Untitled article by C. P. B.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · March 8, 1894

Did the Church of Rome Ever Persecute?

By C. P. B.

It is most emphatically denied by the priests and bishops of Rome that “the church” ever persecuted. In “The Faith of Our Fathers,” Cardinal Gibbons gives this version of the establishment of the Inquisition:—

The Spanish Inquisition was erected by King Ferdinand, less from motives of religious zeal than from those of human policy. It was established, not so much with the view of preserving the Catholic faith, as of perpetuating the integrity of his kingdom. The Moors and Jews were looked upon not only as enemies of the altar, but chiefly as enemies of the throne. Catholics were upheld not only for their faith alone, but because they united faith to loyalty. The baptized Moors and Israelites were oppressed for their heresy because their heresy was allied to sedition.

It must be remembered that in those days heresy, especially if outspoken, was regarded not only as an offense against religion, but also as a crime against the State, and was punished accordingly. This condition of things was not confined to Catholic Spain, but prevailed across the sea in Protestant England. We find Henry VIII. and his successors pursuing the same policy in Great Britain towards their Catholic subjects, and punishing Catholicism as a crime against the State, just as Islamism and Judaism were proscribed in Spain.

It was, therefore, rather a royal and political than an ecclesiastical institution. The king nominated the inquisitors, who were equally composed of lay and clerical officials. He dismissed them at will. From the king, and not from the pope, they derived their jurisdiction, and into the king’s coffers, and not into the pope’s, went all the emoluments accruing from fines and confiscations. In a word, the authority of the Inquisition began and ended with the crown.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew is explained by the cardinal in about the same way. He says:—

In the reign of Charles IX. of France, the Huguenots were a formidable power and a seditious element in that country. They were under the leadership of Admiral Coligny, who was plotting the overthrow of the ruling monarch. The French king, instigated by his mother, Catherine de Medicis, and fearing the influence of Coligny, whom he regarded as an aspirant to the throne, compassed his assassination, as well as that of his followers in Paris, August 24th, 1572. This deed of violence was followed by an indiscriminate massacre in the French capital, and other cities of France, by an incendiary populace, who are easily aroused but not easily appeased.

Religion had nothing to do with the massacre. Coligny and his fellow Huguenots were slain not on account of their creed, but exclusively on account of their alleged treasonable designs. If they had nothing but their Protestant faith to render them odious to King Charles, they would never have been molested; for, neither did Charles nor his mother ever manifest any special zeal for the Catholic Church, nor any special aversion to Protestantism, unless when it threatened the throne.

The true attitude of the papacy toward the Inquisition is thus stated by Ranke, in his “History of the Popes,” page 58:—

When it was perceived that no conclusion was come to with the Protestants of Germany, and that at the same time, even in Italy, controversies respecting the sacraments, doubts concerning purgatory, and other speculations of great moment, as regarded the Romish ritual, were gaining ground, the pope one day asked Cardinal Caraffa “what means he could devise against these evils.” The cardinal declared that the only one was “a thorough searching inquisition.” John Alvarez de Toledo, Cardinal of Burgos, joined with him in this opinion.

The old Dominican Inquisition had long ago fallen into decay. The choice of inquisitors was committed to the monastic orders, and it frequently happened that these partook of the opinions which it was sought to put down. In Spain, the earlier form of the institution had been so far departed from, that a supreme tribunal of the Inquisition for that country had been erected there. Caraffa and Burgos, old Dominicans, both of them, both men of harsh and gloomy views of rectitude, zealots for the purity of Catholicism, austere in life, and intractable in their opinions, counselled the pope to found in Rome, on the model of that of Spain, a general supreme tribunal of the Inquisition, on which all others should be dependent. “As St. Peter,” said Caraffa, “vanquished the first heresiarchs on no other spot than Rome, so must the successor of St. Peter overcome all the heresies of the world in Rome.” The Jesuits reckon it to their honor, that their founder, Loyola, supported this proposal by a special memorial. On the 21st of July, 1542, the bull was issued.

