Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. THE HOLY INQUISITION

JESUS AND PERSECUTION

The Holy Inquisition was the Roman Catholic killing machine created to destroy all dissent from orthodoxy as defined by the pope in Rome. It has its roots in the Bible itself which seeks the murder of heretics and witches in the name of God and at the command of God. The Bible claims to have been written by God and all true Christians accept this claim. What the Inquisition is most remembered for is the burning of witches and heretics to death at the stake.

Even today the Church puts its seal of approval on publications like Reasons for Hope which say that heresy, disagreeing with the Church leaders in faith or morals, should be a crime (page 198).

Recently, Patrick Madrid's Church approved book, Where is That in the Bible? on page 160 admits that the Inquisition went too far at times but stated that God instituted it. It quotes Deuteronomy 17 with approval . This text commands on God's authority that heretics be stopped by violence from spreading or preaching their errors. There God commands that such evil must be purged from the midst of his people. That is the important point. It means that if the people of God can't use violence today, they have other alternatives. But they must not allow heretics to preach.

Pope Pius XII who died in 1958 knew all about the Jewish Holocaust under the Nazis during the Second World War from the start. He made no effort, despite all the means at his disposal, despite the discreet options open to him, to get this information out to the world so that something might be done. He made no condemnation of the persecution of the Jews. He even stated in writing that he admired Hitler though he knew that Hitler was a rabid anti-Semitist. Pius's Church spewed anti-Jewish sentiment in its official newspapers and continued to publish books and preach sermons against the Jewish people right up to the end of the Second World War. Such publications were an encouragement to Nazi thought and practice. Pius let the world think that what was happening to the Jews was not too bad.

Benedict XVI and his supporters would say that Pius had to be silent or he would make things worse. This does not excuse Pius failure to do anything. This is the Church that says that doing nothing and saying nothing always makes things worse. Denmark was under Nazi rule. Yet the Danish Lutheran Church was able to condemn Nazi anti-Semitism and work to save the Jews. The Church and Danish people managed to save 7,000 Jews. The more powerful Roman Catholic Church in Rome refused to copy the Danish Church's example and in 1943 1,900 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Rome itself! To say the pope was right to say nothing for it would make this worse is to admit that he knew what was going on and took no action. Catholics have said that he refused to condemn or speak out because the Nazis would turn on the Catholic Church itself. In other words, protecting Catholics loyal to the pope was all that really mattered. They are saying that a real evil, happening in the present matters less than a possible and preventable evil that may never happen. How twisted is that? And besides, if the Nazis started to persecute Catholics the world would have taken action to stop it. The Jews because of Christian slander were not considered to count for much and no Christian country was willing to do much to help them.

Praising the pope for saying nothing and excusing him by saying he didn't wish to risk the Nazis starting on the Church ignores the fact that the Nazis were hoping to eliminate the Jewish race not the Jewish religion as such. Plus Nazi support came from people who identified themselves as Catholics. Even if there was a risk, you don't let people slaughter all they want and say nothing over something they might not do or get the chance to do at all! Perhaps if some persecution of the Church took place, the pope speaking out could still have produced a better outcome than would have been had he said nothing.

The Nazis were supremely confident that no condemnation would come from Rome when they didn't touch Catholic clergy and prelates who would back the pope and condemn them if he did. Interesting. The Holocaust is an example of how Catholicism even if it had no Inquisition to destroy the Jews was happy to condone and use somebody else's.

Top of the Document

JESUS AND PERSECUTION

Matthew 18:1,15-20 has Jesus saying to his disciples, disciples meant any of his followers not just the apostles, that if you have a complaint about a believer and he won’t listen to you bring in members of the Church to do it with you the next time and if he still won’t give in treat him like Gentile or a tax-collector – someone who is shunned and despised by society. Christians distort this to say he only meant just be distant from them to help them learn their lesson but be kind to them otherwise. Then why didn’t he say that? Why did he say Gentiles or tax-collectors who were treated with hatred and contempt? Nobody was kind to them to help them change. They got suspicion and dislike and abuse wherever they went and were regarded as unclean and dirty and not fit to be in the company of God’s people.

