The Catholic Church Against Slavery: Setting the Record Straight

American Thinker ^ | 11/12/2023 | Janet Levy

[SeekAndFind]

The Catholic Church, like many ancient institutions, has a checkered past.  Its record has been marred by the horrors of the Inquisition, its ambivalence towards the Nazis and the Holocaust, and its complicity in – and even cover-up of – child abuse by priests.  To its credit, however, the Church – despite some lapses – has a long and consistent history of opposing slavery.

That is the thesis of The Worst of Indignities: The Catholic Church on Slavery, the latest book by Paul Kengor.  A professor at Grove City College, Kengor is the bestselling author of over a dozen works, such as The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration; Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century; and Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left has Sabotaged Family and Marriage.

Citing scriptural depictions of Jesus healing slaves, Kengor asserts that an exemplary, forward-thinking role against slavery can be traced to the very beginnings of Christianity – as early as the first century.  Since then, the Church’s stance has been consistent.  Papal bulls and encyclicals have condemned the abominable commerce in humans, which soared during the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 1480s through much of the 19th century. 

The stance continues to this day.  Early in the 20th century, in an encyclical called Lacrimabili Statu (Latin for in tears), Pope Pius X described slavery as “the worst of indignities,” from which the book draws its title.  Pope John Paul II, whose papacy ran from 1978 to 2005, apologized for slavery

[SeekAndFind]

Prof. Paul Kengor writes that he discovered that in 506 A.D., at the Council of Agde, the church vowed to “take care of” manumitted slaves.  From then on, there are penances set out for ill-treatment of slaves.  He also found that in 1102, the Council of London forbade the sale of men “like brute animals in England.”  These, and various papal pronouncements on slavery, were unique, farsighted, and humane for their times.  Here’s a partial list from the book:

• In 1434, Pope Eugene IV’s Creator Omnium excommunicated Christians who enslaved other Christians.  He then expanded it to include all slaves.
• In 1537, Pope Paul III called for excommunication of slave owners and proclaimed the intrinsic dignity of humans regardless of ethnicity, color, or creed
• In 1686, Pope Innocent XI affirmed that slavery was wrong and that slavers must stop their activity and make reparations
• In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV’s Immensa Pastorum demanded proper treatment of all human beings, threatening excommunication of those who did not
• In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI’s Supremo Apostolatus sought complete abolition of slavery
• And in 1888, when slavery continued only in parts of Brazil, and in Africa at the hands of Muslim slavers, Pope Leo XIII’s In Plurimis said that humans were made in the image of G_d, so slavery was unnatural.

[Alter Kaker]

Several popes and a great number of cardinals and other church officials owned slaves, and for something like 500 years, canon law specifically imposed slavery as a punishment for various offenses.

[Montana_Sam]

Paul Kengor is an outstanding scholar and researcher. His book, “The Devil and Karl Marx”, should be required reading for every high-school junior and senior, and every undergraduate and post-graduate student. Annually.
There is a reason marxism, and its fraternal twin, fascism, stink up the world.

[daniel1212]

At least one informed RC on a forums of a well-known RC apologist expressed a different partial summation:

bill bannon says: February 27, 2009 at 9:33 pm...

Slavery was implicitly supported in Trent's catechism...read carefully the text on "other forms of stealing" as to the 7th commandment...it was supported in most major theologians until 1960 (Tommaso Iorio's 5th edition of Theologia Moralis 1960 and that was preceded by Merkelbach in 1936 and Vermeesch in 1904 and by St.Thomas in the Supplement to the ST in the section on marriage of a slave wherein Aquinas gives the cites for the decretals (canon law) supporting the slavery of a child born to a slave). And in every century a majority of theologians in the schools supported 4 just titles to slavery and birth to a slave was almost always included and now is banned by Vatican II's authroity.

Shane says: February 28, 2009 at 9:27 am
... Chattle slavery is what the Church condemns as intrinsically evil; penal slavery (and other forms such as serfdom) has been permitted by the Church....

bill bannon says: February 28, 2009 at 10:55 am

Shane, You are hiding in logic-speak because history detail totally refutes you. You wrote: “Chattle slavery is what the Church condemns as intrinsically evil..”...

...your mistake is just what I noted. One Pope out of 265 Popes condemns slavery as intrinsically evil in the ordinary magisterium and you call it Church Teaching without ever using your own brain to see if he might have overstepped in his late years... and you are prepared to throw God Himself and His estimation of slavery overboard. The Prots are not 100% wrong when they fault us for Pope worship. You just did it.

Your thoughts on torture and saving Pope Leo X's reputation from an obvious cruel belief is absolutely the same syndrome.

I think you are important to the Church but you will spoil it if you think flattering Her when She really needs the opposite from you is the thing to do. Paul confronted Peter in Galatians and Peter grew....the Church now has no one with Paul's truthfulness.

The list of bulls against slavery occurred over a time span that included 44 Popes but only about 7 of them denounced slavery of sorts....one was against slavery in the Canaries but only of baptized natives....the next one by Paul III was against the enslavement of the Caribbean natives but not against that of blacks....another was against the trade, but not against the domestic slavery of blacks born to slave mothers and held by religious orders into the 19th century, with [the] Bishop [of] England who knew the Pope [was][ writing for domestic slavery after the bull and not being gainsaid by the Pope. The most complete one was finally at the end of the 19th century by a Pope...Leo XIII this time... who claimed that the Church was the great liberator from slavery, and he gave a papal list which left out the six Popes from 1452 til 1511 who literally turbocharged the slavery by Spain and Portugal that involved millions. And you can easily research the first words of that chain by going to Romanus Pontifex on line by Pope Nicholas V and go to the middle of the 4th paragraph. In the OT flattery was a sin. Why does no one say that anymore? Because Church speak is floating in it.

Slavery was implicitly supported in Trent's catechism...read carefully the text on "other forms of stealing" as to the 7th commandment...it was supported in most major theologians until 1960 (Tommaso Iorio's 5th edition of Theologia Moralis 1960 and that was preceded by Merkelbach in 1936 and Vermeesch in 1904 and by St.Thomas in the Supplement to the ST in the section on marriage of a slave wherein Aquinas gives the cites for the decretals (canon law) supporting the slavery of a child born to a slave). And in every century a majority of theologians in the schools supported 4 just titles to slavery and birth to a slave was almost always included and now is banned by Vatican II's authroity. — http://www.jimmyakin.org/2009/02/soups-reredux.html

[Elsie]

This sounds like something our buddy ebb tide would post!