Stupid things religious people say

[Angrboda]

Well, they could have known just like they can today: they could see that these people were suffering. Indeed, there were some people, or should I say organizations, in the United States who would buy slaves or obtain them in different ways and then free them and send them back to Africa.

But they (the Church) didn’t view enslaved people as ‘people’ - that’s a fairly recent development. 

It’s a repugnant point of view to us, but in the period under discussion in Leo’s apology, it was not only Church policy but a moral certainty that non-Christians were sub-human and had no more rights than cattle or sheep. 

Boru

What about an inference from classical times when even Jews were enslaved. It sounds like you're saying the church had no counterexamples, but they did.