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How could the church ever have condoned the horrors of the Inquisition? No matter what her reasons, butchering anyone who disagreed with catholic teachings was obviously more criminal than Christian.

 

There is nothing in our human history that is more deplorable than the cruelty of man inflicted upon man, especially when it is committed in the name of some worldly ideal, political persuasion or worse; religion.

In many ways, we continue to experience this today, whether it is in the form of terrorism, social discrimination or political persecutions.

But nothing seduces the human imagination more easily than the very mention of the Inquisition. At this word, cruel and barbaric tortures spring to mind, innocent victims tied to the stake and torched mercilessly, bodies racked under the pains of crude machinery and through it all, the devilish grin of some catholic prelate laughing maniacally over the bloody triumph of his church's enemies. This popular scene is so ingrained in literature and hollywood depictions that generations of people have unwittingly taken every howl, every cry and every detail of cinematic violence to represent historical truth when it comes to judging the church on this matter.

With this mindset, it is never easy to offer a different perspective to audiences who have grown familiar with this picture, because as we know, everyone loves to have a Frankenstein monster to attack and slay, if only to divert attention from ourselves and deny the presence of monsters in our own lives.

Nevertheless, we have to admit that the Inquisition was definitely a complex and embarrassing page in the church's history.

Because of the political and judicial nature of its time, it is a subject that is often difficult to analyse objectively and hence, it makes for great ammunition for Anti-Catholic activists who have always sensationalised the events and claimed more bloodthirsty gore and cruelty than it actually was.

To adequately explain this chapter of church history, I would need to fill a heavy volume of work with footnotes and endless references, which would be a blood-curdling torture in itself for both the reader and myself. Instead we shall mercifully avoid that and focus on some brief and basic points that hopefully will dispel some myths about this period, and give us a better understanding of the subject at the same time.

To begin, one must have a balanced view of history when discussing this subject so as not to be duped by twisted facts and overexaggerated figures.

We must first remember that the Inquisition was more a product of the times than of religion. The Catholic religion never sanctioned the extreme and
often scandalous behaviour of some its members. Fundamentalist protestants will have you believe otherwise, insisting than the Inquisition (right down to the burning of heretics) was specifically ordered down to its gory details by the Pope. This too has often been the position of the media and everyone else who has ever had a bone of contention with the Catholic Church.

Anyone who has ever watched the opening sequences of the critically-acclaimed movie "Elizabeth", will remember seeing the camera pan over the anguished cries of of three protestant martyrs burning at the stake, all this taking place presumably under the oppressive regime of the Catholic hierachy. For the purpose of the story, Elizabeth was portrayed to be the saviour who would deliver England from the tyrannical yoke of Roman cruelty. Ironically, this is the same "good queen Beth" who after ascending the throne, unleashed such a reign of terror upon her catholic subjects that the persecutions of her father, Henry VIII, paled in comparison and ferocity.

Monasteries and churches were either confiscated or destroyed, clergy and religious forced to take the oath of supremacy or face death, and priests and laity hunted, condemned, tortured, hanged, disembowelled and finally quartered and their remains hung in public squares as a dire warning to other Catholics. In the mind of Her Majesty, to practise the Catholic religion was simply high treason, since a "loyal Catholic Englishmen" was both an oxymoron and impossibility.

But despite the fact that across the fence, Protestant authorities all over europe were also hacking and burning Catholics with equal ferocity, this is not a question of who slaughtered whom more.

Both sides were wrong. And when we judge a situation like this in the light of the second millennium, we must remember to judge such actions and mentality in the context of their times, not to excuse such terrible crimes against humanity but to obtain a better understanding of their causes and effects. As barbaric as it seems to us now, these kinds of things happened with far greater frequency and perceived normality than we are now accustomed to.

All the same, we must be careful not to shirk the responsibility of acknowledging the wrongs that were committed by some of our churchmen.

But in spite of the actions and behaviour of some of her unworthy members, the real question here is whether the Church herself condone the horrors of the Inquisition? Was it truly because of the Catholic Religion?....Or was it due to the political manouverings of States and Peoples on both sides of the conflict?

