March 5, 2014

Catholicism and the challenge of liberty


From Constantine to Vatican II: A brief history of religious liberty...

6 comments:

  1. I didn't learn anything about the Catholic Church and Liberty from this video - I found it contradictory and confusing. Not to mention the completely superfluous but ghastly music which swamped the entire presentation. Was it really necessary? Was it's purpose to make up for the lack of depth and clarity in the content? I don't think this method of sound-bite interview snippets is helpful or informative. Disappointing, to say the least.

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  2. Liberty? What Liberty? Since Arius all the way to our days when pedophile priests are protected and rotated, a trail of innocent blood.
    Was Luther free to discuss? Was Waldo? Was Hus? And we can go on and on. Those were the times, we are told. After centuries of Gospel, this is the excuse we get? Truth is the liberty and respect taught by Christ was never applied in the Catholic Church.
    All it mattered was:Power!!!
    (and money of course)

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  3. It is a very interesting video. But too confused with two much opinions. Maybe a video with only three of them would be much better. I would like to see a video with Thomas Pink, Thomas Storck and John O'Mailley.

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  4. Fairly surprised that this video was posted here, given its unorthodoxy and false historical claims. One need simply to look at the Catholic Encyclopedia on this website:

    "A second revival of slavery took place after the discovery of the New World by the Spaniards in 1492. To give the history of it would be to exceed the limits of this article. It will be sufficient to recall the efforts of Las Casas in behalf of the aborigines of America and the protestations of popes against the enslavement of those aborigines and the traffic in negro slaves. England, France, Portugal, and Spain, all participated in this nefarious traffic. England only made amends for its transgressions when, in 1815, it took the initiative in the suppression of the slave trade. In 1871 a writer had the temerity to assert that the Papacy had not its mind to condemn slavery" (Ernest Havet, "Le christianisme et ses origines", I, p. xxi). He forgot that, in 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime" (magnum scelus); that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; that Urban VIII forbade it in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741; that Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade and Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, 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. Everyone knows of the beautiful letter which Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed 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."

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  5. Thank you for this timely, relevant, wise, balanced, and uplifting presentation. It seems to me that the point is that the disagreements about continuity and discontinuity persist because those concerned largely only measure the issue from the time of the post-Reformation & French Revolution. Christianity's earliest history, prior even than the Edict of Milan, was of a persecuted minority (Christ Himself, the Apostles, the early Church/martyrs) by ALL temporal authorities at that time - the Sanhedrin, the Temple Guard, and the Romans. Originally the Church had no temporal authority with which to coerce, but was itself the victim of coercion. The various factions that have weighed in on this matter have forgotten about the origins of Christianity itself as THE oldest Tradition against the coercion of the human person as well as against jurisdictional coercion - the coercion that was exercised against Christ Himself, St. Stephen, St. Peter, St. Paul, etc..

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  6. This video was good for sparking a dialog between two different perspectives on the topic of the Church and Liberty. Problematic is that 'personal liberty', even as it applies to the Church, is far too broad and nuanced to do justice in a short video. I personally think that a rather lengthy book might be more effective. I agree with others that commented about flaws in the rendering of Church History. I also know much more than most about the Reformation... and Yes, Liviu Constantin, Luther was given the chance to discuss... actually debate... and defend his 95 Thesis. Sadly, most Catholics do not know the authentic history of the Church.

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