Path: christian
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From: gt7122b@prism.gatech.edu (Randal Lee Mandock)
Subject: Inquisition (was Re: Christianity & Slavery: A Commentary...
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
References: <4dcshj$7fq@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4dfchu$98v@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4f6pmh$5ue@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> <4f9h54$8da@heidelberg.rutgers.edu>
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

>In article <4f6pmh$5ue@heidelberg.rutgers.edu>,
>hobbes95 <hobbes95@richmond.infi.net> wrote:
>So let s talk about the Church s "truth." Since you seem to know the
>catholic church so well, I m sure you are familiar with the time of
>Galileo. It was during a time when the Inquisition was still going
>strong, when thousands of human beings were burned alive for
>committing the crime of daring to think something other than what the
>"Church" deemed "truth." Remember the Religious "auto-da-fe" (act of
>faith)?" For those who don t know, it was the ceremonious burning
>alive of convicted heretics (daring to think for themselves and/or
>believe an unsanctioned "truth"). According to James A. Haught s book
>HOLY HORRORS, a Dominican friar, Thomas de Torquemada, burned alive at
>least 2000. Pope Innocent IV (can you beat that name?) authorized
>torture in 1252, and by Galileo s time, such horrors were in full
>swing. In the auto-da-fe sometimes as many as 1500 were burned alive.
>All this sanctioned by the pope.
  <text deleted>  
>Before we continue with this rather useless argument, may I suggest
>you take some objective courses history. You might just be surprised
>at what lengths the Catholic church went to preserve its dogma and
>suppress truth.

History lesson follows.  

______________________________________________________________________         


              Catholic Historians on the Inquisition


In his conclusion on the nature of the mediaeval heresy , A. L.
Maycock ("The Inquisition," 1927, Harper Brothers Publishers, pp. 97-
104) writes the following.

