This morning, I finally got around to listening to Paul Fahey’s Third Space interview with Fr. Chris Kellerman, SJ, author of All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church. They discuss what Fr. Kellerman discovered over the course of researching and writing his book, including his realization that the sanitized vision of the Church’s relationship with slavery, which has long been promoted by Catholic thinkers and apologists, isn’t entirely accurate.
Many Catholics have sought to distinguish between chattel slavery, which treats human beings as property with no rights, and certain other forms of servitude that they considered morally licit under specific circumstances. Many Catholics have argued that when Pope John Paul II published Veritatis Splendor in 1993 and listed slavery as an intrinsically evil act — “something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order” (VS 80) — he was referring to chattel slavery alone. Theologian Avery Dulles held this view, writing, “Radical forms of slavery that deprive human beings of all personal rights are never morally permissible, but more or less moderate forms of subjection and servitude will always accompany the human condition.”
In the podcast, Fr. Kellerman explains that what he found in the historical record — including the writings of fathers, theologians, and popes through the centuries — does not sustain the narrative of good and bad forms of slavery. He asserts that the type of slavery found in the New Testament was unquestionably chattel slavery:
It’s not even a debate. And so when St. Paul tells enslaved people that they should obey their masters as they would obey Christ when Jesus meets the centurion who has a slave that he wants healed, when we meet slaves in the Acts of the Apostles we’re talking about chattel slaves in the Roman slave trade system and you can read the Roman law of the time if you want to. You can read Roman philosophers that are writing about this.
I am not immediately convinced by all his assertions, but I accept the likelihood that many of his conclusions, if not most, are sound. I intend to look more deeply into these questions, especially his claims about saints who were slaveowners. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that clinging prejudicially to comforting and familiar narratives about the Church is just as dangerous as accepting new ideas or claims uncritically. Yet even if we reach different conclusions, I think it’s also useful to be aware of different ideas, areas of research, and schools of thought — because even if we disagree with something or draw different conclusions, we can always learn from others.
I was speaking with a wise deacon recently about the way learning difficult truths is a sobering experience. At one point he quipped, “The more you know, the more you wish you didn’t know.” But as unpleasant as it can be, hiding the truth will allow error to perpetuate.
I was thinking about all this when I finally sat down and read Pope Francis’s new Letter on the Study of Church History, which was released last week to little fanfare but which makes an important call to Catholics, particularly priests and seminarians, to develop a genuine sense of Church history so that we may better understand the world in which we live.
The pope’s letter rejects a triumphalist or idealized view of the Church. He warns against what he calls “ecclesiological monophysitism,” an overly spiritualized and disembodied view of the Church that overlooks her historical reality. Pope Francis reminds us in this letter that the Church is a community of people, and, like any human institution, it bears the marks of human frailty, sin, and error. Yet it is also a community that is led by the Holy Spirit and called to holiness.
One of the most striking aspects of the pope’s letter is its emphasis on memory — not just on good memories, but of failures, sins, and injustices. Citing examples like the Shoah, Hiroshima, and the Church’s complicity in other historical atrocities, Francis calls for a “penitential memory” that acknowledges and learns from the past. Quoting Fratelli Tutti, he writes, “Those who were fierce enemies have to speak from the stark and clear truth. They have to learn how to cultivate a penitential memory, one that can accept the past in order not to cloud the future with their own regrets, problems and plans. Only by basing themselves on the historical truth of events will they be able to make a broad and persevering effort to understand one another and to strive for a new synthesis for the good of all.”
I think the Church is capable of learning and growing from its missteps. But we must first recognize the Church’s missteps. Perhaps paradoxically, the traditionalist view of the Church — with its insistence on a narrow understanding of doctrinal development and rigid view of continuity — often overlooks (or even glorifies) the Church’s past mistakes: religious intolerance and coercion; mistreatment of women and those of other religions; tolerance of wars, the death penalty, colonialism, and economic inequality.
Contemporary traditionalism seems to oppose the Church’s acknowledgement of these mistakes and subsequent reforms. The traditionalist seems to find more fault in the contemporary Church’s embrace of religious liberty and infinite dignity than in things like its past wars of conquest and expulsion of Jews. This is not new, but is ultimately a rejection of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict’s call for a “hermeneutic of reform” was in great part a call for doctrine to “be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought.” This includes, obviously, the modern science of history.
This is something we should approach not with fear, but with faith. If our faith is true, it will withstand the scrutiny of modern science, history, and archeology. And we should be open to new developments and ways of thinking and a deeper understanding of doctrinal development. For a faithful Catholic today, the idea of buying and selling a human being as a slave is abhorrent. Today’s Catholic conscience — one that believes that all people have intrinsic, inviolable, and infinite human dignity — agrees intuitively with John Paul II’s declaration that it is intrinsically evil. This is true even though the thought would not have occurred to most Catholics only a few hundred years ago.
This makes sense if we understand Pope Benedict’s teaching that the Church “is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.” When embarking on a journey such as a pilgrimage, we learn and grow along the way. When we journey together, we have moments of companionship and conversation, and moments of walking in silence and contemplation with ourselves. We grow a little worse for wear, but we also develop the muscles and callouses that will assist us as we go on.
Image: Statue of John Carroll, slaveholder and the first US bishop, at Georgetown University. “Georgetown University founder” (CC BY 2.0) by Serge Melki
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. He and Jeannie Gaffigan co-host Field Hospital, a U.S. Catholic podcast.
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