Everywhere you will find misconceptions about the Church’s role in slavery. Even most Catholics do not know the truth about what the Church did, and did not do, regarding slavery.
Best-selling author Paul Kengor joins us to share some of the surprising true story.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and one of the things, among the many, that modern people accuse the church of is the accommodation to slavery or maybe even an encouragement of slavery. And so, if you’re going to be occupied with defending the faith you ought to have at least some sense of what is the real history of the church in relation to slavery. We have a great guest to talk about this hour, Dr. Paul Kengor. He is the Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the Institute for Faith and Freedom at Grove City College. He’s the author of a bunch of books, including a Pope and a President, John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century. His new book, the Worst of Indignities: The Catholic Church on Slavery, is out this summer from Emmaus Road Press. Dr. Kengor, thank you for being with us.
Paul Kengor:
Cy, it’s good to be with you again. Thank you, sir.
Cy Kellett:
Look, Pope Francis comes to America, he’s going to say something about how the church opposes slavery, and modern popes do that. But here’s what I think most people are going to say, “Yeah, of course the church opposes slavery now but it didn’t come out in opposition of slavery until the 19th century or something. It’s really just following the lead of the modern world.”
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, that’s complete nonsense. In fact, you’ll see some people claim that the church didn’t condemn slavery until Vatican II.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, really?
Paul Kengor:
Yeah. I mean, it’s out there. Yeah, you could see it. And in fact, I cite some examples in the book. Most people though will say, “Well, they didn’t get around to it until about Leo XIII,” but in fact it goes way, way, way, way back. I mean, how far do you want to go? Councils? Council of Agde, the year 506, Council of Worms, Koblenz? Let me go back to the year 900. Do you want examples of saints, popes? How about St. Patrick fourth century, who was a slave himself? How about St. Gregory the great from around 600? A pope, saint, who himself had been a slave. You want formal papal bulls, exhortations and cyclicals? Okay, Sicut Dudum, January 1435, Creator Omnium, which was December 1434.
If you’re doing the math that is over a half a century before Columbus landed in America. Go to any of Pope Paul II’s 1537 statements where he referred to slavery as a product of Satan, an instrument of Satan, which the title of my book, The Worst of Indignities, is a quote from Pope Pius X who said that in 1912. And he also said that slavery was a product of Satan. And in fact, Pope Paul III and other popes from the 16th century were not only condemning slavery, but they were excommunicating Catholics, including princes, royalty who owned slaves. They were calling for reparations. Our church, Cy, was way out ahead on the reparations. And by the way, why wouldn’t it do that? Because in a sense, it’s like we have a thing called making reparation. Making reparation for sins.
So, our church has been doing this for 1,500 years. These encyclicals that I noted from 1434, 1435, that is literally 400 years exactly before Wilberforce and the Brits abolished slavery in 1835, before we did it in 1865. The church was way ahead on this. People say that have no idea what they’re talking about. They’re embarrassing themselves.
Cy Kellett:
Well, what about the complaint then that will go like this? Well yeah, what the church was condemning was enslaving other Christians. You couldn’t enslave a Christian, but you could enslave anybody else.
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, it’s nonsense again. And in fact, one of the arguments that you’ll hear is, “Well, the church was late on condemning Black African slavery, the transatlantic slave trade.” No, transatlantic slave trade, do a quick Google search, most people begin it in the year 1444. And I just named three different or two different church and cyclical statements. Creator Omnium, which was December 17th, 1434, Sicut Dudum, January 13th, 1435. Those are both a full decade before the transatlantic slave trade started. And the second Sicut Dudum is called Against the Enslavement of Black Indians from the Canary Islands, Black people from the Canary Islands.
It was explicitly against the enslavement of Black people specifically, it even specified color in the title of the Encyclicals. At this point, somebody might step up and ask, “Well gee, why had the church never condemned slavery of whites until that point?” Why did they suddenly condemn it for Blacks? Where were they with whites and Jews all those years? But the church was ahead on Black slavery.
Cy Kellett:
Right. I wonder how much of what you’re saying involves a kind of failure, and maybe a willful failure to make a distinction among Christians in that it is the case, especially here in the United States, that biblical scholarship, preaching, all of that was sometimes marshaled, not sometimes, it was quite often marshaled to justify Black slavery here in the United States.
