Yesterday I copied here verbatim an entire
anti-Catholic screed: in-your-very-face hatred for the Church, riding on the
still-open wounds of grown children once heartlessly abused by a handful of
self-serving priests.
It's
not quite that cut-and-dried simple, though. A quick googling of the author –
John Wojnowski – and trolling through some of the results, quickly yields his
own claim of having been abused fifty years ago. I've no reason to doubt this,
and it would be at best very inconsiderate toward other abuse victims to treat
his claim in any other way.
On
Thursday I'll begin going point-by-point through his muck, of course taking
into account what he himself experienced through the betrayal-of-trust by a
member of the clergy. Today I want to just offer up a quick counterpoint to his
charge on the Church's stance on slavery.
Let
me repeat a quote he gives in his particularly wretched denunciatory document:
Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not
at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just
titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and
commentators of the sacred canons… It is not contrary to the natural and divine
law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given
He
references the source for this as an 1866 Instruction from Pope Pius IX
(1792 - 1878), as quoted originally by John Maxwell in "World
Jurist". The existence of this Instruction I've not yet been able to
verify, but let's treat it, too, as genuine.
Before
digging further into the Church's history on/against humans as chattel, I found
that quote troubling. For me as a European-American, heir to the blame for the
blood and suffering of generations of Africans (and others) brought here to the
Land of the Free as forced cheap labor, the term "slavery"
immediately conjures up images of chains and whips, families rent asunder,
baying hounds, bodies strung from trees and telegraph poles and dragged behind
motor vehicles, lit by the abomination of flames consuming a cross, symbol of
the liberation and salvation of humankind.
I
retain that abhorrence utterly, and cannot be any kind of devil's advocate for
the practice of forced servitude. I gather Mr. Wojnowski's image of slavery
matches the one I paint above – in hues of red, rich brown, and wavering tears.
Yet… research this one a bit yourselves, folks: The Harriet-Beecher-Stowe-esque
image is the ugliest and most reprehensible face
of a much larger, multi-sided economic entity: not all slavery in history has
been enslavement.
Under
the header of "slavery", there is also indentured servitude (think of
the many people who used this method to pay the way for themselves and their
families to the Colonies/States from Europe), and even prison-supplied press
gangs, among others.
I
still feel dirtied, sullied, and compromised to even point this out, as though
I'm saying it's okay to beat up, string up, and cut up any of our cousins from
Africa, or the aboriginal Americans, for that matter. No. Yet one purpose
this blog serves is to at least try to get some minds out there to think beyond
the rutted paths and narrow ways even I have felt safe in.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church – essentially,
the doctrine and teachings of the Church – has this to say regarding slavery
(number 2414):
"The seventh
commandment forbids acts or enterprises
that for any reason – selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian –
lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and
exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a
sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them
by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul
directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave 'no longer as a slave
but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, …both in the flesh and in the Lord'."
The
quote that rounds out this point is from the brief Letter of St. Paul to
Philemon (yes, it's in your Bible), 1:15-17. In full, these verses read (NB: different translation):
"Perhaps this is why he was away [i.e., had run away]
from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a
slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more
so to you, as a man and in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome
him as you would me."
Let's
go right to the top: what have the Popes themselves – shepherds of the faithful
and servants of the servants of God – had to say over
the ages about slavery? I very quickly found several good articles online, and
strongly suggest you read them, both for how they approach the overall
institution of slavery (including servitude vs. enslavement), and the
quotations they provide, which I include below.
The
articles are these: "The Popes and Slavery: Setting the Record Straight" by Father Joel S. Panzer; "Slavery" by Father William G. Most; and also "Slavery
and the Catholic Church" at A Catholic
Response. The author of the third article
is not named, but its content has been examined (scrutinized, in fact) by the
Church, and approved.
