Persecution - Catholic Encyclopedia - Catholic Online. Persecution may be defined in general as the unlawful coercion of another's liberty or his unlawful punishment, for not every kind of punishment can be regarded as persecution. For our purpose it must be still further limited to the sphere of religion, and in that sense persecution means unlawful coercion or punishment for religion's sake. The growth and the continued existence of Christianity have been hindered by cultured paganism and by savage heathenism. And in more recent times agnosticism has harassed the Church in the various states of America and Europe. But most deplorable of all persecutions have been those that Catholicism has suffered from other Christians. With regard to these it has to be considered that the Church herself has appealed to force, and that, not only in her own defence, but also, so it is objected, in unprovoked attack. And even if the answer be urged that she was only defending her own existence, the retort seems fairly plausible that pagan and heathen powers were only acting in their own defence when they prohibited the spread of Christianity. The Church would therefore seem to be strangely inconsistent, for while she claims toleration and liberty for herself she has been and still remains intolerant of all other religions. The Church claims to carry a message or rather a command from God and to be God's only messenger. In point of fact it is only within recent years, when toleration is supposed to have become a dogma, that the other . That they should abandon their right to command allegiance is a natural consequence of Protestantism ; whereas it is the Church's claim to be the accredited and infallible ambassador of God which justifies her apparent inconsistency. Such intolerance, however, is not the same as persecution, by which we understand the unlawful exercise of coercion. Every corporation lawfully constituted has the right to coerce its subjects within due limits. And though the Church exercises that right for the most part by spiritual sanctions, she has never relinquished the right to use other means. Before examining this latter right to physical coercion, there must be introduced the important distinction between pagans and Christians. Regularly, force has not been employed against pagan or Jew : . But the Church does claim the right to coerce her own subjects. Here again, however, a distinction must be made. The non- Catholic Christians of our day are, strictly speaking, her subjects; but in her legislation she treats them as if they were not her subjects. So, with regard to her right to use coercion, the Church only exercises her authority over those whom she considers personally and formally apostates. A modern Protestant is not in the same category with the Albigenses or Wyclifites. New Yorker Claire Danes was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Carla (Hall), a day-care provider and artist, and Christopher Danes, a computer consultant and. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, I implore you to please stop reading now. One out of every two people who are shot here die, making it the most lethal of Baltimore's deadliest neighborhoods. The homicides have become so frequent that the. Jesus Delivers the Adulterous Woman. 1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. 2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him. Pietro da Morrone, who was Pope Celestine V in 1294, is believed to be one of the subjects of a passage in the Inferno that states, “the shade. These were held to be personally responsible for their apostasy ; and the Church enforced her authority over them: It is true that in many cases the heretics were rebels against the State also; but the Church's claim to exercise coercion is not confined to such cases of social disorder. And what is more, her purpose was not only to protect the faith of the orthodox, but also to punish the apostates. Formal apostasy was then looked upon as treason against God — a much more heinous crime than treason against a civil ruler, which, until recent times, was punished with great severity. Thomas Aquinas, II- II, Q. Not, of course, that she would exercise her authority in the same way today, even if there were a Catholic State in which other Christians were personally and formally apostates. She adapts her discipline to the times and circumstances in order that it may fulfil its salutary purpose. Ambrose, in the fourth century, the latter applying it even to the treatment of formal apostates. It must also be remembered that when she did use her right to exercise physical coercion over formal apostates, that right was then universally admitted. Withal, the Roman Inquisition was very different from that of Spain, and the popes did not approve the harsh proceedings of the latter. Moreover, such ideas of physical coercion in matters spiritual were not peculiar to Catholics (see TOLERATION). The Reformers were not less, but, If anything, more, intolerant (see INQUISITION). If the intolerance of Churchmen is blamable, then that of the Reformers is doubly so. From their own standpoint, it was unjustifiable. First, they were in revolt against the established authority of the Church, and secondly they could hardly use force to compel the unwilling to conform to their own principle of private judgment. With this clear demarcation of the Reformer's private judgment from the Catholic's authority, it hardly serves our purpose to estimate the relative violence of