    If we have succeeded in doing so with even the smallest degree of
  coherence and right proportion, it will have been made perfectly
  clear that the Monastic Inquisition came into being to fulfil an
  absolutely necessary function.  It was an indispensable adjunct or
  throttle to the secular powers.  The secular significance of heresy
  depends largely upon the peculiar structure of the society in which
  it appears.  This is so because in any society a subversive doctrine
  necessarily comes into conflict with the Sovereign Power,
  necessarily strikes at the Sovereign loyalty.  Therefore in a
  theocracy the scope of what is categorized as heresy is vastly
  greater than in any other kind of social structure.  An opinion that
  may be termed unpatriotic or even treasonable under a secular
  monarchy will be termed heretical under a theocracy.
    Not that the real nature of heresy is in any way variable.  From
  the Catholic point of view Communism - to take a case in point - is
  just as much a heresy today as it was in the thirteenth century.
  But the scale of values has changed.  There is a different standard
  of judgments.  Today the Sovereign loyalty is to the nation; and
  Communism is seen primarily as subversive of national security
  rather than as a rejection of one or other dogma of the Christian
  Faith.
    If, however, the interests of Church and State are identical - if,
  that is, the State exists within the Church rather than vice versa -
  it is clear that the position will be reversed....
    ...The Monastic Inquisition...was charged with the task, not only
  of preserving the integrity of the Faith, but of preserving the
  security of society.  Its failure to do so would have involved a
  complete collapse of Western Christendom.  As a fact, of course, it
  did not fail....Thanks to the Inquisition, the Albigensian heresy
  never assumed the character of a pressing, desperate menace.
    Although they loom in such black impressiveness throughout Lea's
  huge volumes, the severities of the thirteenth-century Inquisition
  were both local and infrequent...  The Inquisition was almost
  unknown in Northern France and the Scandinavian kingdoms.  It
  appeared almost momentarily in England at the time of the
  suppression of the Templars; Portugal and Castile knew nothing of it
  before the days of Ferdinand and Isabella.  Even in countries like
  Aragon, Languedoc and Northern Italy, which were its principal
  fields of activity, it operated almost exclusively in the larger
  towns and in the few recognized centres of heretical resistance.  It
  was not established in Venice until 1289; and the Inquisitorial
  archives of that city show that the death penalty was inflicted by
  the secular power on only six occasions....
    It is unfortunate that the whole history of the Inquisition has
  necessarily been so closely bound up with matters of religious
  controversy.  On the one hand, one comes across the type of writer
  who can never even mention the Catholic Church without referring in
  parenthesis to "the atrocious cruelties of the Inquisition;" which
  is as though a man could not mention the word "monarch" without
  enlarging upon the villanies of the Star Chamber.  On the other
  hand, there is the apologist, who approaches the Inquisition in a
  somewhat furtive manner, with a pot of whitewash concealed not very
  skilfully behind his back.  He tends continually to lose the thread
  of his discourse... The truth is, of course, that uncritical abuse
  and uncritical apology are equally unnecessary.  That historian is
  successful who so presents the facts as to show that the Inquisition
  came into being in response to a perfectly definite need; that, in
  the matter of heresy, it introduced law, system and even justice
  where had been limitless scope for the gratification of political
  jealousy, personal animosity and popular hatred; and, finally, that
  the ordinary, normal-minded person today, if sudddenly dumped in the
  mediaeval environment, would probably have given his heartiest
  support to its establishment....
    ....In truth it is useless, as Mr. Turberville points out, to
  attempt "to read into the mind and conduct of the men of mediaeval
  times a humanistarianism which is the peculiar product of the modern
  world and which they would not even have understood" ["Mediaeval
  Heresy and the Inquisition," p. 241].  Lea comments justly upon "the
  smile of amused surprise" with which Gregory IX and Gregory XI would
  have listened to the thesis that the Church could and did have no
  share in the infliction of the captial punishment for heresy.  The
  heretic was sent to the stake, not for the benefit of his soul nor
  in order to force him to change his beliefs, but to prevent him from
  spreading heresy amongst others.  His fate was intended to be a
  salutary warning to the people; witness Frederick's insistence that
  the ceremony should take place "in conspectu populi."  We do not
  hang murderers to cure them of a proclivity for murdering, but to
  warn others against the practice....
    ...."What you need for true history," says Mr. Belloc, "is by no
  means an agreement with the philosophy of the time that you describe
  (you may be wholly opposed to that philosophy), but at least a full
  comprehension of it and an understanding that those who worked its
  human affairs were men fundamentally the same as ourselves."

In discussing the methods of procedure in criminal cases, Maycock 
(op. cit., pp. 115-116) has this to say about the _Inquisitio_.

    In the first place it is of the utmost importance that several
  general points in connection with the work of the Holy Office should
  be clearly apprehended and borne in mind throughout.  All culpable
  actions of whatever kind fall into one of three categories.  An
  infringement of the moral law is necessarily a _sin_ against God; it
  may also be an _injury_ to an individual, or a _crime_ against the
  State, or both.  The position of the Inquisition was, therefore, as
  follows.  It was concerned to find out whether the accused was or
  was not guilty of a certain sin, the sin of heresy and rebellion
  against God's truth.  The Inquisitor acted simply as an official of
  the spiritual power.  But by the agreement of Church and State this
  particular sin had been declared also a crime, an offence against
  the State.  And since wilful persistence in rebellion against God
  cannot be punished by man, all penal action against the heretic was
  that of a secular power punishing a secular crime.  Strictly
  speaking, the Inquisition had nothing to do with it; and the
  Inquisitor, in abandoning the impenitent heretic to the secular arm,
  simply withdrew the protection of the Church from a hardened sinner,
  declaring that he had placed himself in wilful opposition to the law
  of God and could therefore be punished only by the law of man.
    But if the heretic showed any signs whatever of a desire to amend
  his ways and make full abjuration of his errors, there was no longer
  any question of a secular crime.  The Inquisition was first and
  foremost a penitential and proselytizing office, not a penal
  tribunal.  Its one desire was to secure from the accused a promise
  of obedience to the Church.  It was this feature, no doubt, which
  encouraged de Maistre to declare that the Inquisition was the most
  merciful tribunal in all history.  The statement sounds fantastic
  and is unquestionably an exaggeration of the facts.  Yet it is not
  altogether without foundation.  For all secular justice aims at
  establishing the guilt of the accused simply in order to allocate
  the proper punishment.  The Inquisition, on the other hand, desired
  only an acknowledgment of guilt - an acknowledgment that heresy was
  a guilty and execrable thing - in order that the accused might
  become reconciled with the Church.  The Inquisitor, as Mr. Nickerson
  remarks, was in the unique position of a judge who is always trying
  to turn himself into a father-confessor.  Actually the Inquisition
  inflicted no punishments at all; its whole plan of action was
  penitential and not penal.  All the Inquisitors invariably spoke of
  their ministrations in this sense.  They were out to convert and
  reconcile, not to condemn.  As far as they were concerned, heresy
  was not a crime at all, but a sin for which, by sacramental
  confession and promise of amendment, one could obtain full
  absolution.
     
Jean Guiraud critiques the functioning of the Inquisition in "The
Mediaeval Inquisition" (1929, Burns, Oates & Washbourne Ltd., pp. 85-
88, 102-104).

    The opponents of the Church have a made a great case against her
  because of the tortures of the Inquisition.  The judges of the Holy
  Office are usually represented in the guise of monks presiding over
  the most frightful tortures in order to extort confessions.  For a
  long time there was shown at Carcassonne a room known as the
  Question Room, and all kinds of stories were told accompanied by the
  exhibition of barbarous instruments more or less genuine.  We must
  refrain from any tendentious exaggeration, and allow the facts to
  speak for themselves.
    For many centuries, the Church had remained hostile to the kind of
  torture allowed by the lay tribunals.  Replying to an enquiry from
  the Bulgars, Pope Nicholas I declared in the ninth century that this
  method of enquiry 'was not allowed either by human or by divine
  laws, for confession must be spontaneous.'  Adopting the same
  formula, the Decretal of Gratian, a compilation of canon law made in
  the twelfth century, said that confession must be spontaneous and
  not extorted.  The development of Roman Law in the thirteenth
  century [Maycock, op. cit., p. 86, refers to this as a "revival" and
  "rediscovery" rather than as a spontaneous sort of development] led
  to the reintroduction of torture into civil justice; it appears in
  the Veronese Code of 1228, and in the Sicilian Constitutions of
  Frederick II in 1231.
    The Inquisition also adopted it, for it was practised by the Holy
  Office in the South of France about 1243.  Before that year, a
  certain Arnaud Bordeler of Lauzerte was put on the wooden horse, but
  no confession was extracted from him...  Shortly afterwards, a
  certain Raymond de Na Richa, of Toulouse, 'fuit tractus,' and
  confessed.
    Pope Innocent IV, in his bull 'Ad extirpanda' of May 15, 1252,
  allows the use of torture, laying down cases and conditions of its
  employment by the Holy Office.  He bases this on the use of torture
  in the royal and feudal tribunals in the case of robbers and
  brigands.
    Alexander IV on April 27, 1260, and Urban IV on August 4, 1262,
  allowed the Inquisitors themselves to be present at the torturing,
  to direct it, and to have confessions made during it taken down by
  their notaries.
    It certainly seems that some inquisitors used this rigorous method
  in a cruel manner....
    Other inquisitors were less severe.  Bernard Gui mentions torture
  in his Manual, but only briefly, which leads us to think that he did
  not make much use of it.  As for Eymeric, who always tells us of his
  own experience, he did not believe much in the efficacy of torture
  of the accused.  He says that some prefer to die rather than
  confess; others become insensible; those of a weak nature confess
  everything without distinction.  'Torture is deceiving and
  inefficacious...'
    Eymeric was not the only one who thought thus.  In the South of
  France, where the Inquisition displayed great activity in the
  thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the trial reports rarely
  mention torture.  This is pointed out, not without astonishment, by
  the American historian Lea, so hostile to the Inquisition.  'It is a
  noteworthy fact,' he says, 'that in the fragmentary documents of
  inquisitorial proceedings which have reached us, the references to
  torture are singularly few' ["History of the Inquisition of the
  Middle Ages," I, p. 423].
    The Popes had taken care to pass measures limiting the degree of
  torture, and the cases in which it was permitted to have recourse to
  it.  It was never to be carried on to the loss of a member, and
  still less until death...
    Moreover, the Manuals of the Inquisition, and especially that of
  Eymeric, point out that the question 'was only to be practised in
  grave cases, and when the presumptions of guilt were already
  strong.'  Speaking generally, to put anyone to the torture it was
  necessary to possess already what one might call a half proof of his
  crime, for instance, two 'strong indications,' in inquisitorial
  language, such as the deposition of a serious witness on the one
  hand, and on the other the evil reputation, evil morals, or again
  attempts at escape on the part of the accused ["De Cauzons," II, p.
  237].
    It was inflicted only when the other means of investigation were
  exhausted.  Lastly, it was not left to the inquisitor, excited
  perhaps by the search for the truth, to order it by himself alone.
  It required a special judgment, in which the bishop or his
  representative was to participate.  This measure was taken in 1311
  at the Council of Vienne, by Pope Clement V....
    In the last place, the gravest of all sentences was the
  condemnation to death by the stake.  Attempts have been made to take
  away the responsibility for this from the Inquisition by pointing
  out that the Church did not claim the right to pronounce captial
  sentences, and that it was the secular judge who in point of fact
  condemned to death those whom the Inquisition handed over to its
  arm, because it despaired of their conversion...  In our own time,
  it has been said that in a trial ending in the execution of the
  guilty person, the inquisitor acted only in the capacity of an
  expert determining the fact of the crime against which the civil
  power had already decreed death, and that in reality the
  responsibility for the death penalty belonged to the authority which
  had ordained it, that is, the civil power.
    This kind of reasoning is too subtle.  In point of fact, the
  Inquisition knew very well that in delivering over the heretic to
  the secular arm, it was sending him to death by the stake.  This is
  shown by the fact that the Inquisition knew of the civil ordinance
  which inflicted the death penalty, and secondly, because the
  Inquisition itself compelled the civil power to apply these
  ordinances.  The civil power was not free to release heretics
  delivered over to it by the Holy Office.  A judge or lord who did so
  would have given the impression of protecting heresy and of not
  seconding the Inquisition, and on these grounds he would have become
  a favourer of heresy, and a suspect, and therefore himself liable to
  be called upon to render account to the Holy Office.  He was bound
  to pronounce and to cause to be executed against heretics the
  _animadversio debita_, and these two words signified death.
    This was proclaimed successively by several Popes in the Decretals
  which formed part of the _Corpus Juris Cononici_ of Gregory IX, and
  in the bulls mentioned in the Manuals of the Inquisitors.  Thus
  Lucius III said in the Constitution of Verona in 1184: 'The heretic
  delivered over to the secular arm ought to be punished by the
  latter...'  Innocent III echoed this in the Council of the Lateran
  in 1215...  Innocent IV again said in his famous bull _Ad
  extirpanda_: 'When persons have been condemned for heresy, either by
  the bishop, or by his vicar, or by the inquisitors, and delivered to
  the secular arm, the podestat or rector of the city ought to take
  charge of them immediately, and in five days at latest, apply to
  them the laws passed against them.'
    We must therefore not hesitate to admit what the texts clearly
  prove: The Inquisition itself shouldered the responsibility for the
  sentences which were pronounced by the civil power in consequence of
  its own judgment.  We may, however, add that this burning at the
  stake which is so revolting to our feelings was not invented by the
  Church but by the civil power; by the Roman emperors against the
  Manichaeans, by Robert the Pious against the Neo-Manichaeans of
  Orleans, and lastly by the Emperor Frederick II, who, in his
  constitution of 1224, enacted that a heretic declared such by the
  judgment of the religious authority was to be burnt in the name of
  the civil authority.
    The Church, in delivering the condemned persons to the secular
  arm, recommended them to its clemency, and the formula in which this
  was done has often been regarded merely as a piece of irony in very
  bad taste.  But that is not the case; in speaking thus, the
  ecclesiastical judge had as his aim the preventing of those
  subsidiary tortures which preceded the putting to death, and
  constituted a cruel aggravation of the pain.  The Church never
  allowed applications of red-hot iron, mutilation of members,
  breaking of bodies by the torture of the wheel, which were practised
  by secular justice right up to the eighteenth century, and which, at
  the execution of Damiens, aroused the unhealthy curiosity of the
  most refined and most 'sensitive' ladies!