If it was never sanctioned by Catholic doctrine, then it says nothing about the truth of the Catholic religion. After all, the existence of Jewish prison guards or "Kapos" working alongside their Nazi masters in concentration camps cannot be blamed on Jewish leaders or Judaism in general, but is due rather to the self-preserving instincts of these individuals who were willing to torture their own brethren in order to escape a similar or worse fate. The personal decisions of unfaithful jews in collaborating with nazi brutality should not be seen as an indictment of the jewsh religion.

Likewise, the shameful behaviour of some unfaithful Catholics in choosing to promote the excesses of the Inquisition for their own agendas cannot be blamed on the Church, especially since her official teachings and doctrines forcefully condemn such violence.

Now most people like to lump the INQUISITION under one heading.

In reality, there were several inquisitions during different eras, ordered and administered under different authorities and implemented to combat different heresies and achieve different objectives.

They were also quite different in nature and implementation from each other. Some were under the direct authority of the church. Others were convened by righteous monarchs who established tribunals to protect their subjects from heresies against the faith. Still others were exploited by Catholic leaders who wanted to put down their enemies under the guise of religion.

But basically, there were three main distinct inquisitions in history. The Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition and the Roman Inquisition.

The word Inquisition comes from the latin word, "To Inquire".

From the earliest days of the church, bishops had the right to inquire on matters of faith and morals, it was part of their priestly and episcopal duty to preserve the authenticity of church teachings and truth. The apostles themselves were convinced of their duty before God to transmit the sacred deposits of the faith undefiled to later generations, and that any deviance from what they taught could not be tolerated, even if proclaimed by an angel from heaven.

St Paul in dealing with the heretics Alexander and Hymeneus did not hesitate to cut them off from the communion of the church in order to save the body of Christ from the gangrene of heresy and corruption. (As children, we are all familiar with the story of the influence of a rotten apple in a barrel of healthy ones.) He did not however stipulate that any violence be done to them, although the old testament Jewish penalties for heresy almost always advocated stoning and death. Excommunication was sufficient. And despite the insistence of many critics, violence as dramatised by Inquisitorial literature was never part of the church's program. The most severe and official line of action for the church regarding heretics then and now has always been excommunication..

Now this might seem rather narow-minded and intolerant to post-modern minds, (especially since our society treats religious truth as more relative and debatable than objectively absolute, and born of a divine origin outside the realm of private judgement) but the church has always acknowledged her responsibility before Christ to be the faithful steward of His revelations.

Unfortunately, modern society also has difficulties accepting the church as a divinely ordained institution, what with the scandals and weaknesses of her members, and so discounts any claim she might have to speak for God.

Nevertheless, the belief that orthodoxy must be preserved for the objective good of all was commonly held by all christians until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.

So far so good...but what about the hacking, burning and racking that we hear so much about? Were they merely theatrical overtures to an otherwise boring drama of law and order?

No, the tortures and executions were real enough to earn a page in history.

By the time of the Emperor Constantine, the interests of state and church were beginning to be more formally consolidated so that by the middle ages, they were often indistinguishable in medieval european society. What threatened faith and morals was also considered to threaten the stability of civil society.

Afterall, Catholicism was the only state religion for many countries. And because religion united men and women under one common flag, any disruption to that religious unity (like a heresy) threatened to disrupt the unity of society at large. Hence, attacks on the church's doctrine (particularly public attacks) were seen not just as a religious offence but also treason to the state.

Against this backdrop, Constantine and his royal sucessors being the highest governing authority in the land, also saw themselves as some kind of secular but divinely appointed "bishops" of the state, installed by God to protect and defend religion with all the powers of their sovereignty as Emperors of the Roman Empire. And since Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire since the dramatic conversion of Constantine, it was fervently enforced as the only official faith of the land, with the Emperor himself often in contest with the Pope in a struggle for primacy and ultimate authority.

Heresy against the faith was soon deemed to be a transgression against the person of the Emperor himself, and little by little, it became common practice for the civil authorities to use corporal punishments against certain forms of heresies which they subjected to the penal code of the state.

