1. Standard memberDoctorScribbles
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    07 Oct '05 23:32
    Originally posted by lucifershammer
    [b]And that's the real reason why ivanhoe's article is crap.

    What about my post and the sources I cited? Are they crap too?[/b]
    I'll tell you after you analyze my Onion articles. I don't know why you're being unreasonable and avoiding your duty to address the points they raise.
  2. Standard memberfrogstomp
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    07 Oct '05 23:34
    Originally posted by lucifershammer
    Do you think that, if the Church simply stopped trying to defend itself, that the accusations will go away and that its credibility will be restored? That people will just forget all the myths?

    Or if the Church were to get on its knees and beg for forgiveness for all atrocities (real and imagined)? Would that stop the harangue?
    How about just saying something like " We had no business being monsters toward anybody!"
  3. Standard memberBosse de Nage
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    07 Oct '05 23:41
    Originally posted by ivanhoe
    [b]BdN: "Incorrect. The mediaeval Inquisition was created in the aftermath of the Albigensian crusade, ...... "

    You adress the moment of creating the Inquisition and one of the heresies involved, while I was adressing the reason why the Inquisition was created, namely to outlaw mob rule and arbitrary decisions by the local secular Lords. [/b]
    We're going over the same old ground again.

    Why was the Inquisition formed?

    "The first of the Medieval Inquisitions is called the Episcopal Inquisition and was established in the year 1184 by a papal bull, an official letter from the Pope, entitled Ad abolendam; "For the purpose of doing away with". The Inquisition was in response to the growing Catharist heresy in southern France. It is called the "episcopal" because it was administered by local bishops, which in Greek is episcopos. The Episcopal Inquisition was not very effective for many reasons (see Medieval Inquisition).

    The Papal Inquisition in the 1230s was in response to the failures of the Episcopal Inquisition and was staffed by professionals, trained specifically for the job as decreed by the Pope. " (This is from Wikipedia. No shortage of corroborating references).

    Please note that it is a (common) mistake to call the Cathar religion a heresy because it was not related to Christian beliefs in any way. Do you grasp that?

    Your fantasy of the Inquisition as some sort of humanitarian mission is flatly insane.

    The idea that we are somehow in a better position to be moral today is ridiculous. Take St. Francis of Assisi, or St. John of the Cross. Your precious Inquisitors would have done well to heed their example.
  4. London
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    08 Oct '05 00:11
    Originally posted by Nemesio
    Here is the thing, Lucifershammer:

    When one writes articles that essentially say 'The Inquisition is not
    as bad as people want to admit,' without a full expression of contrition,
    that person is guilty of propeganda.

    If I were to say 'The holocaust stablized 1930s Germany by controlling
    the actions of the Jewish community,' I would expect every ...[text shortened]... you or Ivanhoe
    (well...I can believe that Ivanhoe can't) will not acknowledge it.

    Nemesio
    Alright. In the CATID thread, I also posted a link to another article demythologising the Spanish Inquisition:

    http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Dossier/1112-96/article4.html

    What are your views on it?

    Just because it is factual (and I'm not sure it all is), does not make it worthy of consideration because its wildly biased hermeneutic taints its truthful value. The fact that its content gives the impression that the Inquisition was a good thing, or at worst a 'necessary' not-so-good thing, is appalling and I cannot believe that either you or Ivanhoe (well...I can believe that Ivanhoe can't) will not acknowledge it.

    I acknowledge the article presents a skewed view of the Inquisition. I also agree that the article shows very little repentance for the real crimes committed during the Inquisition. But do Catholics (the intended audience of the article) really need to be reminded of this by the author? Maybe.

    But then, let's be honest - which of our posts don't have a biased hermeneutic? Do you really see Dr. Scribs saying "Yes, the Church has traditionally advocated punitive practices which we Westerners now consider brutal, but far less than common perception suggests"? Wasn't the statement you made in the CATID thread, "Ivanhoe: any attempt to paint the Inquisition in even a slightly positive light
    is perverse and disgusting", originated from a biased hermeneutic?

    What's the difference with Prof. Madden's article? I think the answer is - it crossed an invisible line somewhere that we all know exists. As a Catholic writer and a professional historian, he was expected to show awareness and contrition for the actual crimes of the Inquisition.

    I think the difference between me and you/Scribs is that I think there is some value to be had even in reading what might very well be blatant propaganda. Now, a Jack Chick tract might not interest me simply because I've seen it all before and I know what his credentials are. This, OTOH, was something new from a source that seems to be an expert in the field. A week ago, I wouldn't have guessed that there were people who would deliberately blaspheme to get into the Spanish Inquisition - but there were (this nugget from Prof. Madden is also mentioned in the Cornell Review article I cited in my first post - as are most of the other factual claims he makes).

    What's more, I derive value from reading material that advocates a view opposed to mine - even if it is wildly skewed - simply because it challenges my beliefs. It keeps me on my toes (metaphorically speaking). It invites me to look into the truth of beliefs that I might never have thought about. Even if I don't change those beliefs, it invites me to learn something simply in the process of refuting counter-arguments.

