Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. That is, unless they tune in to PBS Channel 2 Wednesday, May 16 at 9:00pm. The second part of the series is called ‘The War on Ideas’. Does that have a familiar ring?
The first part was rough stuff to watch. Innocent people hauled off to jail without explanation and tortured till they confessed to whatever their persecutors wanted them to say. I cannot imagine the terrorism inflicted on a community when they have to line up and watch one of their own burned alive, and this at the hands of Mother Church. The imagery reminded me of pictures of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Goddess knows that history is full of atrocious regimes. In fact, The Catholic League makes that point. They say the Spanish Inquisition is misunderstood, the Church didn’t burn as many people as the Protestants claim and anyway Stalin was worse. I guess that could be a slogan–‘The Catholic Church–Not as Bad as Stalin!’
One great thing about the series is the interviews with historians and experts. Local boy, Professor David M. Gitlitz of U.R.I. provided commentary for Part I, and Very Reverend Joseph Augustine Di Noia represented the Vatican. At one point, the Reverend conceded that the use of torture was, ‘a mistake’. Interesting language. Yes, mistakes were made.
The Catholic church is legendary for its highly educated clergy; ever heard of ‘Jesuitical sophistry’? Anyway, their priests don’t just fall off the turnip truck. When the Rev. called torture a ‘mistake’ and not a sin, he knew exactly what he meant to say.
What would be the implications of declaring torture to be a sin? Would the Church have to admit that some Popes condoned sin? Would Pope Benedict start talking about excommunicating politicians who condoned and enabled torture? Would Attorney General Gonzales have to go to confession? Makes me wonder…hope that’s not heretical.
Recurring Nightmare 
It takes a lot to make Napoleon look like a progressive, but compared to the Catholic Inquisitors he was the voice of reason. The Inquisition should warn us away from trying to establish a religious state. We’re more ‘French’ than the repubs like to admit, there’s a reason why our flag is red, white and blue. We also borrowed the idea of a secular society, and I would’t trade it for a sanctified dictatorship.
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Interesting points. For his time, I would sugegst that Napoleon was a rather complicated character and in many ways, and in the context of his time, was indeed a progressive. Napoleonic contributions to scholarship, and the classics, new frontiers in science, voyages of discovery, and other areas make for an interesting contrast to his “Alexander the Great” complex and a need to dominate. The need for the Catholic Church to dominate represented a fear of the unorthodox and radical, and again needs to be viewed through a contemporaneous lens. The horror is undeniable, but in an age where mean life expectency was 25 and more than 50% of infants died before age 5, orthodoxy provided the p[romise of a better place after death. Anything that threatened that orthodoxy threatened the world order.
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