I never said you held that punishing or performing heinous crimes was appropriate. I read several times (?) that you did not. You even stated that good Catholic clerics avoided this nonsense.

But you did state:

I also admit that there were abuses and instances where mobs and schimatic clerics instigated pogroms unless local Jews “converted.”

to which I would undeniably admit other atrocious forms of persecution on the basis of rooting out error.

My point was that the pre-Vatican II teachings tended to veer toward coersion. I did not get into what you believe or what you don’t.

However, you imply that there was that stuff going on in extreme cases. Now either you can simply say, “No, the pre-Vatican II social teachings simply did not vear toward coersion” or hold the opposite or some sort of neutral position. This debate has nothing to do with doctrine per se but manner with which Catholics tended to act out toward non-Catholics pre-Vatican II. This, of course, is more than a thread from solving and there is no need to dispute by becomming so defensive. Yes, I fully recall you’re historical “analysis” of the Inquisition and that of the so called “burning of heretics” of the Middle Ages.

PS–A brief look through “National Geographic’s History of the World” has an entire page under the title “Persecution of Jews in Europe.” I do see a quote that states “anti-semitism was widespread in medieval Europe. The Jews were maligned as the ‘Murders of Christ’” etc. etc. Sounds like maybe things weren’t all so hunky dory.

Also, I should rather have related punishment, coercion, and time relations as follows. Coercion seeks to alter one’s course from what it otherwise might be. It addresses present or future events. “Don’t do X, *because* otherwise I will punish you.” Punishment may also address present circumstances, not just past ones. The person engaged in punishment says, “You already are/have done X, therefore I will punish you.” In case I have slipped up, somebody please correct me.

The inquisitors did not mean to intimidate false Catholics to maintain their hypocrisy (i.e. to “coerce” obedience). They did want to inspire in their audience a salutary fear of hell, which would be even worse than the pains of those consigned to terrestrial flames. That fear would inspire confession of sins against the faith, which would lead to confession and repentance. Inevitably, there were people who persisted in their heresies but simply never verbalized it out of fear of the stake. The Inquisitors did NOT want anyone to persist in heresy, whether silently or not, but probably they viewed this silence as better than dissemination of the said errors. But such people are lukewarm cowards, and I wouldn’t lose sleep over such people if I didn’t have a salutary fear that I may in the end wind up among them.

Basta! But as you can see, the point was never to “coerce” anyone into “accepting Catholicism.” The Inquisition was constructed to figure out who was faking it just to get by.

Wow, such confusion. Where did I promote “punishing people or performing heinous crimes to coerce them into accepting a certain religion.” Specify where I said this. Burning at the stake? Is that what you are referring to? You do not understand why medieval and early modern Catholics did that, despite my efforts to make you understand. They *did* not do it in order to “coerce” people into accepting Catholicism. Erase, delete that from your mind. To “coerce” means to intimidate someone to do something. The Church did not use burning at the stake to “coerce” people into being Catholic. They did it to punish people who were false Catholics. The state does not run prisons in order to “coerce” people into being good. It runs prisons in order to suppress malefactors and to protect society. Heretics — people who pretended to be Christians but who were not — were an incredible menace to souls. Think of the man and wife in the New Testament who were struck dead by St. Peter to punish their sinfulness. Was God “coercing” the rest of the Church to be good? No, He was punishing the wicked and protecting the divine society of the Church. I repeat: the Inquisition did not *coerce* people to become Catholic. The Inquisition did not want people to say they were Catholic out of fear. They did not want false confessions — they weren’t Communists. They wanted malefactors to repent of their sins. Some had to be punished because their crimes — and they were crimes, crimes that struck at the basis of the confessional state — deserved it. But if you asked the Inquisitor, “Mr. Inquisitor, are you trying to intimidate people into being Catholic when they otherwise would not be,” he would say, “No. Now what is your name . . .” There is an absolute, metaphysical distinction between punishment and coercion. Coercion concerns present and future acts, by survivors. Punishment concerns past acts. The Church has always condemned the use of force to compel non-Catholics to convert to Catholicism. If and when this happened, it was DESPITE, not because of the traditional teaching upheld in Cardinal Ottaviani’s pamphlet. Burning at the stake was done for people who *already claimed to be Catholic* but who were not. Or for people who apostatized and hence were a threat to their own souls and to others’. But the punishments were not coercive. Do you understand the difference between coercion and punishment and why the two should never be confused? Do you see that the Inquisition was directed toward bad Catholics and not toward non-Catholics? So the Inquisition could not possibly have intimidated non-Catholics to convert, as non-Catholics did not fall under its jurisdiction. I assume you still object to even this (the punishment) but cannot object on the grounds that you stated. And the use of coercion in obtaining spurious conversions has always been condemned, and I condemn it here (without “veering,” without “tending” toward anything). And if you are not talking about the Inquisition — heck, Johnboy, do you even know of any specific instances from which to draw generalizations in the first place? — then what are you referring to? Why am I providing examples for you?