Catholic and Protestant Governments during the times of the Reformation. And yet it is well to remember that the methods of the maligned Inquisition in Spain and Italy were far less destructive of life than the religious wars of France and Germany. What is, however, more to our purpose is to notice the outspoken intolerance of the Protestant leaders; for it gave an additional right to the Church to appeal to force. Dramatis Personae POSEIDON ATHENA HECUBA CHORUS OF CAPTIVE TROJAN WOMEN TALTHYBIUS, Herald of the Greeks CASSANDRA, daughter of Hecuba ANDROMACHE, wife of hector, son. She was punishing her defaulting subjects and at the same time defending herself against their attacks. It is not enough that those who are condemned to death should be suffering for their religious opinions. A martyr is a witness to the truth ; whereas those who suffered the extreme penalty of the Church were at the most the witnesses to their own sincerity, and therefore unhappily no more than pseudo- martyrs. We need not dwell upon the second objection which pretends that a pagan government might be justified in harassing Christian missionaries in so far as it considered Christianity to be subversive of established authority. The Christianrevelation is the supernatural message of the Creator to His creatures, to which there can be no lawful resistance. Its missionaries have the right and the duty to preach it everywhere. They who die in the propagation or maintenance of the Gospel are God's witnesses to the truth, suffering persecution for His sake. Nor does it take into account other forms of attack, e. Christ's sake being a sure note of the True Church ( John 1. Timothy 3: 1. 2 ; Matthew 1. For a popular general account of persecutions of Catholics previous to the nineteenth century See Leclercq, . See also MARTYRS, ACTS OF THE, and the articles on individual martyrs or groups of martyrs (MARTYRS, THE TEN THOUSAND; FORTY MARTYRS; AGAUNUM, for the Theban Legion). But the extreme measures passed against the ancient religion of the empire, and especially by Constans, even though they were not strictly carried out, roused considerable opposition. And when Julian the Apostate (3. Strictly moral lives which, a thing unheard of, should preach and instruct. State protection was withdrawn from Christianity, and no section of the Church favoured more than another, so that the Donatists and Arians were enabled to return. Higher education, also, was taken out of the hands of Christians by the prohibition of anyone who was not a pagan from teaching classical literature. And finally, the tombs of martyrs were destroyed. The emperor was afraid to proceed to direct persecution, but he fomented the dissensions among the Christians, and he tolerated and even encouraged the persecutions raised by pagan communities and governors, especially in Alexandria, Heliopolis, Maiouma, the port of Gaza, Antioch, Arethusa, and C. Grergory of Nazianzus, Orat. Many, in different places, suffered and even died for the Faith, though another pretext was found for their death, at least by the emperor. Of the martyrs of this period mention may be made of John and Paul (q. Rome ; the soldiers Juventinus and Maximian (cf. John Chrysostom's sermon on them in P. G., L, 5. 71- 7. 7); Macedonius, Tatian, and Theodulus of Meros in Phrygia ( Socrates, III, 1. Sozomen, V, 1. 1); Basil, a priest of Ancyra ( Sozomen, V, 1. However, he reigned only for two years, and his persecution was, in the words of St. On the outbreak of war between the two empires, Sapor II (3. Persian priests, initiated a severe persecution of the Christians in 3. It comprised the destruction or confiscation of churches and a general massacre, especially of bishops and priests. The number of victims, according to Sozomen (Hist. Eccl., II, 9- 1. 4), was no less than 1. Symeon, Bishop of Seleucia; there was a respite from the general persecution, but it was resumed and with still greater violence by Bahram V (4. Theodosius II, guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Christians. Yezdegerd II (4. 38- 5. The persecution of Chosroes I from 5. He also destroyed churches and monasteries and imprisoned Persian noblemen who had become Christians. The last persecution by Persian kings was that of Chosroes II (5. Christians alike during 6. But, owing to the exertions of Bishop. Ulfilas (3. 40, died 3. Arian, Arianism was professed by the great majority of the Visigoths of Dacia ( Transylvania and West Hungary ), converts from paganism ; and it passed with them into Lower M. And subsequently, when in 3. Visigoths, pressed by the Huns, crossed the Danube and entered the Roman Empire, Arianism was the religion practised by the Emperor Valens. This fact, along with the national character given to Arianism by Ulfilas, made it the form of Christianity adopted also by the Ostrogoths, from whom it spread to the Burgundians, Suevi, Vandals, and Lombards. Sabas was drowned in 3. When, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Visigoths invaded Italy, Gaul, and Spain, the churches were plundered, and the Catholicbishops and clergy were often murdered ; but their normal attitude was one of toleration, Euric (4. Visigoth King of Toulouse, is especially mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris (Ep. In Spain there was persecution at least from time to time during the period 4. Euric, who occupied Catalonia in 4. We hear of persecution by Agila (5. Leovigild (5. 73- 8.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |