RE: Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
June 20, 2023 at 4:44 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2023 at 4:47 am by Nishant Xavier.)
@ Fake Messiah: 1888? Absolutely false, and you don't know what you're talking about. And you don't the know the (admittedly complex) 2000 year history. This is from 1839.
"But as the law of the Gospel universally and earnestly enjoined a sincere charity towards all, and considering that Our Lord Jesus Christ had declared that He considered as done or refused to Himself everything kind and merciful done or refused to the small and needy, it naturally follows, not only that Christians should regard as their brothers their slaves and, above all, their Christian slaves, but that they should be more inclined to set free those who merited it; which it was the custom to do chiefly upon the occasion of the Easter Feast as Gregory of Nyssa tells us. There were not lacking Christians, who, moved by an ardent charity ‘cast themselves into bondage in order to redeem others,’ many instances of which our predecessor, Clement I, of very holy memory, declares to have come to his knowledge. In the process of time, the fog of pagan superstition being more completely dissipated and the manners of barbarous people having been softened, thanks to Faith operating by Charity, it at last comes about that, since several centuries, there are no more slaves in the greater number of Christian nations ...
We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour..."
Read Sicut Dudum from the 15th Century and Sublimus Dei in the 16th. They condemned the enslavement of Blacks from the beginning. Now, after Africans and others had already been forcibly and unjustly taken from their lands, the practice was tolerated for a while. However, the Popes repeatedly spoke against it, as the above shows.
You still haven't show me any Atheists leading the charge to Abolish Slavery. Quite telling.
"But as the law of the Gospel universally and earnestly enjoined a sincere charity towards all, and considering that Our Lord Jesus Christ had declared that He considered as done or refused to Himself everything kind and merciful done or refused to the small and needy, it naturally follows, not only that Christians should regard as their brothers their slaves and, above all, their Christian slaves, but that they should be more inclined to set free those who merited it; which it was the custom to do chiefly upon the occasion of the Easter Feast as Gregory of Nyssa tells us. There were not lacking Christians, who, moved by an ardent charity ‘cast themselves into bondage in order to redeem others,’ many instances of which our predecessor, Clement I, of very holy memory, declares to have come to his knowledge. In the process of time, the fog of pagan superstition being more completely dissipated and the manners of barbarous people having been softened, thanks to Faith operating by Charity, it at last comes about that, since several centuries, there are no more slaves in the greater number of Christian nations ...
We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour..."
Read Sicut Dudum from the 15th Century and Sublimus Dei in the 16th. They condemned the enslavement of Blacks from the beginning. Now, after Africans and others had already been forcibly and unjustly taken from their lands, the practice was tolerated for a while. However, the Popes repeatedly spoke against it, as the above shows.
You still haven't show me any Atheists leading the charge to Abolish Slavery. Quite telling.