The following account is taken from "Isabella of Spain," by William
Thomas Walsh (1930, republ. in 1987 by TAN, pp. 272-275).

    The chroniclers of his time - and they are frank enough in laying
  bare the weaknesses of great men - unanimously pay tribute to his
  lofty character, his administrative efficiency, and the confidence
  he inspried in the King and Queen.  Two Popes, Sixtus IV and
  Alexander V, praised his zeal and his wisdom.  Severe he was with
  those whom he believed guilty, that is undeniable.  But it is not
  true that he enjoyed inflicting pain for the mere sake of
  persecuting; nor was he a fanatic, as Savonarola was.  A fanatic is
  a man from whom some idea, true or false, has shut out part of
  reality.  But Torquemada saw the world about him very clearly, and
  knew just what he was doing.  And money meant so little to him that
  he spent all of the great sums given him by the grateful King and
  Queen out of the confiscations, on various charitable and religious
  works - built the beautiful monastery of Saint Thomas Aquinas at
  Avila, enlarged the one of Santa Cruz at Segovia, and erected some
  fine buildings in his native town of Torquemada.
    The selection of Torquemada, as Lea admits, "justified the wisdom
  of the sovereigns."  He commenced with calm energy to reform and
  reorganize the Holy Office.  He discharged Inquisitors who were
  unjust or temperamentally unfit, and named others in whom he had
  confidence.  In general he made the procedure of the tribunal more
  lenient, and he seems to have striven in every way possible to avoid
  the mistakes and abuses of the earlier French Inquisitors.  He
  forbade the Inquisitors and other persons attached to the Holy
  Office to receive presents, under pain of excommunication,
  dismissal, restitution and a fine of double the gift - and he was a
  man to enforce his regulations.  He insisted upon clean and well
  ventilated prisons which were far better than those maintained by
  the civil authorities all over Europe.  Every effort was made to
  safeguard the legal rights of the accused person; he was allowed
  counsel, and he could name his enemies, whose testimony, if they
  were among the witnesses, was then discarded.  Torture was used, but
  sparingly, and only when other means failed to elicit a confession
  from one against whom there was strong evidence.  Secret absolution
  was allowed where the crime had been secret....
    If we remember that heresy was considered very much like high
  treason, and that high treason was punished everywhere in Europe not
  only by the most cruel kind of death but by confiscation of the
  estates of the guilty, the attitude of the Spanish sovereigns and of
  the Holy Office seems moderate by contrast....
    Many of the 2,000 victims of Torquemada would undoubtedly have
  been put to death by the criminal courts of the State, even if there
  had been no Inquisition.  For he enlarged the scope of the tribunal
  to include numerous offenses that were only  "implicit" heresy.
  Thus the Inquisition punished bigamists, blasphemers, church
  robbers, priests who married women and deceived them as to their
  status, priests who seduced women and induced them not to confess
  the sin, usurers, employees of the Inquisition who violated female
  prisoners, mixers of love potions, pretended saints and mystics, and
  "all who speculated on the credulity of the public."
    If the institution is to be judged, as de Maistre insisted, not
  only by the evils it caused but by those it prevented, the verdict
  of history must be that in the long run the Spanish Inquisition
  proved to be a life-saving organism, in the sense that it averted
  more deaths that it caused.  Not only was Spain free from the
  terrible religious wars that cost hundreds of thousands of lives in
  the countries where Protestantism obtained a foothold, but she
  escaped almost completely the terrors of witchburning, which claimed
  100,000 victims in Germany and 30,000 in Great Britain [Lea is
  cited, "The Inquisition of Spain"].  When the witch-hunting craze
  swept over Protestant Europe, Spain was not immune from that curious
  impulse to persecute; but the Inquisitors claimed jurisdiction over
  witchcraft and necromancy, and after an investigation they announced
  that the whole business was a delustion.  A dabbler in the black art
  was whipped or penanced here and there, but few if any lives were
  lost [Lea is cited, "The Inquisition of Spain," vol. IV, pp. 217-
  224].
    If Vacandard is right in estimating that about one-tenth of the
  persons accused where executed in the early Inquisition against the
  Cathari, it would appear that Torquemada's courts were far more
  merciful.  For during his whole regime more than 100,000 persons
  were placed on trial, but only two percent - about 2,000 - were put
  to death.  In other words, Torquemada's Inquisition was only a fifth
  as deadly as the thirteenth century tribunal.

