How to Do Penance for the Inquisition
William Cavanaugh Friday, 1 June 2007
As a Catholic theologian who has written on the subject of torture, I often face the question of the Inquisition when giving lectures on torture in the modern world. The question often comes in the form of a semi-accusation: "How can you criticize the United States for using torture when the Catholic Church has such a history of torture—you know, the Inquisition and all that?" Behind the question seems to lurk a whole range of common perceptions about Catholicism, medieval society, and about torture itself. Catholicism seems especially identified with the past, with a medieval culture in which no aspect of life was untouched by Christianity, in which, in other words, there was no independent "secular" realm. Medieval society, in turn, is identified with a "Dark Ages," a time of ignorance and superstition in which corporal punishment and torture seem to have found a natural home. It was a time when focus on the sufferings of Christ bled inevitably into such "gothic" excesses as self-flagellation and the Inquisition.
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