Paul Kengor:
Well I mean, yeah, it was. So look, the United States is very different because from the beginning we were basically a Protestant Christian nation. There weren’t many Catholics. There weren’t many Catholics even into the 19th century. So our Protestant figures, including the American founders, would not have been taking their lead from the institutional Catholic Church on this. But that said, for every crazy, enraged, stereotypical Southern Bible man whipping his slaves with a whip in one hand and his Bible in the other, there was a whole abolitionist movement that was led by Protestant Christians. John Brown, who is sometimes considered the first domestic terrorist in America was-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right. Anti-slavery terrorist.
Paul Kengor:
… a Protestant minister. And the American founders, so I spent a lot of time on this in the book, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, so many of the leading founders were completely against slavery, never had slaves. And in fact, Ben Franklin’s last real public gig was the head of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. The founders who did have slaves, Washington and Jefferson for example, were absolutely against it and said so in statements, and even made efforts to try to abolish it. The problem was they couldn’t financially and personally extricate themselves from it, and so they allowed it to persist. But what’s important, as Abraham Lincoln said, is that Abraham Lincoln said this in the Gettysburg Address, 1863, he said, “Four score and seven years ago,” that would’ve been July 4th, 1776, “Our forefathers put forth the proposition that all men are created equal.” In other words, they established the principle that you shouldn’t be able to have slavery.
Now, anybody reading this book is going to be struck by the heroic, amazing, almost angelic St. Peter Claver and what he did in the 1500s to serve slaves. Leo XIII said, “No figure in the history of Christianity other than Christ himself has so impressed me other than Peter Claver.” Okay, one might ask, “Well, what did Peter Claver do to abolish slavery?” Well, nothing. He couldn’t, but he rode to the ships to wipe the mucus and the blood off the faces of the slaves, and kissed them, and washed their faces, and ministered to them. He did what he could in his era. So, the founders couldn’t abolish slavery in America in 1776, it would take a civil war to do that.
The bloodiest war in American history, 600,000 to 700,000 American boys died in a war over slavery out of a population of 30 million. 600,000, 700,000 is all the combined losses of all wars in American history, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam combined. So, what’s unique about America is not that we had slaves. Every country, every culture has since the ancient Mesopotamians, the Egyptians. What’s unique about America, as Thomas Sowell points out, is that we abolished it in the bloodiest war in the history of our country. We paid for it big time.
Cy Kellett:
Well, if popes in particular, who are, I mean, they’re very, very powerful people, and theologians, and those who were in the leadership positions of the church were so opposed to slavery, why were they so ineffective at ending it? Why did it go on for hundreds of years while these popes came and went?
Paul Kengor:
Because it was accepted as really part of the universal condition. You’ll hear people say all the time, atheists will say, “Well look, there’s slavery in the Bible.” Well yeah, because it existed everywhere. In fact, I quote one of the Ottoman Sultans, who’s just baffled, he’s mystified at these westerners and the Vatican. He’s like, “I don’t understand this moral push to end slavery. I mean, this is what you do. You invade a country, you pillage it. You take the women, you take the slaves. This is simply what you do.” Ancient Mesopotamia, where you could trace the origins of slavery going back like 6,000, 7,000 years. Look, in the Book of Genesis, ancient Mesopotamia, which is modern day Iraq, is in the Tigris and Euphrates River where the confluence, and in fact that’s described in Genesis.
What are they talking about in Genesis and when they talk about the Tigris and the Euphrates? The Garden of Eden. So, slavery goes back to nearly the Garden of Eden. The Coliseum was built by slaves. The Great Wall of China was built by slaves. The ancient Egyptians held Jews in slavery, and this is going to shock people. 1619? Go to the year 1618. There’s a book called White Cargo, which came out around 2000 before the 1619 project even began. The first slaves that came to America, Cy, came in in 1618 as white indentured servants from Britain, about 300,000 of them altogether. And many of them were auctioned, whipped, treated with great cruelty. And I’ll give you another date. After 1865, the Civil War, American Indians. We now celebrate an Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We can’t celebrate Columbus, we can’t celebrate Junipero Serra.
So, now we celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ day. I got news for you, folks. The five so-called civilized tribes, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, all the others, all owned, and whipped, and treated cruelly Black African slaves. Some of them fought with the Confederates in the Civil War, and even after the Civil War they still had those Black slaves. And there are Black Americans today, ancestors of those slaves, who have lawsuits against American Indian tribes trying to get reparations for how their ancestors were treated by American Indians. The American Indians were going at this longer than Washington and Jefferson were, and we don’t even talk about that.