Jesus used violence in the Temple to put out those who were buying and selling there.

Jesus gave authority then for the Church to persecute people who despise any of its “morals” or beliefs. Anybody who disbelieves any part of Church teaching is insulting the intelligence of the rest so they can go to him and persecute him for it. The purpose of the persecuting was to force. People who knew they could lose their families if they got on the wrong side of their God would have no choice but to give in to the Church. Matthew 18 is the reason Jehovah’s Witnesses are notoriously nasty to members who commit adultery or who consort with another faith. Any Christian cult that ignores Matthew 18 is not sincere even if it feels it is for how could it be sincere and ignore the words of the Son of God? It is stupid to use the excuse that it would be hard to implement now. Jesus warned that difficulty was not excuse for not doing God’s will. All unpalatable rules are hard at the start.

Jesus tried to use fear to get converts. He said that Sodom which was burned by fire and brimstone would have it easy compared to any town that would not welcome his messengers (Luke 10:12). He warned of everlasting punishment for unbelievers and those who had different moral beliefs to him.

He believed he had the right to persecute himself and even embrace death on a cross that he knew was coming. This put faith before his own life meaning faith comes first and man is made for faith and not faith for man. This idea has spawned oceans of bloodshed.

The Manichees like many heretics before them believed that certain foods should be avoided and they just took food that was white on the basis that its colour showed it was full of light, so they thought it was a better energy source. Such food regulations were nearly always bad science or based on the idea that eating animals was cruel. We still have some bad science around today that condemns many foods. Yet the Bible condemns forbidding foods (1 Timothy 4:3). This clearly suggests that if it can be eaten it should be eaten. It opposes science even when it is correct about some food being bad.

Top of the Document

MURDEROUS CHRISTIAN DOGMA-MONGERS

The Bible does not sanction the convert or die approach unless you were originally a believer in the true religion. The first five books of the Bible give many examples of people who God commanded must be destroyed for their heresy.

Fr Alexius Lepicier was a professor of the College for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. He reissued his book in 1910. It was called, De Stabilitate et Progressu Dogmatis. It contained a long attempt to prove that the Church had the right to put heretics to death. Pope St Pius X got a preface written to express his warm approval of the teaching of the book (page 588, Catholicism and Christianity, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, 1928). In a letter received from the Protestant Truth Society in September 1993, A.J. Roberts informed me that a Father de Luca of the Gregorian University in Rome stated that it was the duty and right of the Church to kill heretics. The priest said that in 1903. In Catholicism and Christianity (page 586-7) we read that this priest, who it tells us was a Jesuit, published in two volumes a work called Insitutiones Juris Ecclesiastici Publici which made a distinction between heretics who thought that erroneous doctrine was Catholic doctrine and ones that did not care. He gave seven reasons why a Catholic who leaves the Church should be forced to come back and punish him if he remains steadfast in his infidelity. The Jesuits published a paper called Civilta Cattolica which said that the Church could and should and would force itself on heretics in an edition dating from July 1902. A Jesuit called Fr X Brors created a book of apologetics stating that ex-Catholics deserved to burn in Hell forever and if they deserved that they deserved earthly death. For the sake of the Church’s reputation this statement was deleted from subsequent editions. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopaedia argued that the Church had the right to use the state to force ex-Catholics to return to obedience to her (page 587).

St Thomas Aquinas said the same as Father Brors. He also taught, “Heresy is the most terrible of all offences. To corrupt the faith is a far worse crime that to corrupt the coinage. If the coiner be deemed worthy of death, how much more the heretic” (page 419, Apologetics for the Pulpit). Ludovico a Paramo wrote a book for the Holy Inquisition in 1398. He said that the Inquisition is right to persecute and hand over heretics to be killed because heresy is against the unity of society. The thought seems to be that since heretics must expect their followers to die for false doctrine that they must be destroyed.