In all this civil action, the church objected vociferously to the use of violence against the accused. St Cyril of Carthage and St Hilary of Poitiers in the third and fouth centuries protested against such criminal excesses, reasoning that if religion was spiritual, then its penalties must likewise take on a spiritual character where excommunication replaces death as the ultimate sign of severence from the life of Christ.

Lactantius, one of the early church apologists living in the fourth century wrote:

"Religion being a matter of the will, it cannot be forced on anyone; in this matter it is better to employ words than blows [verbis melius quam verberibus res agenda est]. Of what use is cruelty? What has the rack to do with piety? Surely there is no connection between truth and violence, between justice and cruelty . . . . It is true that nothing is so important as religion, and one must defend it at any cost [summâ vi] . . . It is true that it must be protected, but by dying for it, not by killing others; by long-suffering, not by violence; by faith, not by crime. If you attempt to defend religion with bloodshed and torture, what you do is not defense, but desecration and insult. For nothing is so intrinsically a matter of free will as religion. (Divine Institutes V:20) "

St Augustine himself had this to say about violence against heretics, "we wish them corrected, not put to death; we desire the triumph of (ecclesiastical) discipline, not the death penalties that they deserve".

But still, did the Church really have a right to impose herself on non-believers?

Ironically, this question presupposes that the church forces herself on members of other faiths and persuasions. This couldn't be further from the truth, although there certainly were followers of other religions who incurred serious penalties for attacking the christian faith by their words and actions. Rather, the inquisitions can be more acurately termed as reactions to hostile groups and ideologies bent on imposing themselves on the church.

Now before we go any further, we must understand that trials and inquiries into orthodoxy are as old as the church itself, existing long before the Inquisition and stretching all the way back to scripture.

Even then, freedom of religion was not just tolerated but actually respected and advocated by the early church. It was not criminal to be a moslem, jew or non-believer in Christiandom. In principle, everyone was free to practice their own faith, so long as such practices and beliefs do not threaten to corrupt the christian religion and confuse the masses.

Rather, the attention of inquisitional tribunals were usually turned towards members of the christian family itself, particularly those who denounced traditional doctrines and eagerly promoted bizarre ideas and insights incompatible with authentic christianity.

To be sure, the history of the middle ages was most certainly not deprived of strange new doctrines advocated by pseudo-christian groups.

Since the welfare of society and religion was so inextricably linked, it was important to protect the faithful deposit of the faith, which christian societies of that time very much  relied on for unity and order.

However as is often the case with men, abuses arise whenever a group of people assume power and judgement over another. All one has to do is to look at the kangaroo courts of communist regimes or even the excessive violation of human rights within legitimate authorities like the police force in some countries.

Thus it was that Pope Gregory IX formally instituted the office of the Inquisition in the middle ages, mainly to combat such excessive abuses and to bring such endeavours under better control and order, so that inquiries into orthodoxy would not be left to freelance activists and quacks, but be formally entrusted to an official body of investigators with proper authority and jurisdiction.

And it was hardly the bloody picture imagined by popular novelists.

People who were spreading heresies were called up to give an account of their beliefs and persuaded to forsake these falsities or at least make no public attempt to spread their doctrines. And if they recant their heresies, they were normally given a penance that included a public renunciation of their heresies, in addition to some pious devotional practices thrown in as restitution.

Some of these penances might seem excessive to us today but it was quite normal and natural for penitents to amend for their wrongdoings with public humiliations back then.

For example, they might be forced to wear a confession and stand at the gate of the city, be appointed to serve the sick in the hospitals for a whole year or undergo some other penalty that can include fasting, scourgings, wearing a garment that signified your crime and other mortifications which serve as forms of corrective work order. Afterwhich they were fully reinstated into the church and society.

(To understand something of this, we just have to look at statements of public apologies in the newspapers or even on television. Whenever an individual or organistation is misquoted in the press, calumniated or wrongly accused without evidence, every effort is made to restore truth and justice to the honour of the injured party, in the hope of repairing the harm and confusion already done to the public. Why? Simply because false information can sow grievous damage to one's honour and good name, affecting his credibility in the eyes of others.)

