St. Thomas More Burning Heretics

[thessalonian]

I agree with Zig's analysis as being another aspect of this. Captial punishment is less neccessary now because there are other ways to defend people against murder. As far as spiritual murder I am not quite sure. Part of it is our higher learning makes us more accuntable and we should be less easily deceived. I think another part may be that back then there were violent reactions when heretics spoke publically, slandering the Church. Unjustified or not we leave these reactions to God's judgement. But the government had a right and duty to defend the unlearned and also keep order. Incarceration was less of an option than it is today. Also cultures are less religously homogenous and so there has to be more tolerance for differeng views. People have learned to live more peacefully. That brings about the order that goverments had to try to establish before.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Delivery Boy' post='1731184' date='Dec 18 2008, 09:07 AM']Peace Whinchestrer, Godbless
How was heresy dangerous ? By drawing cathoilcs and others away from the sacrments ? From what I know (very little ) protestants today are assumed our seperated brothers and sisters in Christ. At one point would they become "dangerous" today and it be justifiable to burn them ?
If church and state werent seperated and it was run by the cathoic church would they again be burned if they didnt convert ?[/quote]
What happened to England and Catholicism (including Catholics) because of heresy? What if Henry the Eighth had been found guilty of heresy and stopped from forming the Church of England?

Such is the danger of a grave and powerful heresiarch.

[Winchester]

People were not so ignorant as we like to believe.

[jkaands]

Since when is burning heretics a contraindication to canonization?

The Inquisition in Spain was overseen by Dominic's own order, the Dominicans. St. Vicente Ferrer, of Spain, was a violent anti-Semite, even for the day, and certainly would have supported the burning of non-converting Jews.

[Winchester]

[quote name='jkaands' post='1731390' date='Dec 18 2008, 02:39 PM']Since when is burning heretics a contraindication to canonization?

The Inquisition in Spain was overseen by Dominic's own order, the Dominicans. St. Vicente Ferrer, of Spain, was a violent anti-Semite, even for the day, and certainly would have supported the burning of non-converting Jews.[/quote]
The inquisition in Spain was more a vehicle of the state than of the Church.

He "would have," or he "did?" One is speculation, the other accusation. Your word choice indicates your position, which is somewhere in the National Enquirer circle of history. Last I checked, canonization was sometimes sloppy and there's no official anti-semitic dogma in the Church. Remember St. Christopher? Oooh, the canonization process isn't infallible. Another newsflash: There have been popes with illegitimate children! Some Catholics owned slaves! The Crusades ended in corruption and murder! The Templars were suppressed for political reasons! Joan of Arc was railroaded with the cooperation of a CARDINAL! The Pope hates puppies and kittens!

You want to go for atrocities commited by members of the Catholic Church? I've got books with all the blessings to print you could ask for that talk about them quite freely, so let's not try to pretend there's some grand secret you can expose. One thing Church history is not deluded about is the corruption of Her members.

On the other hand, there's more than one way to read your post...

[socalscout]

[quote name='thessalonian' post='1731331' date='Dec 18 2008, 12:09 PM']Wrong. See my post above. Historical setting has everything to do with it. Today those who leave the Church are actually MORE accountable because they have the ability to defend themselves through educating themselves by reading good, reliable materials about what the Church teaches. Back then the people were in ignorance and a deciever could much more easily have his way with them.[/quote]

I think we are looking at it from different points and not meeting together. You can rationalize all you want about how easily people were influenced then by their ignorance and how spiritual death is graver than physical death but I am arguing that burning someone to death is no more justifiable then than now for any reason..

Unlike actual murder, the "killing of the soul" from heresy can be reversed at anytime within someone's life so this capital punishment of burning really is for the attempted killing of a soul. Also too, was the heretic trying to condemn souls or preach what he himself was misled by a false truth. You cannot convince someone to be unmurdered but someone who follows a heretic can always be saved.

I cannot believe that it can be acceptable to burn someone strictly based on availablity of education. Its akin to saying the printing press saved people from being burned because it made the ignorant more accountable. I can't buy that.

Its black and white to me. Either it is always wrong to torture to death or alwyas right. Like Abortion and the early Church, it is either alyways a grave evil or it isn't.

[Ziggamafu]

Then you don't understand Church teaching on capital punishment. In some cases it is just and in some cases it is unjust. It is, from what I've read, the opinion of most devout Catholics that today, the death penalty is unjust in most societies. Does that mean that the death penalty was wrong in ages past? No.

[Guest]

death penalty +1 (as long as they know the person did it for sure)

[Hassan]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1731162' date='Dec 18 2008, 09:53 AM']A heretic is a Catholic who has rejected Church teaching. There are degrees of heresy, and if one keeps silent, it's not a problem.

Since I don't have the documents, I don't know, but generally, heretics were not released to the state unless it was a grave matter. That being said, these were humans running the courts, so the justice would be flawed.