In Radio Replies, First Volume, we read, “St Thomas taught that heretics should be put to death. He had in mind such men as had been Catholics, and who laboured to destroy the faith of other Catholics after their own lapse from the Church. And even then he puts the question speculatively. And he was quite logical going by the premise that wilful dissent from Church teaching is divinely impermissible. He argued that one who unjustly takes his neighbour’s life by murder deserves death at the hands of the state. But he who destroys the faith of another robs him, not only of his temporal life, but of his eternal life, which is far worse. The state, therefore, which is bound to safeguard the well-being of its citizens, would be justified in putting such a man to death”. Later we read, “In practice he does not say that it should be done” (page 217, Question 1066). The last quote is only to shut up the governments of countries who would not like to tolerate a bloodthirsty religion. It is obvious that it is not sincere. Never does the New Testament teach the abolition of the death penalty for murderers. Before the Law of Moses it was taught by God at the time of Noah that it was right to kill those who murdered others. When this law that was not part of the allegedly abrogated Law of Moses was not done away it is still in force. And the killer of souls should be killed before the killer of earth-life.

We can read what St Thomas declared in Documents of the Christian Church (page 133-135). There we read that that the Church has charity towards the heretics but says that since charity is for the good of others and mainly for their salvation heretics should be forgiven but still destroyed when they relapse again. A close eye is to be kept on any heretic who claims to have reverted to Roman Catholicism.

In Volume Three, we read that it was right for the Church to use the state to execute heretics who had turned against Catholicism for the nations were wholly Catholic and the heretic was a danger to this purity (Question 1024). It approves of Aquinas who gave it this heart-warming thought.

Pope Leo XIII taught that St Thomas filled the entire world with the splendour of his teaching and that he handled every part of philosophy with acuteness and strength in his encyclical Aeterni Patris. This is implicit approval for this man called the Angelic Doctor who urged the Church to have a rabid hatred of heresy and to murder in the name of Christ.

The religionists who try to evangelise Catholics and get them out of the Church have to be in the same boat because they know that they are making Catholics sin in listening to them against their conscience. And so are those who do not reach Catholics but who would admit Catholics as members into their systems. They are indirectly ruining or would ruin the Church.

If Thomas did not say it should be done then he may have meant that though heretics should be killed we cannot kill them for it is better to jail them and try to make them sorry. But no doubt there would have been circumstances like when you can’t jail a heretic who is harming the faith and who can’t be persuaded to abjure his errors in which Aquinas would have to agree with killing him. It is like the modern doctrine that a murderer deserves death but you can only kill him when you can’t jail him to protect others which sees capital punishment as wrong but not in extreme circumstances like everything else.

Some argued that when Jesus gave the Church the right to exercise a coercive jurisdiction (Matthew 18; 2 Thessalonians 3; 1 Corinthians 5; 2 Corinthians 10, Acts 4) that forcing the faith on ex-Catholics was a duty. 1 Timothy 5:20 commands that sinners must be condemned and reproved before the congregation to scare the rest. When you force good behaviour on a sinner which the Bible certainly commands why not force faith on him?

If the faith is true and Catholics know it as they claim, then the faith can be forced on people the same way as a teacher can force the 1+1=2 belief on you.

The Church says that sincerity is enough for Catholics who are sincerely wrong in their theology but who mean to be orthodox Catholics and their sincerity will save them. This implies that morality is most important. When it is okay to force morality it must be more okay to force the faith on people. The Church says that God wants small sacrifices from the vast majority of us and so to force somebody away from a sex-partner or whatever is relatively unimportant – there are more important things. When people can be forced in these things why not in things like the faith for it would just be as important as the sacrifices?