Cy Kellett:
So, as part of what your contention would be about, it’s not really even a belief that people have. I think it’s an assumption that they have that the church was a failure when it comes to slavery, it seems to just go by as an unquestioned assumption. What you’re painting a picture of is this pervasive institution throughout human history that virtually everyone is implicated in, and that the voices of popes, say in the 1400s, were set against this institution. But it’s maybe like the voices of popes being set against the institution of abortion today. They can rail all they want, they don’t have the power to change what seems to be the human condition.
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. So picture, I mean, you have guys like Washington and Jefferson coming out and saying, “There’s nobody who wishes to see an end to it like I do.” Or, “The wolf has us by the tail. I’d like to see it ended, if only somebody could end it.” So, that’s pretty strong language. Okay, go back 300 years before that and you have Pope saying, “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s an instrument of the devil.” Who created slavery? Satan created slavery. I mean, that’s really strong. I mean, that’s completely unprecedented. That has the Sultan going. “What? I mean, our Koran talks about this.” Muhammad had slaves. Muhammad was a warlord, who had concubines, female slaves. I mean, ISIS to this day has slaves. It’s the church that comes out of, aside from everybody else in all of history, as if frankly guided by the Holy Spirit. I mean, it’s hard to imagine any other explanation how the church could be so far ahead on it.
Cy Kellett:
Well, how would you answer the Sultan’s question then? Because if what he’s saying to essentially to the popes of the 15th century, “On what basis are you opposing slavery if it’s in your Bible?” What’s the answer to that? On what basis did they oppose slavery?
Paul Kengor:
Well, here’s a good question. So, I just pulled this up on my screen. I’ll let Pope Paul III answer you. So this is June 2nd, 1537. It’s been 300 years before Wilberforce even ends slavery in Britain, and it’s called Sublimis Deus, which is a quote on the enslavement and evangelization of Indians. So this is 1537. This is a century before the Mayflower, before the pilgrims, before John Winthrop and the Arabella, before the New York Times 16 and 19 project. And here’s what he said.
“Who is responsible for this slavery? The enemy of the human race who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of salvation to the people. He inspired his satellites, who to please him,” that be to please the devil, “Have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West, and the South, and other people of whom we have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, we define and declare by these letters that said Indians,” and by the way, get this Cy, “And all other people later to be discovered by Christians-
Cy Kellett:
So for all time, the pope is saying-
Paul Kengor:
For all time. “Are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ, and that they may and should freely and legitimately enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property, nor should they be in any way enslaved. Should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.” So I mean, it’s pretty amazing. And people say, “Well, they’re just saying this because they want to evangelize.” And well, of course they want to evangelize. Jesus wanted to evangelize, go and make disciples of all nations. But he says, “All other people who may later be discovered by Christians.” It doesn’t matter if they’re Christians at that point, they are human beings and they should be treated as such.
So the church said this, the entire Salamanca School in the 1500s-
Cy Kellett:
That’s the judgements.
Paul Kengor:
… Antonio Montesinos, Francisco Vitoria, Melchor Cano, Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas, on and on, and on, there were entire Christian orders. St. John de Matha, 12th century, founded an entire order based on ransoming slaves. St. Peter Nolasco, same time, he was called the Ransomer, around the year 1200. That’s 600 years before Georgetown University sold slaves. So the church was way out ahead on this, way out ahead.
Cy Kellett:
What about the other side of the church’s treatment of slaves? You mentioned a pope who was an ex-slave. Because what you’re describing is basic justice, that is in justice we must oppose slavery is what the church is teaching us from the 1400s, and certainly from before that. In your book you get very, very early in church history with like St. John Chrysostom and others. So, if that’s what the church demands in justice, what about her ministry of charity? Has she been charitable to enslaved people? Has she shown her charity there?
Paul Kengor:
Oh, yeah. Tremendously so. In fact, one of the longest sections of the book I talk about three modern slaves. And so, they are the venerable Pierre Toussaint, Augustus Tolton, who is considered by many to be the first Black priest in America. He lived 1854 to 1897. And I talk about one of my favorites, St. Josephine Bakhita, who died in 1947, and she is very symptomatic of a problem to this day, namely slavery in the Sudan, which still goes on with Black African Muslims capturing Black Christians in the Sudan. It’s still going on. But in all three of those cases, they were shown amazing, beautiful, wonderful, inspiring, will bring you to tears charity by good Catholics. And that was especially the case with Augustus Tolton, who had this priest who took him under his wing.
And on the negative side, Cy, this priest wrote all these letters trying to get Tolton into a seminary in the United States and they all turned him down. That’s bad, that’s bigotry, that’s discrimination. So, he writes to Rome, and in Rome it wasn’t unusual to have a Black person in seminary.
