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JUNE 15, 2004: PAPAL REPENTANCE FOR INQUISITION USHERS IN NEW SCHOLARSHIP
The historical excesses of the Catholic Church in combating heresy have long been symbolized by the Inquisition, the arm of the Church that investigated and tried cases of heterodoxy for three centuries until its abolishment in 1834. The injustices wrought by the Inquisition comprise a particularly grievous stain on the memory of Christians, and even more so for the Jewish people, whose ancestors experienced persecutions at the hands of the Inquisitors.
Pope John Paul II has in recent years publicly asked for God's pardon for the historical crimes of members of the Church, not least of which are those of the Inquisition. In 2000, he prayed, “Lord, God of all people, in certain epochs of history Christians have sometimes consented to methods of intolerance and have not followed the great commandment of love, sullying thereby the of the church your spouse. Have mercy on your sinful children and receive our resolution to seek and promote the truth in the sweetness of charity, knowing well that the truth cannot be imposed except in virtue of the truth itself.”
In keeping with this penitence, the Church has begun to undertake an examination of conscience, in the form of a thorough investigation into the facts and events of the Inquisition. In October 1998, a symposium was convened to study the Inquisition and the ways it “indulged in ways of thinking and acting that were in fact forms of counter-witness and scandal,” in the words of Cardinal Georges Cottier, papal household theologian. The proceedings of the symposium have been published, in a volume, Minutes of the International Symposium: The Inquisition.
According to Vatican officials at a June 15, 2004, press conference, the new scholarship on the Inquisition, while helping the Church to repent for the actual wrongs committed, also will clarify the scale of the Inquisition's brutality. For example, the international and inter-religious group of historians at the 1998 symposium established that in its 300 years, less than 1 percent of the 125,000 cases processed by the Inquisition were resolved with sentences of death. Far from exculpating the perpetrators of violent intolerance in the name of religion, Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Cottier hope that the search for the truth about the Inquisition will foster trust, and will allow for the Church to undertake the sincerest possible penitence.
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