In 1808, when Napoleon took over Spain, an officer Colonel Lemanouski and is men smashed their way into a Dominican monastery in Madrid where the monks had resisted them. They found torture-chambers there which were cruel and disgusting in the extreme even to them. Many of the victims of this Inquisition were dying. They then blew the monastery up.

Loraine Boettner wrote a book called Roman Catholicism which devoted Chapter 18 to defend his observation that the Catholic Church is intolerant, bigoted and persecutes heretics. It gives several quotes from leading Catholics and Catholic books (eg Catholic Principles of Politics, by John A Ryan and Francis J Boland, The National Catholic Welfare Conference, published by The Macmillan Company) that back this up. He inserted a quote from Monsignor Francis J Connell, the top theological expert in America who wrote in 1946 that Catholic rulers have the right to prevent other religions drawing Catholics out of the Church. The quote says this is only logical for Christ established only one true religion and commanded its acceptance under eternal damnation. I see that the Church would claim that if this is true then it is unfair to expect the leaders to promote eternal damnation and pull it on themselves by letting Catholics be led out of the Church. The leaders would not be able to lead if they disobey and let the religions reach out to Catholics for the fear of eternal damnation would immobilise them. The Church wants to take over every area it is in and stop smaller religions from evangelising though it says it will not persecute them will violence though it will tax them while claiming tax exemption for itself.

It is well known that the Catholic Church had many tortured to death for heresy and witchcraft in the past. The New Catholic Encyclopedia in its entry for Capital Punishment states that the state has the right under God to put certain criminals to death.

Top of the Document

THE HAMMER OF WITCHES

In recent times, there has been a Satanist scare. Millions of religionists believed that the Satanists were abusing and sacrificing babies all over the place.

This was not the first time religion caused such hysteria.

Christian theology maintained that the Devil was the chief angel in Heaven before God chucked him out. It was believed that he retained the incredible powers his former role bestowed on him now that he was fallen and that he could help those who sold their bodies and souls to him to work great marvels in return for their sacrifices of sin.

Pope Gregory IX was the main force behind the revival in the belief that there were witches with awesome powers. They could ruin crops, or kill, or even turn into animals and fly through the air with the aid of the Devil. In 1231, he originated the Inquisition which was meant to eradicate witchcraft and heresy. A long-lasting orgy of violence and murder ensued.

Two Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger wrote a book called The Hammer of Witches in 1486. It even clamed that witches could have babies by the Devil who employs artificial insemination! The book prescribed torture to make witches confess. The book called for their extermination. Incidentally, in an age approving of capital punishment one could only expect that people who were in league with the Devil and willing servants of his and having his power should be put to death. This book was granted official Church approval. Not surprisingly, since St Thomas Aquinas declared it heresy to assert that true witches did not have the power to change nature magically. The authors of the Hammer had been appointed by the infamous Witches Bull of 1484 which was written by Innocent VIII to extirpate witches and preach against them.

The Bible says that we must not suffer a sorceress or a witch to live (Exodus 22:17). Anybody who claimed to communicate with the dead and by implication other gods had to be put to death by stoning (Leviticus 20:27). Magic workers are excluded from the kingdom of Heaven (Galatians 5:19-21; Revelation 21:8). God even killed King Saul for consulting a spiritual medium (1 Chronicles 10:13).

The Bible also forbids the toleration of anybody who promotes the worship of other Gods. It commands their execution.

Back to the first declaration. A sorceress need not promote her faith so it is not that the law is worried about. The sorceress must be killed because she does spells. This seems senseless if she is a solitary witch so we can take it that the good book is saying that she has magical powers to do harm with them which justifies ending her life.

People would reason that if she or he has not started killing people by black magic she soon will and that justifies putting her on top of a bonfire.

Even if we are not sure of the import of the verse we have to slay witches to be on the safe side.