In
a Bull
to the princes of Sardinia in the year 873, Pope John
VIII wrote the following (his and his successor's usage of
"we" here means "I"; traditionally monarchs – this included
Popes – have used this pronoun; Pope John
Paul I of warm, brief memory dropped it the moment he was elected):
"There is one thing about which we
should give you a paternal admonition, and unless you emend, you incur a great
sin, and for this reason, you will not increase gain, as you hope, but guilt…
many in your area, being taken captive by pagans, are sold and are bought by
your people and held under the yoke of slavery. It is evident that it is
religious duty and holy, as becomes Christians, that when your people have
bought them from the Greeks themselves, for the love of Christ they set them
free, and receive gain not from men, but from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Hence we exhort you and in fatherly love command that when you redeem some
captives from them, for the salvation of your soul, you let them go free."
In
1435, Pope Eugene IV issued Sicut
Dudum, a document condemning the enslavement of black natives of
the Canary Islands (off coastal Africa):
"They have deprived the natives of
their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the
inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery [subdiderunt perpetuae
servituti], sold them to other persons and
committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them…. Therefore We…
exhort, through the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed for their
sins, one and all, temporal princes, lords, captains, armed men, barons,
soldiers, nobles, communities and all others of every kind among the Christian
faithful of whatever state, grade or condition, that they themselves desist
from the aforementioned deeds, cause those subject to them to desist from them,
and restrain them rigorously. And no less do We order and command all and each
of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the
publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to
their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once
residents of said Canary Islands… who have been made subject to slavery
[servituti subicere]. These people are to be
totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or
reception of any money."
In
his Pastorale Officium of 1537, Pope Paul III
said firmly:
"…[W]e give
orders that… to all and each one of any dignity whatsoever…. you give strict
orders under penalty of automatic excommunication…. that they must not in any
way presume to reduce the Indians we mentioned into slavery."
That
same year, he also promulgated in his Subliminis Deus:
"…the enemy of the human race… has
thought up a way… by which he might impede the saving word of God from being
preached to the nations. He has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to
satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the
Indians of the West and the South… be reduced to our service like brute
animals, under the pretext that they are lacking the Catholic Faith. And they
reduce them to slavery [Et eos in servitutem redigunt], treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use
with brute animals.
"Therefore, We, …by our Apostolic
Authority decree and declare… that the same Indians and all other peoples –
even though they are outside the faith – who shall hereafter come to the
knowledge of Christians… should not be deprived of their liberty or of their
possessions. Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this
ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery,
and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void.
These same Indians and other peoples are to be invited to the said faith in
Christ by preaching and the example of a good life."
Three
centuries later, in 1839, Pope Gregory
XVI – immediate predecessor to Pius IX, by the way –
issued his In Supremo Apostolatus, which includes this:
"There were to be found… among the
faithful some who, shamefully blinded by the desire of sordid gain, in lonely
and distant countries did not hesitate to reduce to slavery [in
servitutem redigere] Indians, Blacks and other
unfortunate peoples, or else, by instituting or expanding the trade in those
who had been made slaves by others, aided the crime of others. Certainly many
Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, Our Predecessors, did not fail, according to
the duties of their office, to blame severely this way of acting as dangerous
for the spiritual welfare of those who did such things and a shame to the
Christian name.
"…Indeed these sanctions and this
concern of Our Predecessors availed in no small measure, with the help of God,
to protect the Indians and the other peoples mentioned from the cruelties of
the invaders and from the greed of Christian traders.
"The slave trade… is still carried
on by numerous Christians. Therefore, desiring to remove such a great shame
from all Christian peoples… and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors,
We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful
Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to bother
unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery [in
servitutem redigere] Indians, Blacks or other
such peoples. Nor are they to lend aid and favor to those who give themselves
up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as
if they were not humans but rather mere animals, having been brought into
slavery in no matter what way, are, without any distinction and contrary to the
rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and sometimes given over to the
hardest labor."
I
don't expect that even the words of the Bible (which the Church embraces,
obviously – shoot, the Catholic Church gave the world the Bible!) and further
words of four heirs to St. Peter himself (these aren't the only anti-slavery
statements the Church and her Pontiff have given, of course), would settle the
matter that Wojnowski raises yet again. Most likely I'll have to address it
further myself at some later point… and I'm hardly the best spokesman for the
Church – but I know where to find some of them.
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