Burning Heretics At The Stake In 2008

[socalscout]

What I don't understand is comparing physical murder with "spiritual murder" and justifying capital punishment for both.

Clearly spiritual murder is worse but it is not absolute like physical murder. It can be reversed. You cannot convince some to be unmurdered, physically, but you can convince someone to repent.

So really they are being burned for attempted spiritual murder. I wrote this in the other thread, it is measuring the morality of the act based on technology. The printing press saved heretics because it made the uneducated more accountable thus making the act of burning somenone to death a little less justifiable. To me its black and white. Its either bad from the start or it never is, like abortion.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='socalscout' post='1731897' date='Dec 19 2008, 10:20 AM']What I don't understand is comparing physical murder with "spiritual murder" and justifying capital punishment for both.

Clearly spiritual murder is worse but it is not absolute like physical murder. It can be reversed. You cannot convince some to be unmurdered, physically, but you can convince someone to repent.

So really they are being burned for attempted spiritual murder. I wrote this in the other thread, it is measuring the morality of the act based on technology. The printing press saved heretics because it made the uneducated more accountable thus making the act of burning somenone to death a little less justifiable. To me its black and white. Its either bad from the start or it never is, like abortion.[/quote]

What do you think about some of God's commands regarding capital punishment in the Old Testament? Were God's commands bad from the start? If not, are they then always acceptable?

[Hassan]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' post='1731881' date='Dec 19 2008, 08:20 AM']In the Old Days, a person could say that he saw a dragon or a goblin and, given enough communication skills, could convince a whole village of the story.[/quote]

I don't know what you mean by "in the old days". Sure there was a time when zoology was a less established dicipline, but naturally that is not comparable to theology which the vast majority of people are much less aquainted with. The reason that such a zoological claim would be met with wider skepticism today is because people have more grounding in the basics of physical science, evolutionary biology, and zoology in general. By contrast I don't think you can claim the same is true today with reguard to theology. If anything I'd say there has been a decline in general theological. The gullability of the community had nothing to do with the individual in questions communication ability but with the general gaps in knowledge of the larger world.

[quote]Today, precisely because of our advancements, people are far more skeptical.[/quote]

I have no idea how you could support that claim with scientific data.

[quote]We all (by "all" I am generalizing) can read. We all have access to libraries and facts; we are all educated. In matters of faith and logic - the world of unseen truth - things can be twisted in fantastic ways.[/quote]

That is true for historic Christendom when relegiosity is on the decline, but not nearly so much with reguards to the South America, Africa, the east orient and other places where Catholicism is expanding.

[quote]As previously pointed out, there was a time when it could take months or years for any given group of people to find out what the news was from the other side of the known "world". That time has passed.[/quote]

Yes, and as I pointe out that is not necessairly sound reasoning. The change in communication is with reguards to speed. In "older" times it is not as though the heretic had the modern postal service while the Church had a horse and buggy, the heretic and the Church both had the same avalability to communicative technology. In fact if anything it was the Church that had the advantage in older times. In medeval Europe the Church had a ready audience in the populace who was much more religious and consiquently willing to bend their intelect to the Church's dictates. If anything the Church now has fewer means and less influence in getting its message out to oppose the latest heresy.



[quote]Back then, heresy was by no means contained so easily.[/quote]

So you say. Yet in older times the state and Church both assented to the need to protect the populace from heretical innovations, today the state no longer makes such an assent. How is heresy more easiely contained? Perhapse you could argue that the Church can more easiely warn the faithfull, I dispute that but's let's grant it for the sake of argument here, that does not mean the heresy is more easiely "contained" far from it. The Church now has almost no means of "containing" the spread of the heresy.

Moreover if containment was the end goal why not simply imprison the individual for life?

[quote]Most people were illiterate and uneducated, prone to rash and hasty judgment, had little - if any access - to information necessary for research, and had to wait for long periods of time to get word from Rome (or in some unfortunate cases, their own bishop). Heresy was and is like a spark. The difference between the threat of heresy then and the threat of heresy today is in the flammability of the kindling and the proximity to water.[/quote]


I think your reasoning is, with all due respect, unsound.