Never does the Bible says that powers of witchcraft are delusion. It never says that mediumistic powers are delusions. The witch of Endor made Samuel’s ghost appear to King Saul. There is no evidence in the story that it was not the witch that did it but God alone. The story therefore says that mediums can make the dead speak.

The magicians Moses had to reckon with could transmute things with their magical arts. There is no hint that God gave the magicians the powers to show that Moses was stronger. The matter of fact way it was reported suggests that they always had those powers.

In Ezekiel 13, God condemns the wearing of magic bands. He does not say in this book that magic is a delusion so that proves that he meant that the magic is real. If a books speaks of thanking God and does not say that this isn’t meant seriously then the book is saying that God really exists.

When the Bible speaks of soothsayers predicting lies it does not say that they are making it all up. Their powers could be deluding them.

What if we see no evidence for such miraculous powers today? The answer would be that the Devil is obsessed with secrecy and will not let such powers be proven except to the person who has them. He might show off with a possessed person but a possessed person is not necessarily a disciple of his. He might even let a disciple show off his magic in an attempt to refute God’s miracles.

The stories of possession in the Bible tell us that the Devil is very powerful. The Whore of the Book of Revelation who will be on earth before the return of Jesus has great magical powers. The Book of Revelation says that magic exists and it is real. Since Jesus told us we would not know when he would show up this forces Christians to believe that the world is in the grip of witches and black magic for he said that they would be epidemic before his second advent. All this tells us to kill witches. Their main concern would be to do magic to make a person sin and then kill her or him so that he or she goes to Hell forever. They would do it subtly and wouldn’t want to make it too obvious. Proof that a witch has killed by her black arts is not necessary.

The miracles of the Bible are largely pointless. God should have done one big sign. So if God does senseless miracles then he lets the Devil work evil ones too. It would then be more likely that when a person testifies to a miracle that it has happened. If a person says he saw a witch taking off on her broomstick we would be obliged to believe it. The miracles imply that witchcraft is real and should be believed to be real. They imply that we should never have stopped torturing people and burning them at the stake for sorcery. The fact that the Old Testament did not need to command the destruction of witches and still did it proves that God regards such killings as intrinsically good. Even if Jesus abolished the capital punishment law for an adulteress in the dubious addition to John’s gospel – which he did not if you read it right - that does not mean that he wanted witches to be permitted to live. Adultery breaks the way God wants society to be ordered but religious crimes are in a completely different category.

Finally, the witches like the witches of today bake cakes to worship their goddess the Queen of Heaven. The Bible says that this worship is forbidden (Jeremiah 7:18; 44).

THE HOLY INQUISITION

The Catholic Church tends to play down the evil of the Inquisition which was set up by her to destroy anybody who differed from her. You will read in books like Apologetics for the Pulpit that it was not the fault of the Inquisition which was a legitimate arm of the Church that the secular powers went too far in killing heretics for the Church (page 431). But the fact is that excommunication in those days made you a complete outcast and if you were an excommunicated king you had no authority so the Church could have used excommunication to deter Inquisitors from going too far. And besides the Church was not forced to hand heretics over to the state for punishment. The state would not have been so keen to destroy heretics had it not been for the Church teaching that the heretic was a powerful instrument of the Devil and had to be destroyed for to destroy him was to weaken the Devil and destroy his plan. They knew fine well that there were plenty of harmless heretics and a large chunk of the population was made up of closeted heretics and no harm had come. It is a fact that no pope for centuries condemned the view that heretics have no rights while the Inquisition was in force (page 227, Vicars of Christ). They encouraged the Inquisition by their silence.

The Fourth Lateran Council which took place in 1215 AD in Rome, stated that all who disagree with the Catholic Church in any way are heretics and all heretics are as bad as each other and their goods must all be taken from them and if they are priests or princes they must lose their authority and it shall be taken from them and heretics have no right to testify legally and they must be rooted out and excommunicated (page 287, Fifty Years in the “Church” of Rome). The Council offered a plenary indulgence to Catholics who took it on themselves to exterminate heretics. They were granted the same spiritual benefits as those who fought in the Crusades. (The decree can be read in the book, Documents of the Christian Church, pages 132-133.)

The Catholic doctrine that even an apparition of Jesus or the Virgin Mary must be ignored if it commands what is contrary to the will of the Church or the parish priest or bishop or anybody in authority in the Church obviously shows that the Church is claiming a monopoly on the right to tell people what they should believe. If the Church commands the slaughter of heretics even Jesus is forbidden to say nothing against her. So the Church is not so worried about the will of God after all! Well that is assuming God has any kindness in him at all.

Today, the Church says that to be a heretic in those times was to be willing to take up arms against the innocent members of the Church and to kill them was right. But Lateran 4 never says that. It tars all heretics with the same brush. Most heretics are not murderous or traitors. The Church is lying to cover up the evil of the past. To do that dishonours the murdered heretics intensely and shows how much hate festers inside the façade that is Roman Catholicism.

Pope Boniface VIII stated that the Church should hand heretics over to the secular powers even when it knows that its request that they will not be executed will not be fulfilled (page 72, Crisis of Moral Authority, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1985). The Church even granted an indulgence to those who gave wood to the executioners to burn heretics (page 242, A Handbook on the Papacy).

Strictly speaking, there were five different Inquisitions. The first one was created by bishops in 1184. Innocent III set up the legatine Inquisition which was supervised for him by the Cistercians in 1198. Gregory IX established the monastic one in 1231 which was operated by the Dominican order. Paul III founded the Roman Inquisition in 1542. The worst one was the Spanish Inquisition which started in 1478. It was the arm of the state for destroying Jews and Moors who faked conversions to Roman Catholicism. It was driven by the knowledge that if the enemies pretend to be friends they can do the faith a great deal of damage. In 1480, Pope Sixtus IV approved the Inquisition in Spain (Vicars of Christ page 237).

Juan Antonio Llorente worked for the Inquisition gave the world the evidence that the Inquisition murdered millions. 105,285 victims were killed by the Inquisitor Torquemada alone. Llorente was accused of embezzlement but it is wrong to say that that has anything to do with his reliability as a historian. Anyway, the accusation was not proven. The documents he had consulted were burned by him. This is held by Roman Catholics like Karl Keating (Catholicism and Fundamentalism, page 292) to cast doubt on his reliability. But these documents were stolen and he had to destroy the evidence for the Church that would come after him. He knew that the Church could not get him arrested and jailed if he got rid of the documents for then she would have to make other documents that proved the information in his books was right and came from purloined papers in order to establish his guilt.

Keating tells us that according to some Catholic scholars the Inquisition only killed about 4000 people all the time was extant (Catholicism and Fundamentalism, page 296).

It does not really help the Church if the numbers murdered were low for it was still evil and intolerant for her to kill them and shows what he would like to do to heretics.

But many Catholic scholars who know a thing or two believe that the horrific and unbelievable account of the Inquisition put together by Henry Charles Lea who many Catholics disparage is the truth. Lord Acton endorsed it and he was hard to please (page 637, Vicars of Christ).

The accused would never have been sure about what he was supposed to have done for he was never fully informed (Difficulties, page 14). The Inquisition hypocritically forbade anybody from being tortured more than once but allowed the torture to go on indefinitely. We know that “a Toledo record which extends over forty years (1648-1694) contains 1,205 cases (2 cases per month, almost exactly) of which only six ended in complete acquittal” (Difficulties, page 14). The Inquisition did not mind if it made mistakes and killed good Catholics for it felt it was better to do that then to let one heretic escape (Difficulties, page 16). All Mgr Knox can do in response to all this is appeal to the Chambers Encyclopaedia of 1860 which stands refuted by the historical evidence.