Cy Kellett:
That’s what I love about his story is in America this is shocking that you should have a Black person apply. In Rome they’re like, “Well, we’ve been doing this forever. Why would we care if a Black person wants to be a priest?”
Paul Kengor:
Right, probably back to Augustine. I mean, some people consider Augustine to be Black. We don’t know for sure how dark his skin was if he’d be considered Black or African. But yeah, no, going back centuries. And Tolton gets over there and he just loved these Italian professors. He just loved them. They were so kind to him, they were so sweet to him, and he wanted to go to Africa once he was ordained but the cardinal who ordained him said, “No, we’re not sending you to Africa. We’re going to see how enlightened the Americans truly are. We’re going to send the Americans their first Black priest. You’re going to America.” And by the way, he gets to America and the people in his hometown, his parish, basically throw him like a ticker tape parade. They are so proud of their boy they just forget that he was Black. The fact that he’s Black doesn’t matter anymore. Now they like that he’s Black. He’s the first Black priest.
Cy Kellett:
He’s their pioneer, so to speak.
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, and they treat him beautifully. Josephine Bakhita is really saved from these sadistic, evil, horrific Muslim slave women, and commanders, and military men by this Italian who sees her waiting on this Muslim slaver, feels bad for her, he’s watching her. And he basically buys her, takes her, brings her back to Italy. She falls in love with Italy, she doesn’t want to go back to the Sudan. She argues with this guy all the time, she’s like a member of the family. And then eventually another family gets her. The family doesn’t want to free her because the little daughter loves her so much. The mother and the daughters selfishly want her to be part of their family. But these nuns, these Italian nuns, all white, want her to be part of the convent. The bishop who’s white, steps in, wants to be the cardinal comes in, they pull her away from the family, and she becomes the only Black woman probably in the whole village and convent, and she’s beloved. She becomes a saint.
So they meet genuine charity and kindness, these Black slaves.
Cy Kellett:
It does suggest though, especially the story of Augustus Tolton, I mean, the story of Pierre Toussaint, who you mentioned as well, he became a very charitable person himself, that it’s extraordinary. I mean, he basically paid for the first St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and then some porter at the door, a white porter wouldn’t let him in on the day they consecrated the cathedral.
Paul Kengor:
Yeah. I visited his tomb, and his case is very touching. I don’t want anybody to misconstrue this. I mean, obviously owning slaves is evil and bad, but his slave owners that he had were kind to him. So much so that when the father of the family died, the widower was struggling. And Pierre, who they let work, they allowed him to work and earned an income and earned saving.
Cy Kellett:
He was a very smart, very capable businessman.
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, and he became one of the top hairdressers with his own business in New York. White women would come to him to have their hair done, pay him a lot of money, and when the widower was struggling Pierre helped her out. He said, “Well, I’ve saved a whole bunch of money thanks to you guys letting me do … I’ll take care of you.” And they freed him. So, he met kindness as well in that case.
Cy Kellett:
But it does give you a strong sense, and I don’t like to too fastly associate this with abortion, but there’s a way in which in America we are accommodated to abortion in a way that 19th century America was accommodated to slavery. And remembering that the church was actually on the right side of this maybe would give us a little bit of oomph in us to resist the culture. In other words, you look back on and say what Augustus Tolton went through and you say, “I wish more Catholics could have resisted the culture and been what the popes were calling them to be.”
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, that’s a great example. As you know, I did a book called A Pope and a President, and Ronald Reagan compared abortion to slavery in the 1980s. I think it was a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, or maybe the religious broadcasters. New York Times was so offended they did an editorial on it. John Paul II went to St. Louis, Missouri and talked about the Dred Scott decision and compared the denial of the humanity of the fetus through abortion as equivalent to the denial humanity of a Black person just because they were Black through the Dred Scott decision. And he said that right in front of Bill and Hillary Clinton when Clinton was president. So yeah, very similar. And in all these cases, sometimes the best you can do is stand up and denounce it.
And people could look back and say, “Well, why didn’t the church end it?” Well, why did the church in what, 1200 stop the Ottomans from running slavery?” I mean, we tried crusades dude, you guys don’t like that. How do you want the Pope to stop the Ottomans from invading Malta, and Lepanto, and Vienna? Sometimes the best you can do is help the person and stand up and issue statements against it. These things don’t happen in the snap of your fingers. America took a civil war.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. So when you look at the book, I mean, one of the things that clearly is accomplished with this book, and thank you very much for producing it so that we have it, and one of the things that’s accomplished is clarify the record, and that is important so that people can have … Because I do think it undermines people’s faith when the record is obscure and these really evil assumptions are made about the church when they’re not the case. But going forward, why do you think a book like this is important? I mean, you mentioned that slavery still goes on today. Are you looking for a more anti-slavery church? Are you concerned that this is an issue that comes back again? What’s on your mind?