1-in the Church's justifications for burning heretics was justification contingent on commuicational ability?

2-If containment was the goal why not imprison the heretic rather than killing him?

3-why does the speed of technology matter when the capabilities of each respective parties ability to communication eas and remains equivalent?

Three main questions along with the other issues.

[Hassan]

It seems to me that rather than actually representing the Church's position or accounting for the Change in the Church's views on individual consciousness you are simply providing a plausable after the fact rationalization.

If communication and educational infrastructure broke down would the Church be once again obligated to kill heretics?

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1732190' date='Dec 19 2008, 06:33 PM']It seems to me that rather than actually representing the Church's position or accounting for the Change in the Church's views on individual consciousness you are simply providing a plausable after the fact rationalization.

If communication and educational infrastructure broke down would the Church be once again obligated to kill heretics?[/quote]


If our ability to safely contain physical threats broke down then we would be morally capable - and perhaps obligated - to utilize capital punishment.

So yes, the same would apply for spiritual threats.

Physical threats are contained by prisons.
Spiritual threats are contained by education.

[Ziggamafu]

I should add that this is just as much an exploration of history and moral theology for me as it is for anyone else in this thread. I certainly had no intentions of getting sucked into a debate on this topic; I merely gave my opinion and I am sort of figuring it out as I go. I see the sense in St. Thomas More's arguments...I suppose I am attempting to more clearly articulate (for myself, really) what it is that I "see".

[Tinkerlina]

[quote name='Lena' post='1731670' date='Dec 18 2008, 10:38 PM']Let's go on a witch hunt while we're at it though I'm kidding! How ludicrous would it be to even think about burning someone on a stake?? It would never be justifiable, that's inhumane.[/quote]

I agree-I'm having difficulty understanding why it was [i]ever[/i] allowed-I realize times were very different but it still seems horrible...-Katie

[Tinkerlina]

[quote name='LouisvilleFan' post='1731888' date='Dec 19 2008, 09:36 AM']I'm not buying these arguments that heresy itself was punishable by death. I think it's got everything to do with the nature of monarchies and enforcing the king's authority, which included loyalty to the king's religion. If the king is Catholic, you are Catholic; if the king is Lutheran, you are Lutheran; if the king declares himself the head of the Church in your land, you obey the king as head of the Church in your land.[/quote]

I think there is a lot of truth to what you're saying-for example, when I studied the Spanish Inquistion in my Civilization of Spain course at school, I was told it was more than anything a way for Isabel and Ferdinand to punish political enemies. Not that I'm in any way sanctioning the participation of the clergy in it, but there was definitely a huge, predominant political aspect. -Katie

[Maximilianus]

The Church had little to do with the Spanish Iquisition. Pope Sixtus IV tried to put a stop to the craziness by ordering the bishops to take a direct role in the trials, giving the accused legal counsel and the right to appeal their case to Rome. Ferdinand didn't like that and made the Inquisition part of the monarchy, separate from ecclesiastical authority.

Edited December 20, 2008 by Maximilianus

[Hassan]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' post='1732259' date='Dec 19 2008, 09:14 PM']If our ability to safely contain physical threats broke down then we would be morally capable - and perhaps obligated - to utilize capital punishment.

So yes, the same would apply for spiritual threats.

Physical threats are contained by prisons.
Spiritual threats are contained by education.[/quote]

Except that is not what the Church says. In the 50's the Church put out a document affirming individuals rights to religious freedom within the context of the state. Which is why I am having trouble understanding the connection to communication. Looking at the History of the Church's teaching on this I never encountered any justification based on communication, however prior to the 20th century there were denials of freedom of consciousness and religion. The Church was defending the faithfull from spiritual danger but the change was not correlative to changes in information technology but changes in the Church's view of man and the state, Church and state, and the right of the invididual.

As I understand it anyway.

[Lilllabettt]

First of all, burning at the stake is drama, drama, drama.

Second, people got burned at stakes for violating civil laws that demanded people believe certain things ... we don't have civil laws like that anymore. Maybe people thought those laws were necessary back in the day. I don't think they were, or are.

