what about the Canon 3 of the 4th Lateran Council of 1215,

Concerning the use of the word exterminate in Canon 3 of the 4th Lateran Council of 1215, 

see here http://www.cpats.org/_webpostings/answers/2013_01JAN/2013JanHowWouldYouRespond.cfm    Here is part of the quote:

The whole of Canon 3 can be read here in translation:

• Twelfth Ecumenical Council: Lateran IV 1215, Canons 3

That web publication is cited in Fr. Cleenewerck's book, so apparently he was using that very translation. It was published in 1937, and it's actually a bit misleading. In particular, the wordexterminate is misleading in English: a more accurate translation would be expel. So the Fourth Lateran Council was urging secular authorities to expel heretics in their territory. Admittedly, that is not up to modern human rights standards, but for the 13th century, that's how they kept the peace. It's not talking about extermination in the sense of killing, so the whole thing becomes less shocking.
That point about language leads to another question. Fr. Cleenewerck doesn't cite any source for his readers to look at the canons in the original Latin. That is really not up to scholarly standards, which is surprising, since he holds several graduate degrees.

However , this guy does not agree with the above:http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/inquisition.html

 The fact that the Church did not directly assume the task of executing heretics, but turned them over, after conviction, to the secular arm, does very little towards qualifying its responsibility. For not only did it inculcate the general maxim, that in guarding the faith the temporal power must obey the spiritual, but, as has just been indicated, it required specitically, and under stress of the highest censures at its command, that the temporal power should diligently employ its exterminating sword against heresy.

 By an ecumenical decree, that of the Fourth Lateran Council, it ordained that the temporal lord who, after fair warning, should delay to purge his land of heretical defilement, should be excommunicated and lose all claim to allegiance. In the person of several Popes it prescribed, in authoritative terms, the adoption of a code which sentenced obstinate heretics to death by fire,

Then this from Catholic answers comment :http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=889548&highlight=canon+3+of+the+4th+Lateran+Council+of

First, let's quote the relevant document:

Lateran IV, Canon 3: "[Civil rulers] ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate/expel in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church." 1215 A.D.

First, let it be noted that the most significant word in Canon 3 is translated in two different ways: sometimes as exterminate, sometimes as expel. But let us suppose that exterminate is the correct translation. In that case, there is an apparent contradiction between this teaching and the modern teaching of the Church on the just use of the death penalty. 

Consider this quote from the Catechism: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against [an] unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means" CCC 2267.

The Catechism seems to say that the State must not use the death penalty if they can avoid it, and its purpose is to "defend [] human lives against [an] unjust aggressor." ButLateran IV seems to say that the death penalty must be used against heretics. According to the Catholic Church, our teachings cannot change. How do we square this apparent contradiction?

By reading carefully. Lateran IV does not say that the death penalty must be used against heretics in all cases -- it says it must be used against "all heretics pointed out bythe Church." That phrasing is important. It acknowledges the Church's right to decide upon the moral use of the death penalty. And the Church says that the death penalty cannot be used against someone unless they are an "unjust aggressor" who is attacking "human lives" and who cannot be stopped in any other way.

Similar reasoning applies to Pope Leo X's Bull Exsurge Domine.

According to that document, Error 33 was: "That heretics be burned is against the will ofthe Spirit." 1520 A.D.

To say the same thing in other words, what Exsurge Domine is condemning is the idea that it is contrary to the Law of God to apply the death penalty to heretics. And we do condemn that: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to thedeath penalty." But when? "[Only] if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against [an] unjust aggressor."

This is not a new interpretation of this teaching; this was how it was understood at thetime. I think that perhaps no better proof of this can be cited than St. Thomas More, who was in charge of executions in England shortly after Exsurge Domine was published. According to this saint, writing in 1528, the Church's teaching was tempered by the fact that heretics' executions should only be done once they themselves have become violent. He says this several times in his Dialog Concerning Heresies, Part IV, Chapter 13:

"[The princes] never in fact would have resorted so heavily to force and violence against heretics if the violent cruelty first used by the heretics themselves against good Catholic folk had not driven good princes to do it."

"[A]s I said before, if the heretics had never started with the violence, then even if they had used all the ways they could to lure the people by preaching...yet if they had left violence alone, good Christian people would perhaps all the way up to this day have used less violence toward them than they do now."

"[F]rom the beginning [heretics] were never by any temporal punishment oftheir bodies at all harshly treated until they began to be violent themselves."

"[Therefore] what the Church law on this calls for is good, reasonable, compassionate, and charitable, and in no way desirous of the death ofanyone." (More, Thomas. Dialogue Concerning Heresies. Translated by Gottschalk, Mary. 2006. New York, NY: Scepter Publishers. p. 460-464)

Now I admit that this teaching was not always followed in the Middle Ages by everyone, and in the space of 1000 years from 500 to 1500 A.D. I am sure that there were people who ordered the deaths of heretics who could have been left alive. But apart from thefact that no one is obliged to follow unjust orders, it is worth pointing out that theAlbigensians, against whom Lateran IV was directed, were known to have existed in 1022 A.D., almost 200 years before the Albigensian Crusade was ordered against them, andthe Church's bishops did not order anything to be done against them until the papal legate Blessed Pierre de Castelnau was murdered by them when he was trying to peacefully recover the Albigensian regions to the Catholic faith. In this case, too, it was the heretics' violence which begot a violent response, though the violence of the Catholics was arguably beyond what was required.