Paul Kengor:
Well, the church has been so consistent on this for so long, and the only example that I can find where a pope failed was probably Nicholas the V with two statements Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex, which so confounds modern scholars. I literally emailed over 100 Catholic scholars, and I counted, trying to figure out, trying to make sense of what he was trying to say with these two statements that he had. But other than that, the record from about Council of Agde in 506, through papal statements in 1434, 1435, through Pope Francis today, who’s probably condemned human trafficking and slavery more than any other pope, it’s an extraordinarily impressive record that no other institution in history can match. So it’s not perfect, and the men and women of the church being human beings aren’t perfect, but it’s impressive. It’s something to be proud of and something I think the Catholics need to know about.
Cy Kellett:
One of the things that I noted in your book too, and I hadn’t thought about this, is in the internet age, as scholars find these older documents from the 900s, 700s, 500s, they’re posting them online and it does seem like a story that was a bit hidden about the Catholic opposition to slavery. A clearer picture is getting out there because of this research being able to just just be posted online.
Paul Kengor:
Well, that’s exactly right. In fact, one of the only people who’s done a book on this, Joel Panzer, a priest, and I was blown away by what he had in his book, and I was finding papal documents earlier than the ones that he presented. And the more I would dig, I’d say, “Wow, did I just discover this?” This thing is written here in the year in the sixth century? And I see that it’s posted, but I don’t think anybody has linked anywhere that, oh wow, look at this. This means that this pope was condemning slavery 1,400 years ago. So, it’s all kind of out there and getting posted and putting up, being put up.
Fordham University, other places with archives, and I think 50 years from now, if somebody does this research again, or even 10 years from now, they’re going to find more than what I found. And this idea that, oh, the church didn’t condemn slavery to all Leo XIII or Vatican II,” people say that just look like, I’m sorry, complete ignoramuses.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, more and more they do indeed. Yeah. I mean, in a certain way it is kind of analogous to me to the 19th century Bible scholars who said, “Oh, there’s no Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. This is made up.” And then archeologists find it, and no one ever corrects the record and goes, “Oops, my bad.”
Paul Kengor:
Yeah, yeah. Nothing. No apology.
Cy Kellett:
But modern scholarship is getting us closer and closer to the truth about the ancient world, the medieval world, and even the early modern world, and the church comes out looking better not worse as it does that.
Paul Kengor:
Right, and we shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, look at the New Testament, Galatians, where Paul says, “There is neither Jew or Greek, Gentile, male or female, slave or non-slave.” And Christ talks about setting people free. I mean, it’s all pretty clear from the scriptures. But slavery existed since the dawn of humanity, every institution, every culture, people call it the America’s original sin. Well, it might be in a sense an original sin to America, but it’s not unoriginal. It’s not unusual.
Cy Kellett:
We didn’t invent it, that’s for sure.
Paul Kengor:
We didn’t invent it at all. I mean, everyone else was doing it too, which is not to excuse what America did, of course, but-
Cy Kellett:
No, no. Of course. Right.
Paul Kengor:
… that’s what makes it even worse, is that everyone has done it since almost the dawn of humanity. My ancestors in Italy in Calabria, were constantly … I look back, Cy, and I think, “Boy, how beautiful would it be to live in Reggio Calabria with my ancestors in the year 1500.” These people were sweating it out all the time the Muslim pirates were going to come in and take their daughters away.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. We forget that.
Paul Kengor:
It was a constant, constant fear with no one to protect them. No one other than some church statements.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Someone just come and take you away as a slave.
Paul Kengor:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Dr. Paul Kengor has been our guest, The Worst of Indignities: The Catholic Church on Slavery, it’s out now from Emmaus Road Publishing. Dr. Kengor, thank you very much. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Paul Kengor:
Thanks, Cy. And thanks for all you do. You guys are great.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to all of our listeners. Hey, if you want to communicate to us about this episode or any other, you can always write to us, focus@catholic.com is our email address, focus@catholic.com. Wherever you’re listening, if you would give us those five stars and write a nice review, that does help to grow the podcast and share it with everyone else, and we’d love that if that would happen. And it does cost a little bit to do this. If you can support us financially, you can do that at givecatholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.