I think you need to come to grips with the distinction that you don’t need to punish people or perform heinous crimes to coerce them into accepting a certain religion. It’s a matter of tolerance, my friend. Tolerance not of error in and of itself but of the respect for a person’s personal decisions and beliefs. In our day and age the Church sees tremendous wisdom in this–and I’d hate to think folks don’t.

As for my own two-bit reason why pre-Vatican II teaching *tended* to veer towards forced conversions was because the over-riding concern was that error has no rights and society has a duty to the true religion. There was no talk, to my knowledge, of that of the inviolable right for a person to act with a “bare faith.” And I did mention that Dignitatis Humanae prescribed certain limits to freedom, giving as an example the clear error in radical Muslim’s terrorizing on the basis of belief.

Perhaps my comment was not reality. But I have certainly heard of forced Baptisms of babies and, although evidently an ongoing historical debate, the abuses of Catholics in the area of religious liberty (and consequently freedom of conscience).

J-B, you’re simply not living in the real world. You are denying reality. Pick up these documents, read them: they support, beyond any doubt, confessional states. Have you read any of the following?

Longinqua oceani

Libertas praestantissimum

Sapientiae Christianae

Quas primas

or Cardinal Ottaviani’s lecture, which I have summarized here, delivered in the presence of the Supreme Pontiff, Pius XII? He wasn’t chosen to give the keynote address on the anniversary of the Pontiff’s election because he was a nut case, but because as head of the (now) CDF, it was his job to understand the teaching of the Church on such matters very well.

Anyone who has eyes can see that the Church has abandoned a teaching which Cardinal Ottaviani calls immemorial.

really the issue brought forth by Vatican II was more than a straw man…not simply because an entire document was generated from topic; but also because pre-Vatican II social doctrine tended to vear towards forced conversions. Think of babies baptised outside of parental consent, abuses in religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

[last last post]

In the Middle Ages, the Church and the Inquisition DID NOT force Jews to become Catholics. However, Jews were not permitted the same civic rights because they conspired to destroy Catholicism (and that’s a fact — read the works of William Thomas Walsh). Jewish groups today, like the Anti-Defamation League, do the same, and they get interviews with the Pope! But, if a Jew converted, then they could be punished by the state for going back to their old religion. That’s because they would be committing perjury and treason — claiming to be Catholic and not being so. Same with protestants, like Huss. They could be punished since they were a menace to society, especially to the divine society of the Mystical Body of Christ. If the state was “imposing” religion, it was merely reinforcing the demands of the Church on those who claimed to belong to it.

Now, there were abuses, *as always.* Although I have not studied the matter in depth, the crusades against pagans in the Baltic may have exceeded the bounds of what religious goals can be obtained by force. (Chesterton ascribed Naziism to the fact that Prussians had been forced to convert, and hence never really absorbed Catholicism. The same can be said for Lutheranism.) Mobs attacked Jews in the Rhineland during the Crusades and in Spain, and the Crusaders burned a synagogue when they took Jerusalem. Terrible, terrible crimes — acts of hatred. And the Church protected the Jews — just as during the Nazi persecutions, anti-Semites accused the hierarchy of being “Jew-lovers”! In fact, the Inquisition and, probably, the ghettoes and occasional expulsions of Jews were undertaken with an eye toward ending serial unrest that frictions between Jews and Christians (including hateful pseudo-Christians) provoked. Certainly, the Inquisition provided a legal framework that countered the lynch mobs of Spain.

Those are just a few examples of what “imposition” of religion meant, in different times and places. But, despite all the many lies that Protestants, Enlightenment philosophes, freemasons, Eastern schismatics, Jewish activists, Moslem activists, Communists, Nazis, neo-pagans, multiculturalists, and wimpy “Catholics” have come up with (did I forget any of the usual suspects?), the Church simply did not approve of the use of force to obtain (spurious) conversions. It did approve of the use of force to protect the Catholicism of new converts and to uphold the duties of *professed Catholics* living within a confessional society.

