Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION
doubtedly completed when the Decretal of Gregory IX
appeared, authorizing the Inquisitors
to enforce the cruel
laws of Frederic II.
But St. Thomas, who wrote at a time when the Inquisi
tion was in full operation, felt called upon
171
to defend the
infliction of the death penalty upon heretics and the
relapsed. His words deserve careful consideration. He
begins by answering the objections that might be brought
from the Scriptures and the Fathers against
his thesis.
The first of these is the well-known passage
of St. Matthew,
in which our Savior forbids the servants of the house
holder to gather up the cockle before the harvest time,
lest they root up the wheat with it. 1
he says,
St. John Chrysostom,
"
argues from this text that it is wrong to put
heretics to death." 2 But according to St. Augustine the
words of the Savior: "Let the cockle grow
until the har
vest," are explained at once by what follows: "lest per
haps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also
the wheat
with it." When there is no danger of uprooting
and no danger of schism, violent measures may
be used:
believing all the articles of religion, refused the obedience due to the Roman
Church. All alike were to be forced into the Roman fold, and the fate of
1
Core Dathan and Abiron was invoked for the destruction of the obstinate:
(Summa, lib. i, tit. v, 2, 4, 8; tit. vi, i). This is a travesty of the mind and
words of Saint Raymond. He merely called attention to the lot of Core,
Dathan and Abiron to show what a great crime schism was. He never
asserted that heretics or schismatics, even when obdurate, ought to be "de
stroyed." Summa, lib. i, cap. De Hareticis and De Schismaticis.
1 Matt. xiii. 28, 30.
2 In Matthaum, Homil. xlvi.