a centuries old decaying church with a history of misogyny, racism, accumulation of wealth, colonialism etc.
But is that a fair assessment of a 2,000 year old Western institution that encompasses over a billion people?
It would be like me speaking of Islam as if it had no Golden Age, no Sufi literature or scientific advancements but only the Islamic conquests. In other words, I think your assessment above is decidedly emotionalist. If we have a cold evaluation of facts, the Catholic Church would surely come out as a mixed bag with both positive and negative effects on civilization, rather than the uniquely negative slant that you take which I don't think the majority of academics would support.
For example, you castigate the Church for "racism". This is somewhat strange, since I know of no magisterial documents which exhibit racism. The Church was born as a universalizing institution in the Roman Empire. In the first millennium there were African popes among people from many other far-flung comers of the Roman world. Given that the church believes it must preach a gospel to all "nations", as a salvific imperative, and has a calendar of saints filled with people of all different skin colours, races, languages and cultures; I do not agree. Europe has had terrible racism throughout its history, as have many other continents on earth, however I do not understand why one would attribute this uniquely to its traditional religion.
When the Spanish did occupy the Americas and many of the colonialists thought it meet to regard these new lands outside the known world as being frequented by sub-humans, did not Pope Paul III in 1537, in the bull
Sublimis Dei - encouraged and egged on by Catholic intellectuals such as those in the School of Salamanca - describe the colonialists "as allies of the devil" and declare their enslavement of the natives and expropriation of property "null and void"?
Pope Paul III wrote:
"...The exalted God loved the human race so much that He created man in such a condition that he was not only a sharer in good as are other creatures, but also that he would be able to reach and see face to face the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good...Satan, the enemy of the human race, who always opposes all good men so that the race may perish, has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving word of God from being preached to the nations. He has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians of the West and the South who have come to our notice in these times be reduced to our service like brute animals, under the pretext that they are lacking in the Catholic faith. And they reduce them to slavery, treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use with brute animals. Therefore, We…noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men…by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples—even though they are outside the faith…should not be deprived of their liberty or their other possessions…and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void. ..." [Ibid., pp.79-81 with original critical Latin text]
Sublimus Dei
Or what of our theologians from that period, such as the influential Spanish "School of Salamanca"?
Francisco de Vitoria, (born probably 1486, Vitoria, Álava, Castile—died August 12, 1546), Spanish theologian best remembered for his defense of the rights of the Indians of the New World against Spanish colonists and for his ideas of the limitations of justifiable warfare....
Vitoria’s anticolonial views
Vitoria was doubtful of the justice of the Spanish conquest of the New World. As a friar, he refused to agree that war might be made on people simply because they were pagans or because they refused conversion—for belief was an act of the will and could not be forced. Nor could pagans be punished for offenses against God, because Christians committed just as many such offenses as pagans...Pagans had a right to their property and to their own rulers; they were not irrational. One could not speak of discovery as if the lands had been previously uninhabited; thus the only possible justification for conquest might be the protection of the innocent from cannibalism and human sacrifice. If a Christian ruler presumed to rule over a colony, it was his duty to give it benefits equal to those of the home country and to send efficient ministers to see just laws observed. The Indians were as much subjects of the king of Spain “as any man in Sevilla.”
Vitoria’s arguments, involving the application of moral principles, led to his being often consulted by the emperor Charles V...In 1539 the emperor himself wrote to inquire about the possibility of sending 12 “learned and pious friars” to Mexico to found a university, and a second time to ask for some of Vitoria’s pupils. Vitoria’s open criticism did not affect Charles’s friendly attitude; in 1541 he wrote to Vitoria twice on the subject of the Indians.
Vitoria’s influence was widespread; it swept the universities and even affected the royal councils. About 5,000 students passed through his classrooms; 24 of his pupils held chairs of arts or theology at Salamanca; and in 1548 two also held chairs of St. Thomas Aquinas at Alcalá, the rival university.
Vitoria and some of his contemporaries are sometimes credited with being the founders of international law.
Francisco de Vitoria (Spanish theologian) -- Encyclopedia Britannica
Francisco de Vitoria, a theologian of the 16th century, was a core writer of the Renaissance since he attempted to question the legitimacy of the European expansion, putting forward, according to Martin C. Ortega, ‘a mixture of legal, sacred, pagan and literary references to build up a concept of his own’.[1]
His mission, as a theologian, was to ensure that the political power will be under Christian ethico-political principles...
But the most striking is that the solutions that he put forward on these matters are very similar to the ones that shape the contemporary international system since 1945..Indeed, Vitoria was above all a catholic theologian and his ideas have to serve Jesus Christ’s message and more generally, the mission of the Church.
Francisco de Vitoria and On the American Indians: A Modern Contribution to International Relations
Do you not think it at all possible that the Spanish Empire was more concerned about profit and raw materials to buffer its world power status, than acting out of any truly religious impulse? Do you think a man like St. Francis of Assisi would have approved of that Empire's treatment of natives?
The very fact that the Pope in Rome and certain high profile Catholic theologians back in Spain spoke out against the Spanish Empire's abuses at the time, mitigates against your opinion that their crimes can be attributed directly to Catholicism. You say the "church" ethnically cleansed. Not the Spanish Empire?
The fact is that the Pope and Vitoria's, among other, criticisms had an impact in the long-run. They had to pass the "New Laws" in 1542. While this caused unrest, and they were only partially implemented because this infuriated some colonialists, had it not been for the critiques from Catholic universities like Salamanca in Europe the situation would have been even worse.
Do you think he was "racist" by the standards of his time? Was it racist of the Pope to tell the Spanish conquistadores that their irrational and contemptible beliefs about native Americans - simply because they did not dwell in the "known world" or belong to any known continent such as Europe, Africa or Asia - were "satanic" in nature and that these people were not to be reduced to slavery, despoiled of their possesions or treated like beasts because of their race or religion but rather recognized as true human beings? Was he wrong to call the Spanish who did these abominable acts "allies of Satan" in the context of his time?
I must admit I am somewhat disappointed, given my great respect for your posts from which I have learned very much I did not know before, to find you possessing what essentially amounts to a prejudicial, highly subjective, one-dimensional, partial and almost cartoonish account of Catholic history as if we are a bunch of Viking fiends or early Nazis. My understanding based upon your previous posts is that you are perhaps a university academic or professional in the field of anthropology. So I do not presume too know more than you do about the civilizations of the Mesoamerican world and the devastating impact of the Old World upon it, I am merely an honours student of History and Law at the present. I simply appeal for a more impartial understanding of Catholic history as complex or multi-form and not as a concrete monolith representing everything that is negative or abstruse in human nature.
I am well aware that Catholic history, like Islamic and every other branch of the human family, is far from angelic; but I also know that it is far from satanic either. It is simply human, with all the foibles, cruelties and beauties of human nature anywhere else on the earth, with a mixture of "saints and sinners" and everything from humanitarians to psychopaths under its vast umbrella. I wouldn't expect anything else from such a large, ancient, powerful and widespread religious institution.
