.
True, that this isolates a key point of the source post:
But on a practical level I don't agree with it because in many cases people were wrongfully put to death as heretics.
Interesting cleavage between the theoretical and the practical. When I see statements like this, I suspect the writer of having too much immersion in public school education (the American kind) and Mel Brooks movies.
What does "many cases" mean to you? 6 people? 10%? 90%? If so, how would you ever prove it?
I know it's kind of "montypythonish" to think these things were big charades. Not funny. Really, not funny. A very serious matter.
Do you believe in capital punishment in secular cases?
..but what was the context, anyway?
And did killing heretics fix anything, apart from giving crowds of people the chance to sin mortally by gloating over the death of one they hate?
Yes, after a while there were fewer heretics in town preaching the path to damnation. So, Maizar, you think the Holy Office engaged in unspeakable and sinful acts? And what liberal history book did you read this in?
And do you know for sure the crowds all gloated and hated? I suspect that most were praying their rosaries and repenting their own sins.
I know what Aquinas and many popes have taught about heretics and the justification of putting them to death (although some have condemned the practice),
This is
patently false. There has never been a pope in the history of the
Church who has "condemned the practice" of putting heretics to death.
You're spreading a lie. Maybe Maizar should be banned?? :surprised:
and I understand and agree with the reasoning behind the rule (it is better to not have lived than to have a life that leads a multitude to damnation). But on a practical level I don't agree with it because in many cases people were wrongfully put to death as heretics.
Aquinas:
But on the side of the Church is mercy which seeks the conversion of the wanderer, and She condemns him not at once, but after the first and second admonition, as the Apostle directs. Afterwards, however, if he is still stubborn, the Church takes care of the salvation of others by separating him from the Church through excommunication, and delivers him to the secular court to be removed from this world by death.
Putting a heretic to death is not a real solution to the problem of heresy which is an idea and not an individual. It backfires. We may as well make a list of several hundred million names of Christians who are heretics today, and go after them. Aquinas did far more good by debating and exposing his adversary than he would have done if he'd taken a gun and shot him.
The problem with heresy is, it spreads, like infection.
If putting a heretic to death isn't a real solution to the problem, then
neither is amputation a real solution to the problem of gangrene.
You could say that gangrene is an idea, not a region of rotten flesh.
So, by amputation of gangrenous limbs, you are not thereby destroying
the principle of gangrene, so it's what, a useless endeavor?
Now, by Maizar's (bad) logic, if the amputation of a gangrenous limb would
result in a few healthy cells getting cut off too, then the practice should
be discontinued. Or, in the worst case, if it ever once happens that a
patient's wrong limb is amputated, or if the wrong patient is operated on,
then from that point, nobody should ever have an operation ever again.
This is an outgrowth of the erroneous teaching of JPII whereby capital
punishment should be outlawed, since it's part of "the culture of death."
And then he turned around and demonstrated syncretism while he said
that "this is not syncretism." But even in this extremely deleterious case
of JPII's papacy, he did not "condemn capital punishment."
Topic: Ban Poche. (Read 6861 times)