It names six cardinals, among whom Caraffa and Toledo stood first, to be commissioners of the apostolic see, general and universal inquisitors on this side the Alps, and beyond them. It bestows on them the right to delegate ecclesiastics with similar power, to all such places as it shall seem good to them, to determine absolutely all appeals against the acts of the latter, and even to proceed without the participation of the ordinary spiritual courts. Every man, without a single exception, without any regard whatever to station or dignity, shall be subject to their jurisdiction; the suspected shall be thrown into prison, the guilty shall be punished even capitally, and their property confiscated. One restriction is imposed on the court. To punish shall be its function: the pope reserves to himself the right of pardoning the guilty who become converted. Thus shall everything be done, ordered, and accomplished, to suppress and uproot the errors that have broken out among the Christian community.

Caraffa lost not a moment in putting this bull into execution.

But even as Cardinal Gibbons states it, it is only shifting the responsibility; it is saying, just as religious persecutors say now, “The State did it.” It was, indeed, the civil power that executed the death penalty, but it was the church that defined heresy and excommunicated the heretics, delivering them up to the civil power. It was, in any event, the religious sentiment engendered by Rome that made the Inquisition not only possible but inevitable. And by no possibility can that corrupt church escape the odium. The position of the Catholic Church upon this question is thus defined by Archbishop Kenrick:—

Heresy and unbelief are crimes; that is the whole of the matter, and in Christian countries, where the Catholic religion is an essential part of the laws of the land, they will be punished as other crimes.

In the light of this utterance all that any denial of persecution by Rome means is simply that the papal church did not actually inflict the death penalty. The same defense exactly is made in behalf of Calvin who accused Servetus and prosecuted him before the civil courts. Now the disciples of Calvin declare that it was the civil authorities that put Servetus to death. So it was; but who caused the civil authorities to do it?—John Calvin. And who, in Roman Catholic countries, causes the Catholic religion to be made a part of the law of the land?—Rome. And who invokes the civil law against “heretics”?—Rome. Who then persecutes?—Rome, most assuredly.

But it is not Rome alone that seeks to shield herself from the charge of religious persecution, behind the civil law. It is denied that there has been persecution in Tennessee and Maryland; it is simply enforcing the civil law, say the modern “Protestant” apologists for modern religious persecution. Speaking of the Judefind case in Maryland, the so-called Christian Reformer recently said:—

Of course it will seem to Adventists a most unfair and unjust comparison, but the fact is that the violators of Sabbath law are to be dealt with as the violators of other laws on the statute books of our States.

This is strikingly similar to Archbishop Kenrick’s utterance, which we quote again, in order that the reader may have the two side by side. Here it is:—

What a contemptible attitude is this! “Christian” sentiment demands laws which, in effect, define heresy in the interests of the religious dogma, and then the same “Christian” sentiment disclaims the responsibility and says, “The State did it.”

Now let us put alongside this National Reform utterance (from the Christian(?) Reformer) and papal utterance (from Archbishop Kenrick) the following from Judge Hammond’s dictum in the King case in Tennessee:—

The courts cannot change that which has been done, however done, by the civil law in favor of the Sunday observers. The religion of Jesus Christ is so interwoven with the texture of our civilization and every one of its institutions, that it is impossible for any man or set of men to live among us and find exemption from its influences and restraints. Sunday observance is so essentially a part of that religion that it is impossible to rid our laws of it. So civil or religious freedom may stop short of its logic in this matter of Sunday observance. It is idle to expect in government perfect action or harmony of essential principles, and whoever administers, whoever makes, and whoever executes the laws, must take into account the imperfections, the passions, the prejudices, religious or other, and the errings of men because of these. We cannot have in individual cases a perfect observance of Sunday, according to the rules of religion; and, indeed, the sects are at war with each other as to the modes of observance. And yet no wise man will say that there shall be, therefore, no observance at all. Government leaves the warring sects to observe as they will, so they do not disturb each other; and as to the non-observer, he cannot be allowed his fullest personal freedom in all respects; largely he is allowed to do as he pleases, and generally there is no pursuit of him, in these days, as a mere matter of disciplining his conscience; but only when he definitely sets up his non-observance by ostentatious display of his disrespect for the feelings or prejudices of others.

This is only putting in legal phrase, clothing in judicial language, the same intolerant idea expressed by the so-called Protestant paper, the Christian(?) Reformer and the popish archbishop, Kenrick. The facts of history show that Rome has persecuted; her utterances show that had she the power she would persecute again, while “Protestant” utterances show that such Protestantism is no better than the papacy. C. P. B.