The art of torture, Christian style, thanks to the many clerics who thought up such diabolic instruments!

From time immemorial, man has invented all sorts of apparatus for the good or bad of humanity, from the wheel to an appliance of torture and death!  Religion has never invented anything for the betterment of humanity, its Forté is and has been the inventions of death and torture.  Some appliances were solely to kill, some to torture to extract evidence, some did both and others caused lifelong disabilities, that is if they survived the infections.  Such as the knee splitter was invented to give the victim agonising pain and shock, as well as remove the victim’s ability to walk.   Amputation was probably the only cause of action, from such torture, however, infection was the killer.  The breast removing tongues, solely used on women to remove their breasts while still alive, which the misogynous clerics were very fond of using.  The death appliances were barbarous, only the clergy would think of such barbarity.  A favourite of the Waldensian and Albigensian Crusades, led by Rome, favoured impaling women on a long wooden pointed pale/spike.   Which was forced through the genitalia, and came out of the back near the neck, then the impaler was stood up, so the weight of the body would slide so far down the pole.  Men too were tortured this way too!  Then there was the pear!  Which was inserted into the victim’s mouth, and the screw was tightened, breaking the poor person’s jaw.  Who probably starved to death or died through infection.  However, if the survived, they would surly suffer from speech impediments.

The burning of victims was probably the Church’s favourite method of extinguishing life.  The Church was master at the art of killing and torturing victims, many were innocent of crimes.  A case in point is that of John Hooper, Lord Bishop of Gloucester.  His only crime was being a Protestant.   An eyewitness report of his execution is not for the faint at heart.  https://churchandstate.org.uk/2022/06/the-catholic-inquisition-methods-of-torture-and-victims/.  See seventh paragraph down in the shaded text.

St. Nicholas I’s ninth-century condemnation of this practice had fallen into oblivion, and more than three more centuries would pass before Catholic voices — few and isolated at first — began to call for the abolition of torture as contrary to the spirit of Christ’s gospel. But all the popes and the majority of theologians up until the eighteenth century (including even the great moralist and Doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori) continued to endorse confession-extracting torture. It was not until 1816 that a bull of Pope Pius VII finally enjoined all Catholic rulers to abolish this practice.

The next one-and-a-half centuries were marked by virtual silence from Rome on the subject of intentional pain-infliction prior to Vatican II’s denunciation of “physical and mental torture” as one of many other “disgraceful” social evils that today “poison human civilization” and “debase the perpetrators more than the victims” (Gaudium et Spes 27). In a 1982 allocution to the International Red Cross, John Paul II echoed this pastoral conciliar statement and urged universal compliance with the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition of torture and adding, “The disciple of Christ spontaneously rejects every recourse to such methods, which nothing could ever justify.” Finally, the 1992 Catechism, speaking of “respect for bodily integrity,” describes torture as “physical or moral violence” and affirms that its use “to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the human person and for human dignity” (CCC 2297).      https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7390. 

For information on the quote CCC 2297, see the height of Hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2297.htm.  They did no wrong, it is all down to terrorism.

What do you say?

J.E. Jeanne p.p. Jero Jones.

R&I ~ MJM