In the case of serious heresy, the stubborn ones who refused to recant would be excommunicated, whereupon the civil authorities took it upon themselves to inflict their own punishments and imprisonment for these fellows. The burning and torture was always administered under the auspices of civil authorities, even though they sometimes had religious clergy participating. The official church always condemned such excesses even though civil authorities often did things their own way and barred the church from interfering.

Sometimes torture was used by city officials on those who were obviously guilty but refused to confess either their crimes or the identities of their accomplices. After all, they considered attacking the unity of faith an act of treason to the welfare of the state.

Remember also that you cannot be called up for inquiry for personal and private beliefs...but only when you make these beliefs public by seeking to influence and convert others to take action.

It's hardly what protestants and popular media imagine and depict...where throngs of innocent people are dragged before burning stakes for every little hiccup. And although unlawful arrests did happen in some places, it was never sanctioned by the church which condemned such abuses in no uncertain terms.

Then there was the Spanish Inquisition, invoked by the reigning monarchs of Spain; Ferdinand the Catholic and his wife, Isabella, whose main function was to uproot the rampant heresies of false converts from Judaism spreading across the kingdom of Aragon. In addition, their majesties were also concerned about the widespread growth of the moslem population in Spain, which began more and more to come into open and sometimes violent conflict with the dominant christian society.

But before long, stories of abuses reached Rome and so infuriated Pope Sixtus IV that he issued a papal brief denouncing the excesses of the inquisitors for unjustly imprisoning many people and punishing them with cruel tortures and persecutions. In his fury, he threatened to depose the entire tribunal of catholic clergy appointed by the majesties of Spain but was persuaded from doing so by the royal couple, convinced of its necessity and function in the realm of Aragon.

Without a doubt, it was true that some religious and bishops appointed to administer the Spanish Inquisition were involved in the whole gamut of burning, torturing, imprisoning and maiming. But these were people who for the most part received their commission and appointment with direct influence from the secular court and the King, and not so much from Rome.

Unfortunately, since travel and communications were difficult during those days, it was hard for the Pope to keep a tight reign over the many individual pockets of inquisitional offices littered here and there. Back then, a letter could take weeks or even months to travel to its destination and so people were pretty much free to take charge of their own agenda. Papal legates were sent out to bring order to these abuses but they had to travel for many weeks on horseback over a land that was vast and savage. And as soon as they left, these corrupt and political individuals went back to their old practice without so much as a nod towards Rome.

Of course, that is not to imply that all tribunals for orthodoxy were suspect. Many indeed were justly and efficaciously conducted to the benefit of society and church, curing the body of Christ of many spiritual dangers and doctrinal cancers.

The Roman Inquisition was mainly formulated to handle the apostasy of The Protestant Reformation. More commonly called The Holy Office, this roman congregation within the curia of the church was established to keep the faithful safe from the contagion of false beliefs and heresies being propagated by the new reformers.

The concrete unity of the Christian religion, not counting the schism of the orthodox churches, was to be irrevocably shattered when the Reformers broke from the authority and faith of the Roman Catholic Church, which had kept western civilisation together for more than a thousand five hundred years.

In a matter of months, chaos, divisions and confusion reigned among good people everywhere. No one knew who to believe nor what to believe anymore.
And that was why the church had to call together an emergency body to arrest the damage, and whose main objective was to be pastoral rather than disciplinary.

Incidentally, it wasn't just heretics who were called up by the inquisitional tribunals on charges of suspected heresy, but also anyone who seemed unorthodox in their approach towards the faith, including many catholic saints like Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Avila, who both confidently submitted themselves to the prudence and wisdom of these tribunals as a sure sign of their obedience to the authority and mercy of the Church. But partly also because these tribunals were usually conducted with great sensitivity, fairness and tolerance. Not only did the Inquisition exonerate Loyola from all the unjust allegations of his critics, they also supported and affirmed the future founder of the Jesuit Order in his spirituality and orthodoxy.

