Papal Punishments for Heretics
The following testimony in proof that the persecuting spirit which caused so many martyrdoms in the Dark Ages is still retained and justified by the papacy, was printed recently by a leading Catholic journal of Cologne, Germany, being quoted from a book written by a Jesuit, Father Lucca, and which appeared in Rome as late as 1901:— The church has decided on various punishments for the heretics: (1) The secular government must, at the command and by the direction of the church, inflict the punishment of death on heretics, and can not refuse to take charge of those who have been handed over to the secular arm by the church for death; (2) this punishment is to be inflicted not only on the adults who have fallen away from the faith, but also on those who have been baptized, and with their mother's milk have imbibed heresy, and when grown up pertinaciously adhere to it.—“Institutiones Juris Ecclesiastici,” Vol. I, page 261. German Catholics are now trying to establish the claim that this statement does not correctly represent the position of Rome to-day. But if such a principle of procedure was right in former times, it must be right now; and it is the boast of Rome herself that “the church never changes.”