The Inquisitor, Bernard Gui, said that even the testimony of a notorious perjurer against a person should be accepted and the names of the witnesses were never disclosed to the accused (Difficulties, page 36). In Difficulties it will be seen that the Catholic Fr Knox does not really make an answer to any of that. He tries to claim that the papal protests against the Inquisition were ineffective not because the pope didn’t want them to work but because it is sometimes hard for even the pope to influence the Church. He says that Rome forbade duelling and few listened (page 39). Surely he knows that the nations obeyed the pope when he wanted the Inquisition established though it was an inhuman institution that had a different legal procedure from that of the state. A lot of countries wouldn’t have wanted it for that reason but still they accepted it to please the pope. Some of the popes did not like innocent Catholics being jailed and tortured just because they were accused and tried to PARTLY restrain the evil urges of the Inquisition but what does that do to redeem them from the charge of wickedness and fanaticism? Nothing. Excommunication was the weapon used by the popes to enforce obedience for once a person was an outcast from the Church the person had no rights at all so the pope could have forced the Inquisition to disband. The idea that its cruelty was right was not regarded as heretical but orthodox. But when the popes themselves complained at times it shows they knew the Inquisition was partly heretical and did not care enough to stop it by force. And the pope was not interested in stopping duelling for sin was forbidden but people were given the freedom to commit it. Knox knows fine well that this issue has nothing to do with proving papal inability to stop the Inquisition.

In The Inquisition and Liberty (page 125) we learned that hardly anybody who was accused by the Inquisition was acquitted. If the popes were really that good there would have been plenty especially in the early days. Gregory IX made the fanatical murderer Conrad of Marburg lead the Inquisition in Germany knowing what he was like (Handbook on the Papacy, page 236).

The prisons were terrible beyond belief (Handbook on the Papacy, page 237). And how can the likes of Knox try to say that the popes sincerely meant their denunciations of the cruelty of the Inquisition when the pope had the money and power and influence to ensure that the prisoners had some comforts?

The Franciscan monk, Bernard Delicieux, who tried to stop the inhumanity of the Inquisition became its victim thanks to the pope just for saying the system was unchristian (Handbook on the Papacy, page 238).

Most people would have seen the Inquisition for what it really was and would have inwardly frowned on its speciality, forcing people to confess under torture to things they never did. They could have torn it down but did nothing because they believed the pope who said that all this was right. The papacy is certainly mainly to blame for the excesses of the Inquisition.

The Roman Inquisition in Spain was told to stop using torture by Pius VII in 1816. This was not out of kindness but out of a desire to prevent fanatical Catholics from being forced to confess to what they never did. A dead devotee was not use to the pope. The torturing, however, did not stop for at least two more decades proving that the pope did not mind that much if it continued. Perhaps he only forbade the torturing to give the Church a better image for it had many troubles and did not mean it.

Catholics often try to blame the evil of the Church on the barbaric climate of the times. That is offensive to us for even the blind can see that the things she did were wrong as the Protestant Hubmaier wrote in 1524 (Vicars of Christ, page 247).

Torquemada and the Inquisitors by John Edwards tells us a lot of interesting things about the Inquisition. Muslims in Valencia were forcibly converted to the Catholic Church in 1521 (page 77). French and German Jews had been forcibly converted to the Church during the First Crusade in 1096 and at that time the Church decreed that only people who physically resisted baptism could be considered to have received an invalid baptism and to be free of any obligation to obey the Church – an obligation conferred by valid baptism (page 78). So if you were forced to be baptised and didn’t struggle then in Catholic doctrine the baptism made you a Catholic bound to obey the rules of the Church and bend the knee to the pope. This legislation according to the book was still in force in 1521! There can be no doubt that it was official Catholic doctrine that enforcement was good and acceptable and effective. The Church claims that what it officially accepts is what God has revealed for God doesn’t let the Church err. So the Catholic Church can be justly condemned as believing in forced conversion despite anything it says today. Its standard says that forced conversion is what the Church must believe in.