Heresy

[ICTHUS]

Does the Church teach that heresy is punishable by death or torture? I wondered this because I brought up the fact that John Calvin killed people who didnt agree with him with a Reformed Baptist accquaintance of mine (who is a Calvinist, hence, "Reformed" baptist.) and and he mentioned that the only person he recalled reading about Calvin ordering the execution of, was a Modalist (i.e. didnt believe in the Trinity)

He also pointed out that we, the Catholic Church, were executing Modalists and other heretics that denied certain Christological truths, leading up to and even during the "Reformation".

So, I have two questions:

Has the Church ever taught that heresy is punishable by death or torture?

and

Does she still teach these things today?

[Mary's Knight, La]

I might be wrong but considering what an opponent of the death penalty she is today I doubt the church ever said anything was punishable by death. When people accuse the Catholic Church of claiming something was punishable by death, they are usually referring, knowingly or not, to the fact that some leaders either in good or bad desires declared terrible punishments for somethings, which is what happened during the inquisition.

With the exception of the world's greatest nation, the Vatican, the church doesn't desire to have any political authority except that it would form the moral decisions which in turn form the political decisions. So those claims don't make sense under moral authority only under political authority.

[ICTHUS]

As far as I know, the Church isin't opposed to Capital Punishment, she is opposed to the MISUSE of Capital Punishment.

[M.SIGGA]

The governments today are nothing like the absolutism monarchies that existed in Europe until the French Revolution. Since there was no separation of Church and State, breaking religious laws had consequences attached to punishments by the civil authorities. Religious courts such as the Inquisition would turn over people with serious religious crimes such as heresy to the state for offending the monarch and threatening the civil order of the particular kingdom, and their punishments might include death.

Since protestants like John Calvin were a French religious minority outside of the state and religious court system, I would say that he was individually responsible for killing people - there was no civil court system for Calvinists to try heretics, and since Calvinists were relatively new, they were considered heretics anyway. In a sense there were heretics killing other heretics. Equally in Protesant nations, much later on in history, where the Church was outlawed, then individual Catholics may be considered murderers of Protestants if any of the Protestant majority were put to death - but the institutional Church would not be responsible.

There were probably exceptions where power was abused, but the Church did not institutionally put people to death.