Italian paper slammed for promoting Inquisition "black legend"

Rome, Jun. 10 (CNA/CWNews.com) - Italian journalist Vittorio Messori responded this week to an article in the Communist daily Il Manifesto that portrays as truthful the "black legend" about the Inquisition that hundreds of thousands or even millions were killed by the Church.

In a column translated from Italian by the Spanish daily La Razon , Messori maintains that "the imprudence-- or shamelessness-- of these ideologies never ceases to amaze me. A publicist named Adriano Petta published an article called 'The Skeletons of the Holy Inquisition.' Deja vu, of course. We're talking about two and half centuries ago."

According to Messori, the article "would not be worth reading were it not for the fact that it was published in Il Manifesto , one of the two or three newspapers in the entire Western world that still carries the title 'Communist daily' on the front page."

Messori noted that many other historical publications have been more precise in their accounts. "Just one year of the French Revolution, the reign of terror of 1793, left more victims than all of the centuries of all the inquisitions combined (the Protestants, in fact, did not fool around: the Geneva of Calvin was lit up by the bonfires, Lutheran Germany engaged in witch hunts as if they were a national sport; the last massacre encouraged by the Puritan pastors of Salem, Massachusetts, came at the threshold of 1800.)"

Messori noted as well that the number of victims of the Communist regimes of the last century reached the hundreds of millions, all in the name of stamping out "deviations" from political "orthodoxy." "It's difficult, therefore, to take seriously the preaching that issues forth from certain pulpits," Messori said.

The noted Italian journalist pointed out that an analysis of the modern historical data on the Inquisition, including information from the Vatican archives opened under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, would be of very much benefit to the Church. "Many pillars of the Black Legend would fall," revealing a process characterized by an accuracy and a fairness "unheard of in the civil courts of that time."

"Death sentences and torture were the exception," Messori explains, noting that the typical images people have of the Inquisition were based on Protestant propaganda aimed at undermining Spain's dominance in the Atlantic.

At the same time he emphasized that an authentic study of the Inquisition must acknowledge its "horrors" and that the authentic historian must avoid "the moral sin of anachronism." The past must be understood in the context of the era, rather than analyzed through the lens of 21st century society, Messori maintained.

"Just as today's leaders consider it their duty to provide health care for their people, so the Catholic Church was convinced that it had to answer to God for the eternal salvation of her children: Salvation that was jeopardized by the most toxic of venoms: heresy," Messori wrote.

Messori is an Italian journalist who has long covered the Vatican and is perhaps most famous for the book-length interview with Pope John Paul II (bio - news) that was published under the name "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" in 1994 and the book-length interview with then-Cardinal Ratzinger published as "The Ratzinger Report" in 1987.

Deuteronomy 17:

When there shall be found among you within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God shall give thee, man or woman that do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, and transgress his covenant,

3 So as to go and serve strange gods, and adore them, the sun and the moon, and all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded:

4 And this is told thee, and hearing it thou hast inquired diligently, (Inquisition) and found it to be true, and that the abomination is committed in Israel:

5 Thou shalt bring forth the man or the woman, who have committed that most wicked thing, to the gates of thy city, and they shall be stoned.

* We Christians are just, once again, following the Bible.

But, let's not neglect Moses in this discussion. As the First Inquisitor, in two days he killed more people than the various Catholic Inquisitions killed. Moses ordered FAR MORE killed.

Exodus 32

27 And he said to them: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh: go, and return from gate to gate through the midst of the camp, and let every man kill his brother, and friend, and neighbour. 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the words of Moses, and there were slain that day about three and twenty thousand men.

Numbers 25

And Moses said to the judges of Israel: Let every man kill his neighbours, that have been initiated to Beelphegor.

9 And there were slain four and twenty thousand men

Numbers 31

And Moses being angry with the chief officers of the army, the tribunes, and the centurions that were come from the battle,

15 Said: Why have you saved the women?

16 Are not these they, that deceived the children of Israel by the counsel of Balaam, and made you transgress against the Lord by the sin of Phogor, for which also the people was punished?

17 Therefore kill all that are of the male sex, even of the children: and put to death the women, that have carnally known men.

18 But the girls, and all the women that are virgins save for yourselves:

* end of quotes

A major difference between the Jewish and the Christian Inquisitions was the Christians one killed far less and they didn't kill children and take the virgins as their own (and I didn't even note all the others killed due to schism etc)

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