Catholic Faith Quotes
This quotation shows the unique relationship that the Irish Republic has had with the Catholic Church. There was probably no other non Muslim country in the world where a political leaders could get elected avowing this kind of loyalty and control by a religious heirerchy. See {639726} for an even more Irish, drastic departure from the concept of separation of church and state.
The defense of slavery in this Instruction is not a defense of the racial slavery that was prevalent in the South prior to the Civil War, but rather a philosophical defense of a just conception of slavery. Even so the Pope’s justification of the buying and selling of slaves flew in the face of a papal document issued by Gregory XVI twenty-seven years earlier {611428}. “Just titles” of slavery were approved by the Catholic Church in circumstances in which the person was deprived of their liberty justly. Specific examples in the past included slaves captured in war, persons condemned to slavery for a crime, and those who sold themselves into slavery. Even though the Vatican was defending “just titles” of slavery, this teaching has been seen as regressive and highly contradictory to true Catholicism. After this Instruction the distinction between just and unjust slavery in Catholic teaching would erode and twenty-one years later Pope Leo XIII {611844} would condemn slavery and openly support abolition throughout the world.