But heresy was dangerous to the state as well as the populace. Putting a heretic to death would be comparable to putting a traitor to death.

I think this answers socal, as well.[/quote]

Am I a heretic?

[thessalonian]

I didn't say it was okay or not okay based on education. What your missing is the part and rights and responsibility of government to protect it's people and keep order. It is like with just war theory. The iraq war was discouraged by the vatican but not condemned. Why? Because the vatican realizes that while it needs to provide input, kings and nations are judged by God and there is knowledge the vatican does not have that is privy to the US. Government for instance that George Bush based his decision to go to war on. Same is true and even more so regarding the ages which we speak. Nations have duties to keep order and protect their people from real and percieved threats. In those days among ALL Christians, not just Catholics, heresy was taken far more seriously. A part of that was due to the ignorance of the people and their need for protection from those who were learned. It wasn't a matter of the learned be more or less culpable in their deception or deserving of being burned more or less. It was that protection against heresy was considered more a state responsibility for various reasons. Some including the mixture of Church and State. Some being violence caused by heresy and by the heretics who, like the Hugonauts were sometimes quite violent. Sometimes there was the threat of war with heretics. They were much more disruptive than today. Further today communication is a bigger part of society. We know what is going on in England today. Back then news took months.

[RandomProddy]

[quote name='LouisvilleFan' post='1731212' date='Dec 18 2008, 03:35 PM']Might be worth observing that all these events occured before the world knew anything of a Magna Carta, ...[/quote]


False, the Magna Carta was written more than 300 years before Thomas More's time.

Edited December 18, 2008 by RandomProddy

[LouisvilleFan]

[quote name='RandomProddy' post='1731538' date='Dec 18 2008, 06:58 PM']False, the Magna Carta was written more than 300 years before Thomas More's time.[/quote]

Okay, well freedom and civil rights were clearly still a work in progress.

[LouisvilleFan]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1731397' date='Dec 18 2008, 04:13 PM']The inquisition in Spain was more a vehicle of the state than of the Church.[/quote]

As was the position of Chancellor in England.

[quote name='socalscout' post='1731406' date='Dec 18 2008, 04:24 PM']I think we are looking at it from different points and not meeting together. You can rationalize all you want about how easily people were influenced then by their ignorance and how spiritual death is graver than physical death but I am arguing that burning someone to death is no more justifiable then than now for any reason..

Unlike actual murder, the "killing of the soul" from heresy can be reversed at anytime within someone's life so this capital punishment of burning really is for the attempted killing of a soul. Also too, was the heretic trying to condemn souls or preach what he himself was misled by a false truth. You cannot convince someone to be unmurdered but someone who follows a heretic can always be saved.

I cannot believe that it can be acceptable to burn someone strictly based on availablity of education. Its akin to saying the printing press saved people from being burned because it made the ignorant more accountable. I can't buy that.

Its black and white to me. Either it is always wrong to torture to death or alwyas right. Like Abortion and the early Church, it is either alyways a grave evil or it isn't.[/quote]

I agree... justifications must be consistent throughout history because the Truth, by definition, never changes. Nobody has provided anything showing the Church sanctioned the burning of heretics. That was a function of the state, enforced in England through the Chancellor, and as you'll see throughout medieval Europen history, the purpose was to enforce loyalty to the king in his land. If you can't be loyal to God, whom you cannot see, why would the king believe you are loyal to him whom you can see?

These things happened before or during the Reformation, when they didn't have a history of religious freedom, nor did they have the experience of folks converting from Baptist churches to Catholic or being raised in Methodist or Lutheran churches and freely worshiping with other denominations with hardly a second thought about it. A Methodist darkening the doors of a Baptist church wasn't a small deal even in our parents' or grandparents' generations, and to marry outside your denomination was sometimes taken as an insult to one's own family. Today these decisions don't turn any heads.

Point being, let's first take a look at the context of history and check where we are coming from versus the culture St. Thomas More knew. Some things that we consider perfectly acceptable would be completely unthinkable to him, so don't be surprised when some things he found perfectly acceptable we judge to be completely unthinkable.

[socalscout]

I will concede that the times were a major reason for the punishment much like execution for treason here in the US. Someone mentioned that earlier. This is where I think we are meeting at different points. Adulters were stoned at the time of Christ but an act unheard of now.

I understand Church teaching on capital punishment. I do not agree with capital punishment but would not persuade anyone to believe otherwise from Church teaching. I used to be a big advocate but as I grow older my heart bleeds a little more.

I agree with the use of deadly force to protect and just war but not capital punishment so maybe my whole arguement is based on my strong belief that we cannot punish by taking a life.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1731493' date='Dec 18 2008, 05:36 PM']Am I a heretic?[/quote]
I don't know. I believe I said something about people not having the authority. One can point out a belief as heresy, but judging a person to be a heretic is much more complex.