    And that, perhaps, is why I was disappointed with the simple "This is crap" response.
  5. Standard memberDoctorScribbles
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    08 Oct '05 00:18
    Originally posted by lucifershammer
    Do you really see Dr. Scribs saying "Yes, the Church has traditionally advocated punitive practices which we Westerners now consider brutal, but far less than common perception suggests"?
    Is that the purpose of this thread, to get me and others to affirm the truth of that statement?
  6. Felicific Forest
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    08 Oct '05 00:222 edits
    Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
    BdN: "Why was the Inquisition formed?"

    Of course the Inquisition was formed to adress heresies and the "heretics" called the Cathars.

    BdN: "Please note that it is a (common) mistake to call the Cathar religion a heresy because it was not related to Christian beliefs in any way. Do you grasp that?"

    You do not look upon the Cathars as heretics but the fact remains the Secular and Ecclesiastical authorities at the time did. I cannot change that historical fact. Whether I look upon them as heretics or not is not the issue here.

    A fact is that the Medieval Inquisition introduced an improvement in the existing judicial system in Europe. You keep ignoring this point. You are not even denying it. Does this mean you agree ?

    BdN: "Your fantasy of the Inquisition as some sort of humanitarian mission is flatly insane. .....

    I didn't claim this. My claim is that introducing the Medieval Inquisition was an improvement of the existing European judicial system. That is something completely different. Simply labelling this claim as "flatly insane" will not suffice in a rational discussion I'm afraid.

    BdN: " The idea that we are somehow in a better position to be moral today is ridiculous.

    If you read the last part of my previous post I am puzzled why you think I'm claiming this.

    However, there has been a development in judicial, moral and cultural thinking in Europe throughout the ages. Introducing a formal investigation into the accusations and (re)introducing judicial rules in the twelfth century is a part of that development. No more but also no less.

    BdN: "Take St. Francis of Assisi, or St. John of the Cross. Your precious Inquisitors would have done well to heed their example"

    Please, they are not my "precious" inquisitors and St. Francis and St.John of the Cross were not in the difficult, ungrateful and till this day controversial business of handling difficult complicated national and international conflicts and restoring law and order. You're not being fair in my view.
  7. Felicific Forest
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    08 Oct '05 00:582 edits
    http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Dossier/1112-96/article4.html

    "Discrediting the Black Legend brings up the sticky subject of revisionism. Re-investigating history is only invalid if it puts an agenda ahead of reality. The experts - once true believers in the Inquisition myth - were not out to do a feminist canonization of Isabella or claim that Tomas de Torquemada was a Marxist. Henry Kamen of the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona said on camera that researching the Inquisition's archives "demolished the previous image all of us (historians) had."

    http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Dossier/1112-96/article4.html

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    I admire scientists who dare to speak out against popular and politically correct myths. It is not politically correct to speak in favor of the Roman-Catholic Church. On the contrary, it is politically correct to picture the Roman-Catholic Church as the incarnation of pure evil, as the incarnation of satan himself. People like the Protestant reverend Ian Paisley, who describes the Pope as the Anti-Christ, form the vanguard in this respect. In this slipstream of age-old Anti-Catholicism the liberals may look upon their anti-Church stances as highly modern and original, but their stances are almost as old as the road to Rome.
  8. London
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    08 Oct '05 01:211 edit
    Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
    I'll tell you after you analyze my Onion articles. I don't know why you're being unreasonable and avoiding your duty to address the points they raise.
    LOL. Of course.

    The first half of the Paul Tobin article deals with the Albigensian heresy, which has been discussed somewhat extensively in the 'Papal Infallibility' thread. The second half deals with the Inquisition proper.

    Right away, we can see that the author does not show any awareness that the Inquisition was not a single unified movement (the first myth in my original post).

    Next, he provides a quote from the Swiss Protestant theologian / Church historian, Walter Nigg. The quote is from James A. Haught's 'Holy Horrors'. I presume the quote itself is from Nigg's 1962 book 'The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages'. I'll give Nigg the benefit of the doubt here, because the history of the Spanish Inquisition prior to the work of Henry Kamen and others in the late 1960s were largely traceable back to Protestant sources.

    Nigg's description of the horror of Inquisition torture contains several inaccuracies - the most important of which deals with bloodshed (something the Inquisitions were forbidden to do by the Church). Could he actually be describing secular torture here? Possibly. He also says that three-four hours of torture were not uncommon; in fact, torture sessions rarely exceeded an hour (1).

    Tobin then goes on to a description of the mentality of the Inquisitors as described by Peter de Rosa in 'Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy'. How much of this is de Rosa's own imagination at work (the book reviewer at Publishers Weekly did say that "In the worst proselytizing tradition, [de Rosa] ... overstates familiar arguments, bludgeoning the reader with his dossier against the Church" ), I cannot say. So I'll move on.

    Next, Tobin mentions that the Inquisition was used against witchcraft (although he probably deliberately avoids implicating the Inquisition in the Great European Witchhunt - which would be the last of the myths mentioned in my first post) c.1492. Presumably, he is referring to the Papal Bull by Pope Innocent VIII, 'Summis Desiderantes' (1484) which did authorize the Inquisitions to deal with witchcraft. However, as I mentioned earlier, the Inquisition had the lowest conviction rate of all authorities (and the majority of witch trials were by secular authorities) (3).

    Then he provides the horrific story of Chevalier de la Barre (d. 1766), who was tortured and killed by the Inquisition. Only problem is - there was no Inquisition in France. de la Barre was killed by the secular authorities (4).

    Well?

    ---
    (1) http://www.summerlands.com/crossroads/remembrance/_remembrance/torture.htm
    (2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum
    (3) http://www.cog.org/witch_hunt.html
    (4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_la_Barre
  9. London
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    08 Oct '05 01:25
    Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
    Is that the purpose of this thread, to get me and others to affirm the truth of that statement?
    That statement is true, whether you affirm it or not.

    As I've said before, the purpose of the thread is an open, honest, fact-based discussion of the Inquisition.
  10. Standard memberDoctorScribbles
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    08 Oct '05 02:32
    Originally posted by lucifershammer
    Well?
    I was refering to these:

    http://www.timeforchess.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=30891&page=1
  11. London
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    08 Oct '05 10:15
    Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
    I was refering to these:

    http://www.timeforchess.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=30891&page=1
    Still playing games, Doctor.
  12. Standard memberBosse de Nage
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    10 Oct '05 08:30
    Originally posted by ivanhoe
    Ivanhoe: "If you ask me the question "Why should anyone ever be put in prison or put to death for believing heresy? That is not the way of the Gospel, nor the path of reason." you are again failing to put things in the necessary perspective as I pointed out above."

    The issue of whether or not to put heretics to death had been debated within the Church since early times, with plenty of good rational (Christian) argument against burning them. Read the Catholic Encyclopedia--you'll see that the turning point in favour of roasting heretics came with the Cathars. Then the CE goes on with its own mythology--that the Crusade was necessary to keep Europe from falling apart due to the incipient Cathar menace. The Crusade is justified as a sort of pre-emptive strike.

    With regard to your historical context, "...most learned figures in the Church who are still on record opposed the murder of heretics. Peter Canter, the most learned man of his time says:

    Whether they be convicted of error, or freely confess their guilt, Catharists are not to be put to death, at least not when they refrain from armed assaults upon the Church. For although the Apostle said, A man that is a heretic after the third admonition, avoid, he certainly did not say, Kill him. Throw them into prison, if you will, but do not put them to death.

    So far was S Bernard of Clairvaux from agreeing with the methods of the people of Cologne, that he laid down the axiom:

    By persuasion, not by violence, are men to be won to the Faith."

    However,

    "Alarmed especially by the spread of the Albigenses, the popes issued increasingly stringent instructions as to the methods for dealing with heretics. But they [the Cathars] translated the New Testament into Provençal, and, soon after, those reading it for the first time saw, in the Scarlet Woman of Revelation, the Roman Church. In 1209, Innocent III lost his cool, and began preaching a crusade against the Albigenses.
    ...
    The last discourse of S Dominic to the Albigenses betrays a man who, as H.G. Wells puts it, “has lost his faith in truth because his truth has not prevailed”:

    For many years I have exhorted you in vain, with gentleness, preaching, praying and weeping. But according to the proverbs of my country, “Where blessing can accomplish nothing, blows may avail”, we shall arouse against you princes and prelates, who, alas! will arm nations and kingdoms against this land… and thus blows will avail where blessings and gentleness have been powerless."

    And so on and so on. The quotes come from http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0811Inquisition.html.
  13. London
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    10 Oct '05 08:50
    Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
    Ivanhoe: "If you ask me the question "Why should anyone ever be put in prison or put to death for believing heresy? That is not the way of the Gospel, nor the path of reason." you are again failing to put things in the necessary perspective as I pointed out above."

    The issue of whether or not to put heretics to death had been debated within the ...[text shortened]... so on and so on. The quotes come from http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0811Inquisition.html.
    Good post. Makes a case based on historical evidence. Gets my rec (although I don't agree with Wells that St. Bernard lost his faith).
  14. Standard memberBosse de Nage
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    10 Oct '05 09:03
    Originally posted by lucifershammer
    Good post. Makes a case based on historical evidence. Gets my rec (although I don't agree with Wells that St. Bernard lost his faith).
    Would you say the article is reasonably balanced or a propaganda piece?
  15. London
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    10 Oct '05 09:09
    Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
    Would you say the article is reasonably balanced or a propaganda piece?
    As I mentioned in the CATID thread, I take a rather broad view of propaganda.

    In this case, I would say the article is definitely propaganda - it starts off as a refutation of, what I would think was, a Catholic historian's position; links the Church's opposition to Catharism to its opposition to capitalism (does that sound surprising from an American politics POV?) etc.

    But that doesn't mean the arguments are not worthy of consideration. Now, if we could only convince Scribs of that ...
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