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Originally Posted by dmar198 In addition to what I've posted before on this thread, I wanted you to know that I've been giving your questions a lot of thought in and out of my classes lately, and I had some additional thoughts that I thought you might find helpful. It is my understanding of Church teaching that the Anathema of the Church falls underthe protection of papal infallibility only when it is attached to an ex cathedra papal declaration or a decree of an ecumenical council about faith or morality. Because of this,the threat of excommunication for doing X (or refusing to do Y) doesn't imply that the X is morally wrong or that Y is morally right. Therefore, if you were excommunicated for disobeying a cleric who told you to do something (e.g. execute a heretic), no matter what order he had given you, even if he was the pope himself, it would not imply that there was any Church teaching declaring that the action commanded of you was morally right. Theonly thing that could declare the teaching of the Church on the matter infallibly would be if there was an ex cathedra statement, or a decree from a council, that identified theaction under question and declared it to be morally right. If my analysis is correct, then, if you were told by a bishop that, under the authority vested in him by Canon 3 of the 4th Lateran Council, he hereby commanded you to execute a certain heretic; and if you then appealed to the pope, arguing that he had requested his death without good reason; and even if the pope then overruled you and commanded you to execute the heretic, and said that you would be excommunicated unless you did, all of this put together would *still* not mean that this was okay according tothe teaching of the Church. To determine the morality of the command, a Council(or the pope in an ex cathedra statement) would have to decree that it is okay for a heretic to be executed even if he is not an unstoppable violent criminal. That is not what the FourthLateran Council decreed, and it is not what Exsurge Domine decreed; therefore, nothing about the Church's teaching then was contrary to what it is now, even though it is possible that some commands of the Church's hierarchy were immoral. Could you consider this analysis thoughtfully and get back to me? I'd also like to see if aCanon Lawyer could verify it; it seems sound to me, but I'm not an expert in Canon Law.

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Originally Posted by dmar198 Quote: Originally Posted by dronald So are you saying that the Church leaders (often and most likely with agreement) took a moral high ground by handing them over to authorities to be murdered over their beliefs instead of doing it themselves? No, the clerics handed them over to the civil authorities without requesting or commanding the shedding of blood, because that was forbidden by Canon 18 of the IVLateran Council: "A cleric may not write or dictate letters which require punishments involving the shedding of blood, in the courts of princes this responsibility should be entrusted to laymen and not to clerics." "No cleric may decree or pronounce a sentence involving the shedding of blood, or carry out a punishment involving the same, or be present when such punishment is carried out." I think it is important to read Canon 3 with Canon 18 in mind. The execution of heretics was to be done specifically for "all heretics pointed out by the Church" (Canon 3), but ordinary clerics were forbidden from requesting such executions. Perhaps what these canons really show is how seriously the Church regarded the execution of heretics; it seems to have specified that executions should happen *when a Church organ other than an individual cleric investigated the matter and found it to be necessary. That is a very limiting principle on the right of nations to execute heretics, and perhaps it shows why theusual examples people can come up with were internationally controversial figures like Hus, Wyclif, Waldo, and the Albigensians. In the Reformation period, St. Thomas More also remarks on this point, defending theChurch from the accusation that it was merciless by saying that the Church's clerics did not request the State to execute heretics anyways; that was a State administered penalty, and, in More's opinion, they showed themselves to be Christ-like when they showed a history of avoiding the use of violence until it became necessary for defense against violence by the heretics themselves. (I provided quotes to that effect from him in a previous post; see post #55-56 of this thread.)

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Originally Posted by dmar198 Quote: Originally Posted by FathersKnowBest Suppose you're on a jury for a capital crime. You don't pronounce the sentence, you only determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. You know that there is a possibility that, if convicted, the accused could be sentenced to death. You believe that person to be guilty based on the evidence. Do you vote to convict, or acquit? I think you are bringing up a very important point, that even if we disagree with the use ofcapital punishment, changing that is not the juror's job, his job is just too give a verdict. But I think the Church's medieval hierarchy would be more admirable, viewed from a historical perspective, if they had protested the use of the death penalty in the case of non-violent heresies and if they had acted more strongly to change the law that applied thedeath penalty to non-violent heretics. To be clear, I am not saying that the Church's leaders never did protest, or that their typical silence or even support for the use of the death penalty against heretics constitutes proof that they overturned the early Church's more merciful attitude (because even when someof their writings supported it, this support was never asserted with dogmatic authority), but it sure would make the medieval Church look more admirable if brave souls more often stood up against this use of the death penalty as leaders of the Church. And perhaps they did, and I just can't find translated records of it yet. But I'll keep looking. Either way, since the Church never asserted with dogmatic authority that non-violent heretics may be executed, the argument that the Catholic States of the middle ages sometimes used the death penalty in immoral ways is no proof against the holiness or infallibility of the Church.

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