masters for their spiritual benefit.
None of Lincoln's assassins escaped the US. The woman who ran the boarding house where they met, Mary Suratt, was a Catholic. She was executed, though all of the real conspirators insisted she was innocent.
You shouldn't believe everything you read in a Jack Chick tract.
The Catholic Church did not exercise a political voice in any part of the south--not even in Maryland, despite the fact that thousands of Irish and Catholic British "criminals" (debtors) had been sent from Great Britain to work off their debts in South Carolina and Georgia. In every sense of the word, this, too, was slavery: insignificant debts frequently took decades-long enslavement and usurious repayment. The Church neither condoned nor decried this social evil either. Guess it's difficult for us to imagine today a church that simply did not interfere in Caesar's realm.
slavery was wrong,but the only reason it existed in america is because black kings sold THEIR SLAVES for rum and guns.
I know of no basis for a claim that the Catholic Church "condoned" slavery in any sense in which the mainstream Protestant denominations did not. I mean "mainstream" as opposed to the Quakers and to such groups as the United Brethren.
Christianity Today is as leftwing as Time and Newsweek are.
The editors are largely Liberal Christian--and their editorial bias for the most part is barely to the right of
Time /Newsweek. Have never seen any conservative /rightwing
Christianity reflected in that magazine.
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