If a nation decided to make a law demanding all of its citizens convert to Catholicism or lose their life liberty or ability to pursue happiness (eg, find employment, raise a family, etc.) then yes, I think that would be a truly crummy law worthy of extreme finger wagging.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Lilllabettt' post='1732328' date='Dec 19 2008, 11:32 PM']First of all, burning at the stake is drama, drama, drama.

Second, people got burned at stakes for violating civil laws that demanded people believe certain things ... we don't have civil laws like that anymore. Maybe people thought those laws were necessary back in the day. I don't think they were, or are.

If a nation decided to make a law demanding all of its citizens convert to Catholicism or lose their life liberty or ability to pursue happiness (eg, find employment, raise a family, etc.) then yes, I think that would be a truly crummy law worthy of extreme finger wagging.[/quote]

It was not just civil law though.

[LouisvilleFan]

[quote name='Lilllabettt' post='1732328' date='Dec 19 2008, 11:32 PM']First of all, burning at the stake is drama, drama, drama.

Second, people got burned at stakes for violating civil laws that demanded people believe certain things ... we don't have civil laws like that anymore. Maybe people thought those laws were necessary back in the day. I don't think they were, or are.[/quote]

Yes, burning at the stake creates a little drama

But to your second point, I think you're projecting your own experience of democratic government into a history that knew nothing of democracy. I highly doubt people thought laws enforcing religion for the masses were necessary. Rulers thought they were necessary as a tool to enforce their rule and to control the risk of religious uprisings becoming a threat to their temporal power. This is the very reason our Savior was crucified. If you control the peoples' religion, you control the people.

[mortify]

Modern society has molded our minds so it's hard for us to understand how people in the past could value Truth so greatly. We're more content with allowing heresy to exist along side truth for the sake of tolerance than doing what we can to root out the former. Were our ancestors wrong? The modernity in me says yes but its hard to say. Even though I'm a believer it's hard for me to comprehend a future eternity being more valuable than this present body, and that's simply the influence of the society we live in. I certainly don't buy the fact that it's easier to control heresy in our day, in all honesty there is probably more heresy in the Church than there ever was before.

[Hassan]

[quote name='mortify' post='1733205' date='Dec 21 2008, 04:47 PM']Modern society has molded our minds so it's hard for us to understand how people in the past could value Truth so greatly. We're more content with allowing heresy to exist along side truth for the sake of tolerance than doing what we can to root out the former. Were our ancestors wrong? The modernity in me says yes but its hard to say. Even though I'm a believer it's hard for me to comprehend a future eternity being more valuable than this present body, and that's simply the influence of the society we live in. I certainly don't buy the fact that it's easier to control heresy in our day, in all honesty there is probably more heresy in the Church than there ever was before.[/quote]

But they key is the epistemic uncertainity of our society. If Catholics could verifiably demonstrate the truth of their religion then the logic of killing heretics follows. Contrary to the claims here killing heretics was not just the doing of corrupt secular rulers or some pragmatic necessaity due to "communication" limitations, it was taught by the Church's great theologians, part of Cannon law, and part of the Church's rejection of the rights of the individual to individual liberty of conscience. And all of these followed logically and even morally in a time where the Church's truths were undubtouble, when Aristotilian physics supported Aquinas's five ways, all other religions were obviously the work of the devil or the obstinance of the Jews. Natural Theology began to show the absurdity and silliness of atheism. In this time when the Church was more confident of its supremicy executing heretics was the morally responsible thing to do. But times have changed. As Shabbir Akhtar noted metal objects now pierce the heavens where pious believers thought the angels lived and God's kingdom resided. Biology is no longer obviously teological and natural theology now hopes simply to give believers some rational justification for their faith. And in a world where the Church's claims are no longer self evident, but rather subject to serious doubt her "truths" are no longer apparent. In a world where the truths of the Church cannot be demonstrated, are simply one defensible world view amongst others the execution of heretics can no longer be viewed as a morally responsible thing to do. The Heretics claims are as believable as the Church's so who is she to condemn a man to death.

I believe it is this fundamental epistemological turn that so drastically changed the logic.