Letters From Rome on the CouncilDöllinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von
History
Letters From Rome on the Council
Döllinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von
Popes -- Infallibility; Vatican Council (1st : 1869-1870 : Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano)
18. Innocent III., Alexander IV., and Boniface VIII. teach that it is just
and consonant with the Gospel to deprive the sons and daughters of
heretics, though themselves Catholics, of their hereditary property. But
if the sons themselves accuse their parents and get them burnt, then their
inherited property, according to papal doctrine, is exempt from
confiscation.
19. According to papal teaching torture is an institution thoroughly in
harmony with morality and the spirit of the Gospel, and should be employed
particularly against those accused of heresy. Thus Innocent IV. and many
later Popes have directed, and Paul IV. ordered the rack to be very
extensively used.
20. It is especially just and Christian, according to the teaching and
regulation of Pius V. in 1569, to torture persons who have confessed or
been convicted of heresy, in order to make them give up their
accomplices.(124)
21. This same canonized Pope has ordered in a Bull that even the sons of a
man who has once offended an inquisitor should be punished with infamy and
confiscation of their goods.
22. There is a whole string of papal decrees declaring it a duty of
conscience for every Christian to denounce even his nearest relations to
the Inquisition, and give them up to prison, torture and death, if he
perceives any trace of heretical opinions or of anything forbidden by the
Church in them.(125)
23. The same Popes have declared it to be just and evangelical, and have
ordered, that a relapsed heretic, even if he recants, should be put to
death.(126) They have further declared it to be moral and Christian-like
that in trials for heresy witnesses should be admitted to accuse or give
evidence against the accused, whose testimony would not be admitted in any
other court on account of their former crimes or their infamy.(127)
24. According to papal teaching it is just and Christian forcibly to
deprive heretics of their children, in order to bring them up Catholics.
Thus Innocent XII., by a sentence of the Holy Office at Rome, pronounced
null and void the edict of Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy in 1694 ordering
their children, who had been forcibly taken from them, to be restored to
the unfortunate and cruelly persecuted Waldenses under his
government.(128)
25. The Popes teach that a sentence once pronounced for heresy can never
be mitigated, nor pardon ever granted to any one sentenced to death or
perpetual imprisonment for heresy. Thus Innocent IV. rules in his Bull _Ad
Exstirpanda_.(129)
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