How did the Catholic Church manage to support slavery for centuries?

Question

When now it's obvious that it's morally wrong? Was the Holy Spirit asleep? What happened to Christ's message of love?

Answer 1

They believe that other race weren't human and civilized. So they began to convert and attempt to civilize.

Answer 2

The Bible does not condemn slavery. Colossians 3:22 even states, "Slaves, obey your human masters in everything."

This was much debated before and during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), four hundred years after the Catholic Church became one of the first groups to condemn slavery.

The condemnation of slavery is one of those nonbiblical doctrines that Catholics have developed through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit over the centuries.

+ In 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime" (magnum scelus). Note that this was 30 years before Columbus "discovered" America.

+ In 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians

+ Urban VIII forbade it in 1639

+ Benedict XIV forbade it in 1741

+ Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade

+ Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839

+ In the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the "supreme villainy" (summum nefas) of the slave traders.

+ Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed a letter to the Brazilian bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery -- a letter to which the bishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14036a.htm

A more interesting question is:

Do Christians, who take the Bible literally and do not allow the continuing guiding force of the Holy Spirit to make their beliefs more and more perfect, still endorse slavery as depicted in the Bible?

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

more lies. Here is the truth:

Some Church fathers (such as Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom) strongly denounced slavery.

Sixty years before Columbus "discovered" the New World, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of peoples in the newly colonized Canary Islands. His bull Sicut Dudum (1435) rebuked European enslavers and commanded that "all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of [the] Canary Islands . . . who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money."

A century later, Pope Paul III applied the same principle to the newly encountered inhabitants of the West and South Indies in the bull Sublimis Deus (1537). Therein he described the enslavers as allies of the devil and declared attempts to justify such slavery "null and void." Accompanying the bull was another document, Pastorale Officium, which attached a latae sententiae excommunication remittable only by the pope himself for those who attempted to enslave the Indians or steal their goods.

When Europeans began enslaving Africans as a cheap source of labor, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was asked about the morality of enslaving innocent blacks (Response of the Congregation of the Holy Office, 230, March 20, 1686). The practice was rejected, as was trading such slaves. Slaveholders, the Holy Office declared, were obliged to emancipate and even compensate blacks unjustly enslaved.

Papal condemnation of slavery persisted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pope Gregory XVI's 1839 bull, In Supremo, for instance, reiterated papal opposition to enslaving "Indians, blacks, or other such people" and forbade "any ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse." In 1888 and again in 1890, Pope Leo XIII forcefully condemned slavery and sought its elimination where it persisted in parts of South America and Africa.

Answer 4

It was more than just the catholic church. All major religions had slavery problems.
And there were always dissenters and those who sought to change church practices and policies.

Answer 5

Slavery was only abolished in the early 1900's. Up to then, every nation practiced it. You like poking Catholics with hot metal sticks?

Answer 6

The LAW,,,had quite different rules concerning a slave,,,AND those under the law was NOT allowed to mistaeat them.,,,Consider Joseph, son of Jacob,sold into slavery,,,,Did the Holy Spirit SLEEP? Gen 39-41 Joseph=Zaphnath-Paaneah. (Egyptian,,,SAVIOUR) Just read it please.

Answer 7

The old testament says it is ok. The activity goes back to the dawn of time, it was just the way things were. Jesus was, of course, way ahead of his time. It is taking time for us to understand what the love of others means.

Answer 8

they did not (support slavery), but due to historical and social pressures of historical times they had to look the other way when some of its members practised it.

Answer 9

In very much the same way it has able to support and sustain a large collection of other self-contradicting tenets.

Answer 10

This exact same question was asked like a day or so ago.

Religion is what it is, and not always for someone's spiritual benefit.

Blah blah blah

Answer 11

because they thaught it was a normal thing and they loocked at them as some one might loock at a butler


somthing i foud to be strange is africans actualy selled others to collonists and others i always thaught that the settlers and colonists just captured them