“The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions.”–DEUS CARITAS EST

Seems like the shift in social doctrine is gaining some momentum after Vatican II.

I would think the dangers you mention would not be possible if a Catholic country utilized Catholic morality/teaching in its application of various laws, etc. but this does not mean necessarily that the other non-Catholics should be forced to convert. So therefore the authentic teachings of the Church would be respected and promoted as the basis for the proper ordering of society while at the same time authenticating true religious freedom. Of course Vatican II outlines certain parameters for religious freedom (in other words everyone simply cannot just do whatever they want — think of radical Muslims who wish to kill other folks, for instance).

The idea is that a forced conversion is not a real one and God doesn’t want people to work this way. Some traditionalists are rather strange on this point, perhaps — kind of reminds me of some of the Muslims techniques of domination.

- that all religions are equal,
- or that not all men are called to the Catholic Church,
- or that , in fact, the secular state cannot and should not have anything to do with God or religion, per se.

The last of these three, is a grave and crucial matter. It is often trumpeted and glorified as the model for the secular state today.

However, this merely makes the society follow the religion of “secular humanism” or of complete apathy- both of which do not fulfill the nature of man.

Any state, no matter what it is, will have a religious orientation- or vacuum (which is worse); the religious orientation is inescabable. If we are not Christian, we will be Mohommedean. If we are neither, we may be Jews. if neither: than pagans or atheists.

The true challenge of the Secular State is: How can one establish a Secular State that is oriented for the natural call and natural good of man, without imposing the necessity of what is his supernatural completion?

My initial thought is: Without the innocence of man, this is impossible.

Many say that things are “forced down their throat. I for one have decided to rephrase my expierence of this as “gift.”

May God bless you and the Imaculate Mother of the Sacred Heart aid and protect you!

God love you and the Holy Spirit guide you!
-Christopher

1) The pamphlet does not appear to contradict the Holy Father Benedict XVI or the teachings of Vatican II specifically in “Dignitatis Humanae”.

2) The document “Dignitatis Humanae” has maintained a consistent but progressive (that word is not meant to be liberal) development in Catholic social doctrine:

Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ. Over and above all this, the council intends to develop the doctrine of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society” (par 1f).

3) The pamphlet appears to be addressing a lopsided view of Catholic social doctrine that neglects to incorporate the pre-Vatican II teachings.

The Church maintains that the duty is for men to order society to God. This is accomplished first and foremost by being a believer and ordering your own life to God; and more perfectly in the Catholic Church. This means the ideal *is* for everyone to be Catholic and order society — through their own lives — to God. The problem of today is that there are substantial numbers (let’s say 5/6) that are not Catholic or not Christian. That means the Church cannot for practical purposes run a state. Benedict XVI states in his first encyclical “DEUS CARITAS EST” that the primary function of the Church is to save souls. It is *not* to run governments or states. That is up to the laity whose task it is to order their lives to God in everyday life.

Now the issue you are apparently concerned with is whether a dominant Catholic country should impose religion on non-Catholics via state laws. Since the subject is apparently non-infallible and Vatican II was a development in doctrine (or more bluntly a shift in social doctrine) one might say only time will tell. Apparently, the fathers of Vatican Council II were with the understanding that the document was to encourage non-Catholic countries to respect Catholics’ rights (ie, Communist regimes). Others state that the document entitles countries — even Catholic ones — to not impose a single religion on anyone. So the discussion continues…

[last post]

JS: thank you! I was reading about that mega-mosque in Mark Steyn’s America Alone; it sounds scary, frankly. Yet another way in which the Muslims will mark their presence in Great Britain, now with this huge and enduring landmark. Certainly no need of a Catholic or protestant church of that size!

As you could tell from my post, I was trying to understand Benedict as employing a tactic which would seek to maintain secularism as preferrable to sharia. Since the numbers of Catholics no longer justify a confessional state, almost anywhere in Europe, let alone Britain, while the Muslims are angling for sharia, eventually, here and there, including in Britain, defending secularism might not be such a bad idea.

Democracy can always let new bugs in the door, though . . .

And of course your point, I take it, is that in the mean time, we still have Catholics trying to live their lives in Britain, and the constraints on the Muslims may also hurt the Catholics. I suppose that these kinds of questions will have to be played out on a case by case basis.

Maybe someday I will read it. It probably is good. It looks good. But after previous dealings I prolly won’t agree completely with it.