This was a really neat argument! One area I’ve been wondering about lately in the self-contradicting/morality area has been the Church’s position/papal pronouncements on slavery. I’m a cradle Catholic who is doing some high school tutoring, and want to prepare my students to meet the claims that the church supported/condoned slavery, then “changed their mind” to condemn it, which I’ve seen used to say a) if the church can “change its mind/teaching” on this big of an issue, they can do so for another issue or b) what you addressed in this article, that the church is self-contradictory/taught error. I’ve tried doing some research on the topic, but have struggled to find resources that don’t a) whitewash church history or b) go the opposite direction. Is this an area you could point to resources on?
That isn’t an area of expertise for me! But I do know Word on Fire came out with a volume of the Church’s social teaching recently, and it is bound to have the relevant documents. When I’ve looked in the past, I haven’t been able to find any evidence that the Church herself supported chattel slavery ever. Perhaps forced labor as a punishment, and perhaps moderns sometimes talk as if being a serf was a form of slavery. But what Americans at any rate think of as “slavery” was not practiced in Europe, and then when Catholic countries like the Portuguese did it overseas, they were generally yelled at and/or sharply criticized. I don’t *think* any Catholic nation kept it going as long as, say, the British or Americans, but I could be mistaken about that. Most of the medieval versions of chattel slavery came from Muslims. Entire Orders were formed to ransom Christian slaves from them.
And I do know that for every priest who was a pawn of an empire promoting conquest, there were others pushing back. Famously a Dominican priest in what would become Cuba excommunicated basically an entire company of soldiers over it.
I’ll have to look into that. I never thought of the Europe vs the Americas divide-the idea that the New World and the temptations it offered became a place where that particular evil took root even in/among ostensibly Christian nations and peoples. Do you know if Catholics/Catholic orders within America were also rebuked for holding slaves or told to leave off? And I really appreciate the final point about there were those, like the Dominican Priest, holding the line and telling the truth even as others succumbed to ‘the spirit of the times.’ Thank you for your thoughtful response!
This was a really neat argument! One area I’ve been wondering about lately in the self-contradicting/morality area has been the Church’s position/papal pronouncements on slavery. I’m a cradle Catholic who is doing some high school tutoring, and want to prepare my students to meet the claims that the church supported/condoned slavery, then “changed their mind” to condemn it, which I’ve seen used to say a) if the church can “change its mind/teaching” on this big of an issue, they can do so for another issue or b) what you addressed in this article, that the church is self-contradictory/taught error. I’ve tried doing some research on the topic, but have struggled to find resources that don’t a) whitewash church history or b) go the opposite direction. Is this an area you could point to resources on?
That isn’t an area of expertise for me! But I do know Word on Fire came out with a volume of the Church’s social teaching recently, and it is bound to have the relevant documents. When I’ve looked in the past, I haven’t been able to find any evidence that the Church herself supported chattel slavery ever. Perhaps forced labor as a punishment, and perhaps moderns sometimes talk as if being a serf was a form of slavery. But what Americans at any rate think of as “slavery” was not practiced in Europe, and then when Catholic countries like the Portuguese did it overseas, they were generally yelled at and/or sharply criticized. I don’t *think* any Catholic nation kept it going as long as, say, the British or Americans, but I could be mistaken about that. Most of the medieval versions of chattel slavery came from Muslims. Entire Orders were formed to ransom Christian slaves from them.
And I do know that for every priest who was a pawn of an empire promoting conquest, there were others pushing back. Famously a Dominican priest in what would become Cuba excommunicated basically an entire company of soldiers over it.
I’ll have to look into that. I never thought of the Europe vs the Americas divide-the idea that the New World and the temptations it offered became a place where that particular evil took root even in/among ostensibly Christian nations and peoples. Do you know if Catholics/Catholic orders within America were also rebuked for holding slaves or told to leave off? And I really appreciate the final point about there were those, like the Dominican Priest, holding the line and telling the truth even as others succumbed to ‘the spirit of the times.’ Thank you for your thoughtful response!