CMI: What about bad things done by the Church?
By Dr Jonathan Sarfati | Published 23 Apr, 2014
https://creation.com/en/articles/bad-things-by-church
I highly appreciate putting Breivik in his right category by quoting him:
“If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.”
Footnoted:
See also Bergman, J., “Anders Breivik—Social Darwinism leads to mass murder”, J. Creation 26(1):48–53, 2012; Sarfati, J., Norway terrorist: more media mendacity; creation.com/breivik, 11 August 2011.
Not the least because as an avowed Fundie (as the word is used it covers a combination of Biblical creationism and opposition to abortion, and dito for a Catholic stating yes to 4 of the 5 "fundamentals" from back then, we have a different view of the atonement), I have come, here in France, under attack pretty directly after Breivik's deed and the Norwegian misreport about him.
I will not quibble against what's said about the Crusades, wars overall, or the role of Islam in religious wars. The section on the Salem Witch Trials was not bad, as a Catholic I can point to the Inquisitor who ended witch burnings by 1620 by asking the question if a witch's memory of imagined meetings with Satan is a valid confession of an actual compact (he concluded to the negative).
IRA
The two exceptions would be IRA and the Inquisition. As to the 1970's IRA in Northern Ireland, this is correct. However, it is heir to an IRA that was active in 1916 and between 1919 and 1921. Catholics within it were under excommunication, but they were Catholics. Éamon de Valera hoped that God would forgive his sins later, or perhaps the excommunication was only valid for military action within it. Well, Richard Mulcahy was a military leader and a Catholic. And presumably hoped, God would forgive his sins later. Not meaning they counted actions of war as per se sinful, but we tend to sin and sometimes do sin mortally, and if absolution isn't available now, we have the choice between putting off confession or leaving the worldly business that fell under excommunication.
Inquisition.
I wouldn't say that the Inquisition as such was a blot on the Church. I would say the Spanish Inquisition was at a certain period (before sometime in the 17th C) something of a blot on the Inquisition. Because, that institution was meant to track heresy, not to punish Catholics for enjoying pastrami more than pork in reference to past generations. Well, to be perfectly candid, they didn't require a full reset of the menu, but they would require eating pork once out of obedience. To prove they did not consider the kashrut as binding on a Christian.
A worse blot on the Inquisition was the English one.* While St. Joan of Arc was tried in what's now France, she was tried under what was then English law, the one of 1401 De heretico comburendo. I think this is important to recall when it comes to the judgement of her voices, since English Catholicism at this point was even against Lollards on a point like laymen reading the Bible. Not that Catholicism requires every Christian, even a layman to read the Bible or even overall recommends it, but it's specific to certain contexts when that fact in and of itself can be seen as a sign of heresy. Obviously there were other points where the Lollards were actually bad and should be opposed, and back then even persecuted, to delay the Great Apostasy, but this over caution shows a lack of charity that's not typical of even the Inquisition procedures in France (where at a certain point Inquisitors were told, "no, you can't keep those Waldensians to convert them, we can't afford it, let them go!" and where Inquisition procedures against Waldensianism were replaced with social pressure, under Lewis XI if I recall rightly).
Now, as I described the goal of the Inquisition as "to delay the Great Apostasy" I'd better back it up.
On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but "after the first and second admonition," as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death. For Jerome commenting on Galatians 5:9, "A little leaven," says: "Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but one spark in Alexandria, but as that spark was not at once put out, the whole earth was laid waste by its flame."
S. Th. II—II, Question 11. Heresy
Article 3. Whether heretics ought to be tolerated?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3011.htm#article3
Note that the St. Jerome quote says "expel" ... the previous paragraph on what the heretics merit, ends in "to be not only excommunicated but even put to death." Not necessarily that there is only two steps to the scale, excommunication only or excommunication plus execution. There can be several steps in between, like social pressure (see what the 15th C. France did about Waldensians) or exile (a favourite with Byzantium). When English say that William Penn's uncle was executed or menaced with execution in Spain for disbelief in the Eucharist, the problem is, as an Englishman it is way more probable he would have been simply expelled.** Dito with Russian claims that Peter the Aleut while vititing California was offered communion in unleavened bread, rejected it because he thought only leavened bread was valid matter, and was executed in a manner ressembling the martyrdom of one James of Persia, to which his mentor Hermann of Alaska was devoted. To top this, by Jesuit Inquisitors.*** First, as a foreigner he would have been expelled. Second, denying that unleavened bread is valid matter in the Latin rite is a far lesser offense than denying the Eucharist and the Real Presence, and third, dismembering limb by limb was never an execution method of the Inquisition and Jesuits were never Inquisitors.
Now, I think the Great Apostasy has basically already happened, beginning with the Reformation (or more correct spelling D-), culminating in Communism. 1517 Luther, 1717 Desaguyliers and Anderson, 1917, Lenin. Most countries with Catholics already include too many non-believers (heretics or atheists) to repress them and where this is least so, the country is also least capable of taking such a measure without having to fear international intervention. Today, the Inquisition would be basically useless or worse. This doesn't mean I will condemn what it did, back in its day, except exceptions. I can understand that with Jonathan Sarfati's family background he's not the hugest fan of the Spanish Inquisition. But, like the English, it was partly political and included things which weren't standard in what the Inquisition is normally supposed to be, meaning from the back then Catholic motivations for it.
Concluding.
Jonathan Sarfati's article is mostly good. I think I'm not wrong to recommend it. To some, neither his article nor mine is likely to satisfy that Jesus is the Messiah, because they think that person would ussher in an era of a perfect and peaceful society at all levels of human activity on earth (and not just at a second coming, but immediately). I'd say that is misreading the prophecies. Those saying Judah and Ephraim would disarm and no longer make war with each other have been fulfilled in the 2000-year old history of Christian Palestinians (best Christmas wishes to Bethlehem!), starting in Acts 2 and 8, those saying the Lord's word of peace would go out to the nations have been fulfilled in Christian missions, the word did go out, and the prophecy didn't say everyone would obey it.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Octave of the Immaculate Conception
15.XII.2025
* "A custody battle ensued, during which the University of Paris played a key role in arranging Joan's transfer from the Burgundians to the English at Rouen for trial." p. 5, The Trial of Joan of Arc, translated and introduced by Daniel Hobbins, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England, 2005. [p. 5 is obviously still in the introduction] "et Jehanne la bonne lorraine, qu'anglois brulèrent à Rouen" (François Villon, Ballade des Dames du temps jadis). Wikipedia article Trial of Joan of Arc features "Joan of Arc is interrogated by The Cardinal of Winchester in her prison, 1431. Painting by Paul Delaroche (1797–1856), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen." The Cardinal of Winchester in question being Henry Beaufort. Even if he was not active in the trial, as some assert, the fact that her main judge was a local bishop, Cauchon, et typical of the English Inquisition. In the Spanish Inquisition of Spanish Netherlands, involved in getting Tyndale to the stake, the inquisitor Latomus was not the local bishop, and he was very careful to state heresy only after allowing Tyndale to state his views on justification (like the main historic Reformers, basically a free grace gospel). That he was killed for translating the Bible to English is a lying attempt to paint him as a "martyr for the Bible" ...
** Can't find the reference right now. Not even what his name was.
*** Search the names on Orthodox Wiki.