Walsh continues his critique of the Spanish Inquisition in "Characters
of the Inquisition" (1940, republ. in 1987 by TAN, pp. 173-175).

    How many deaths in all was he responsible for during the whole of
  his career?  The monstrous figures accepted by generations of
  Protestant Englishmen have of course been drastically revised.
  Wherever actual records of the Inquisition have come to light, they
  have refuted the swollen figures of Llorente, who set in motion the
  legend of "bloody Torquemada."  Pulgar, secretary to Queen
  Isabel...says that in her whole reign 2,000 persons were put to
  death by the State, after the Inquisition had handed them over as
  impenitent, relaxed or pertinacious.  This number included those
  convicted not only of heresy...blasphemy and other offenses directly
  religious, but bigamy, sodomy and certain other crimes, which in
  Spain were dealt with by the Inquisition instead of the civil
  courts.  This figure is now generally accepted, even by anti-
  Catholic historians.  If it is correct, Torquemada was responsible
  for perhaps half or more - let us say, at a hazard, between 1,000
  and 1,500.  Bernaldez, who was chaplain to his successor, wrote that
  from 1481 to 1488, seven hundred persons from all parts of Andalusia
  were burned in Sevilla; while 5,000 were sentenced to "perpetual"
  imprisonment, though five years later they were released...  Among
  those burned, according to the _Cura de los Palacios_, were three
  priests, three or four friars, and a doctor of divinity called
  Savariego, "a great preacher and a great falsifier and heretical
  imposter..."
    One of the few local Tribunals for which accurate statistics have
  been found is that of Barcelona.  The court was established by
  Torquemada in 1488.  In the ten years following there were thirty-
  one _autos de fe_.  Ten persons from the city or the country round
  about were strangeled and then burned, thirteen were burned alive,
  fifteen were burned dead, 430 were burned ineffigy, 116 were given
  penances, with prison sentences; and 304 were reconciled after
  voluntary confessions.
    An analysis of these figures will give some idea of how severe
  Torquemada's Inquisition was in practice.  Here we have 888
  accusations.  Of the persons accused, 430 escaped, leaving only the
  poor satisfaction of burning their images; and 15 were dead.  There
  remained in the hands of the Inquisitors 443 persons.  Of these, 304
  were released without punishment, and told to go and sin no more.
  Of the remaining 139 (less than a third), the vast majority, 116,
  were sentenced to terms in prison, whose durations are not stated.
  Twenty-three were executed, ten of them with the privilege
  (considered an act of mercy) of being strangled before being burned.
  Of those accused and arrested, the Inquisitors turned over about
  five percent to the State for execution.  One prisoner out of twenty
  was put to death in the Barcelona district.
    If we may accept the estimate that in Torquemada's entire regime
  100,000 prisoners passed before his Tribunals, and if we take
  Pulgar's estimate of 2,000 executions for the reign of Queen Isabel,
  including the early days of Morillo and San Martin and the later
  administrations of Deza, the percentage becomes even more favorable
  to the Inquisitor General.  Hardly more than one percent of all the
  prisoners in Spain, during Torquemada's term in office, could have
  been executed.
    If we compare these figures with those of Bernard Gui in
  thirteenth century France, we find the percentage of executions
  considerably less, both in Spain as a whole, and in the Barcelona
  district.  The conclusion forces itself upon us that Torquemada made
  the Inquisition decidedly more merciful.

Elphege Vacandard offers a suitable conclusion to this brief treatment
of the Inquisition by citation of eminent historians.  From "The
Inquisition," 1908, pp. 208-257; _in_ "Readings in the History of
Western Civilization," ed. by Thomas P. Neill, 1960, Newman Press, pp.
152-153):

    But even if we grant the good faith and good will of the founders
  and judges of the Inquisition - we speak only, be it understood, of
  those who acted conscientiously - we must still maintain that their
  idea of justice was far inferior to ours...
    The Church in a measure felt this, for to enforce these laws she
  always had recourse to the secular arm...
    But in abandoning the system of force, which she formerly used in
  union with the State, does not the Church seem to condemn to a
  certain degree her past?
    Even if today she were to denounce the Inquisition [which,
  incidentally, JPII has done publicly in terms of its abuses], she
  would not thereby compromise her divine authority.  Her office on
  earth is to transmit to generation after generation the deposit of
  revealed truths necessary for man's salvation.  That to safeguard
  this treasure she uses means in one age which a later age denounces,
  merely proves that she follows the customs and ideas in vogue around
  her.  But she takes good care not to have men consider her attitude
  the infallible and eternal rule of absolute justice.  She readily
  admits that she may sometimes be deceived in the choice of means of
  government.  [Vacandard's statements here pertain only in a
  disciplinary sense, i.e., men can fail in what they _do_, but the
  Church cannot fail in what she _teaches_ as absolute truth.]  The
  system of defence and protection that she adopted in the Middle Ages
  succeeded at least to some extent.  We cannot maintain that it was
  absolutely unjust....
    But perhaps men blame her for having abandoned and betrayed the
  cause of toleration, which she so ably defended in the beginning.
  Do not let us exaggerate.  There was, undoubtedly, a period in which
  she did not deduce from the principle she was the first to teach,
  all its logical consequences.  The laws she enforced against
  heretics prove this.  But it is false to say that, while in the
  beginning she insisted strongly on the rights of conscience, she
  afterwards totally disregarded them.  In fact, she exercised
  constraint only over her own stray children.  But while she acted so
  cruelly toward them, she never ceased to respect the consciences of
  those outside her fold.  She always interpreted the _compelle
  intrare_ to imply with regard to unbelievers moral constraint, and
  the means of gentleness and persuasion.  If respect for human
  liberty is today dominant in the thinking world, it is due chiefly
  to her.
    In the matter of tolerance, the Church has only to study her own
  history.  If, during several centuries she treated her rebellious
  children with greater severity than those alien to her fold, it was
  not from a want of consistency.  And if today she manifests to every
  one signs of her maternal kindness, and lays aside for ever all
  physical constraint, she is not following the example of non-
  Catholics, but merely taking up again the interrrupted tradition of
  her early Fathers.

gt7122b@prism.gatech.edu