Would you buy a used car from this man?
Yahoo News reports on Pope Benedict in Brazil, May 13--why do I feel extreme cognitive dissonance when he makes the following claim?
"This is the faith that has made Latin America the 'continent of hope,'" Benedict told the crowd of nearly 150,000 gathered outside the mammoth basilica of Aparecida.
If the Catholic Church is Benedict's idea of hope, I would hate to see his despair. According to Clara Steinberg-Spitz, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition was imported to South America. They considered it their duty to torture people who differed with them on religious doctrine, was a practitioner of the native religion, or was a Jew.
"The most common form of torture in the New World was the potro, a bedlike frame with straps from side to side upon which the prisoner was placed, naked. The prisoner's limbs were strapped with leather bands, and tightened by the turns of a wheel, causing excruciating pain. Often, a prisoner would confess after the first turn of the wheel. Another form of torture was administered by placing a silk scarf in the prisoner's mouth and then pouring huge quantities of water into his mouth; the prisoner's stomach became distended and unbearably painful."
"The brazo secular (secular authorities) was responsible for reading the death penalty, and also for igniting the pyre at the stake. The auto de fé, or act of faith, was intended to be an enactment of the Last Day of Judgment. Its primary role was to serve as an example to the recently converted Indians and strike terror into the Hebrews. Punishment, from the Inquisition's point of view, was a penance. The tribunal devoted its efforts not merely to finding its victims guilty, but to extracting penitential confessions from them."
So the church only sentenced the poor soul to the torture of being burned alive at the stake--which they called being "relaxed"--leaving it to the secular authorities to do the burning. And many, even after recanting, were burned anyway.
You can read the remainder of Clara Steinberg-Spitz' article here. But you won't find it very relaxing.
I ask you--can you really believe in a God who endorses cruelty?
No comments:
Post a Comment