Apologetics: Did the Church Ever Support Slavery?

The myth persists of Catholics approving slavery, because there were individual Catholics who supported slavery or owned slaves or some nations, even Catholic Portugal promoted it.

If you ever see the movie "The Mission" the controversy of ownership of the land of the Mission was whether it was Spanish or Portuguese rule. Although it isn't the main part of the story, it involved slavery, which was illegal under Spanish law but not under Portuguese. Slavery was similar to today's issue of abortion, some Catholic countries outlaw abortion, while some so called Catholic countries allow it. Both slavery and abortion are human rights issues.  

Scholars, with an axe to grind, use bad Catholics or wayward Catholic countries as  “proof” that the Church accepted slavery, without drawing the necessary distinction that what individual Catholics, or "Catholic" countries may do, does not necessarily reflect the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

Moreover, scholars have routinely failed to distinguish between different types of slavery. The Church has consistently and constantly condemned the practice of “unjust servitude,” which usually entailed the enslavement of a certain race or for economic gain.

But Western society since ancient times permitted just civil servitude; that is, the involuntary servitude imposed on criminals or prisoners of war. Just civil servitude was considered permissible as recently as 1949, when the Geneva Convention allowed nations at war to conscript prisoners of war for labor.

Also indentured servitude was allowed and was considered a form of employment, "selling" their labor for a period of time. Although it was greatly abused, and in some cases led to direct chattel slavery, which we all condemn today.

In these cases the Church has always demanded humane treatment of slaves by their masters and encouraged their emancipation. The failure to recognize these distinctions between types of servitude has led many scholars to declare falsely that the Church failed to condemn slavery.

The Church was born into a world where slavery was a lynchpin of society. Pagan Imperial Rome was built and sustained on the backs of slaves; the complete abolition of slavery in Rome was unthinkable.

Despite societal acceptance of slavery, the Church made no distinction between slaves and freedmen in Her membership. The equality of believers, in a highly class-stratified society, was one of the attractions that the Church held for people.

Once Emperor Constantine legalized the Church in A.D. 313, its teachings influenced Roman laws and policies. Church funds were used by Christians to redeem slaves, especially prisoners of war.

One former slave even rose to become pope (Callistus I) in the early third century. Still, slavery continued in Europe even into the late 5th century. St. Patrick was an avid opponent of slavery in the 5th century, once being a slave himself.  But as the Church’s influence increased the institution of slavery decreased, until it was completely eradicated in European Christendom.

Unfortunately, slavery returned to European society in the 15th century, with the conquest of the Canary Islands and the discovery of the New World. But from 1435 to 1890, a succession of popes condemned the slave trade and slavery.

The first pope to do so was Eugenius IV (r. 1431-1447), who in his 1435 bull Sicut Dudum demanded that Christians free all enslaved natives of the Canary Islands within fifteen days; failure to do so would incur automatic excommunication. Thus, fifty-seven years before Columbus’s first voyage, the Roman pontiff unequivocally prohibited the enslavement of native peoples.

In 1537, Pope Paul III (r. 1534-1549) issued a bull, Sublimus Dei, which taught that natives peoples were not to be enslaved:

   Pope Paul III, Sublimus Dei,June 2, 1537:

"We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians, and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, 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."

In 1591, Gregory XIV (r. 1590-1591) promulgated Cum Sicuti, which was addressed to the bishop of Manila in the Philippines and reiterated his predecessors’ prohibitions against enslaving native peoples and to support King Philip II of Spain, in these anti-
slavery laws, which decreed that no slaves should be made of native indigenous people by Spaniards:

    Pope Gregory XIV, Cum Sicuti, April, 18, 1591:
"We, in order that the Indians may come to, or return to, Christian doctrine and their own homes and possessions freely, and securely and without any fear of servitude as befits what is in harmony with reason and justice, decree in virtue of holy obedience and under penalty of excommunication that if at the publication of these letters, anyone have or detain such Indian slaves, they must give up all craft and deceit, and set the slaves completely free and in the future neither make nor retain slaves in any way according to the edict and mandate of said king Philip."
[btw Spain has a long anti-slavery tradition, Queen Isabella, king Philip's grand mother, banned enslavement of Native Americans who she considered subjects of the Crown. Columbus was preempted from selling Indian captives in Seville and those already sold were tracked, and purchased back from their buyers and released.]

In the seventeenth century, Urban VIII (r. 1623-1644) promulgated Commissum Nobis (1639) in support of the Spanish king’s (Philip IV) edict prohibiting enslavement of the Indians in the New World.

The need for cheap and abundant labor in the colonies is what led to the African slave trade. This new form of bondage was also condemned by the popes, beginning with Innocent XI (r. 1676-1689). In 1741, Benedict XIV (r. 1740-1758) issued Immensa Pastorum, which reiterated that the penalty for enslaving Indians was excommunication. In 1839, Gregory XVI (r. 1831-1846) issued In Supremo to condemn the enslavement of Africans. Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878-1903) promulgated two bulls condemning slavery in 1888 and 1890.

Yet despite the many papal condemnations of slavery, European colonists continued to enslave Africans, and New World natives until the nineteenth century. Papal denunciations of slavery were so harsh and so frequent that the colonial Spanish instituted a law forbidding the publication of papal documents in the colonies without prior approval.

It is ironic that the Church is falsely accused of either supporting slavery or failing to condemn it, when the wholesale enslavement of Christians by Muslims (estimated at one million people), especially the Ottoman Turks from the sixteenth to the eighteen century, is all but ignored.

Finally, it is disingenuous to equate the immoral behavior of individual Catholics with official Church teaching. The fact that some Catholics owned slaves or participated in the slave trade is not an indictment of the Church, but rather an illustration that Catholics will sometimes ignore the clear teachings of the Church.