Slavery in Religion
Sean Okita
Slavery
To this day, the views of slavery are simple. It is unacceptable and detrimental, no matter how one looks at it. It would be ideal to have everyone think of it this way. It is still a debated topic today, so there must be something beneficial to it. If slavery is being debated to this day, is slavery really that bad as people say? To what extent are people exploited and how? The Catholic Church and Society’s opinions vary just as much as how slavery is being used to this day. The Catholic Church has been against slavery, but they still utilized the practice. Advocators for natural law, such as Thomas Aquinas, justified slavery. These justifications, however, were only supported under strict conditions. Throughout the years, nothing has changed. In the 16th century, Papal Bulls, such as Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex and their derivatives, sanctioned slavery and were used to justify enslavement of natives and the appropriation of their lands during the Age of Discovery era. For many centuries the Church was part of a slave-holding society.
The popes themselves held slaves, including at times hundreds of Muslim captives to man their galleys. Throughout Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages, theologians generally followed St. Augustine in holding that although slavery was not written into the natural moral law it was not absolutely forbidden by that law. St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin were all Augustinian on this point. Although the subjection of one person to another (servitus) was not part of the primary intention of the natural law, St. Thomas taught, it was appropriate and socially useful in a world impaired by original sin. No Father or Doctor of the Church was an unqualified abolitionist. No pope or council ever made a sweeping condemnation of slavery as such. But they constantly sought to alleviate the evils of slavery and repeatedly denounced the mass enslavement of conquered populations and the infamous slave
Slavery
To this day, the views of slavery are simple. It is unacceptable and detrimental, no matter how one looks at it. It would be ideal to have everyone think of it this way. It is still a debated topic today, so there must be something beneficial to it. If slavery is being debated to this day, is slavery really that bad as people say? To what extent are people exploited and how? The Catholic Church and Society’s opinions vary just as much as how slavery is being used to this day. The Catholic Church has been against slavery, but they still utilized the practice. Advocators for natural law, such as Thomas Aquinas, justified slavery. These justifications, however, were only supported under strict conditions. Throughout the years, nothing has changed. In the 16th century, Papal Bulls, such as Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex and their derivatives, sanctioned slavery and were used to justify enslavement of natives and the appropriation of their lands during the Age of Discovery era. For many centuries the Church was part of a slave-holding society.
The popes themselves held slaves, including at times hundreds of Muslim captives to man their galleys. Throughout Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages, theologians generally followed St. Augustine in holding that although slavery was not written into the natural moral law it was not absolutely forbidden by that law. St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin were all Augustinian on this point. Although the subjection of one person to another (servitus) was not part of the primary intention of the natural law, St. Thomas taught, it was appropriate and socially useful in a world impaired by original sin. No Father or Doctor of the Church was an unqualified abolitionist. No pope or council ever made a sweeping condemnation of slavery as such. But they constantly sought to alleviate the evils of slavery and repeatedly denounced the mass enslavement of conquered populations and the infamous slave