Indeed, it seems that the problem most Christians have with the Inquisition does not lie with the belief that truth and orthodoxy need to be defended and guarded from lies and distortions. Even scripture says as much.

Rather, the part that we find hard to swallow are the reports of brutality and abuse that we often hear sensationalised in the pages of this period. Even today, anti-catholic fundamentalists like Jimmy Swaggert like to exaggerate the number of people who died under the Inquisitions to ridiculous proportions so as to embarrass Catholics who recognise this to be a dark chapter in their Church's history.

But in truth, the sins of inquisitional torture was not just a stain in the history of the Catholic Church, but rather a blemish in the whole history of european civilisation, including many protestant nations who were running their own tribunals on Catholic blood.

With holy religion as an excuse, it was a chance for some people to seek and destroy their political enemies. Anybody they didn't like was accused of being a menace to faith and religion. Even monarchs like Elizabeth I were using the same excuse to hunt down and slaughter Catholics.

After a while, these trials degenerated into pure outrage and tit for tat. Both Protestants and Catholics were condemning and executing great numbers of people on both sides of the cross in blind hatred and revenge. So much for Christian love and understanding.

Getting the Inquisition into historical perspective is not to condone the evils that were done. But however much those evils may have been committed in the name of the Faith and the Magisterium, they stand condemned by the Faith and the Magisterium, both then and now!

It is not right to accrue to the Magisterium the excesses and errors of individuals or communities who exercised these offices unjustly.

Instead, it becomes increasingly obvious to present day audiences that in the currents of modern relativism, society; especially Christian society needs the refuge and fortitude of a bold and formidable guardianship, where orthodox truth; undiluted, unapologetical, untainted can continue to be protected, proclaimed and celebrated.

This is both the privilege and burden of the Holy Office; a most divine and merciful gift to the Church, better known today as The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

It is headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and has the unenviable, though highly necessary task of protecting the faithful from errors of the faith.

This is the Vatican Office where dissident priests and theologians get referred to when they flirt dangerously with heretical ideas and distract the faithful from the practice of the true faith.

Not surprisingly, many doctrinally maverick theologians do not shy from criticising the conservative theology of John Paul II, nor have any qualms about denouncing the widely respected and beloved Cardinal Ratzinger in bitter terms, often calling him the "Grand Inquisitor" because he is ever ready to discipline them by removing their licence to teach as official catholic theologians in seminaries and Catholic universities, or put their precious books under the index of banned literature.

And yet, without this safety net...the sacred deposit of faith entrusted to the Apostles and their successors would be plundered and lost by every brash, hotshot and liberal theologian who crys 'FOUL" at the first indication that the Church does not agree with them. It is often amusing to hear the familiar cries of censured theologians complaining of their harsh and merciless abuse by cold oppressive Vatican Officials, when the most tragic thing to befall them was to lose
their official standing to represent the church in matters of theology and doctrine.

They could still write, discuss and stubbornly advocate their own views, they just couldn't do so any longer as officially recognised teachers of Catholic Theology, nor enjoy the canonical credentials to teach in the name of the Church, which is only fair since they've chosen to teach doctrines contrary to the traditions of the Church.

In the most extreme cases of unrepentence, the theologian is threatened with excommunication, but always with the gentle and compassionate appeal to return to the fold of Christ. Excommunication is hardly permanant, it is always employed as a last resort while every attempt is made to reconcile the offender to the family of God.

In the past, this might have shaken some consciences but modern arrogance and cynicism toward the spiritual make the penalty of an ecclesiastical sentence like excommunication little more than an irritating nuisance for some people. After all, if you don't believe in the supernatural effects of such an action, you certainly won't find this too distressing.

Ultimately, the Catholic Religion does not, never did nor will ever condone the horrors of violence in her mission to save souls. And yet, save souls she does, by preserving, protecting and defending her children from the lure of dangerous values, philosophies and beliefs that only too frequently violate the truth of our Christian faith...the only one that comes down to us from the Apostles.

 

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