Wading in the Water
Did Mother Church Change Her Mind about Slavery?
Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(March 2009 Issue)
For any slave from Mississippi to Maryland in America, Wade in the Water was a coded slave song, a reference to escaping slaves using shallow streams to throw off pursuing bloodhounds. One would have thought that the social attitude towards slavery today was entirely different from that of those days.
Slavery is a phenomenon that is universally illegal today. Yet, its illegal legislative status notwithstanding, there are more slaves in the world now than at any other time in the history of humanity. An estimated 27 million persons around the world are captives of slavery, exploited for various purposes, some of which are forced prostitution, domestic work, and other forms of labour. Of these slaves, approximately fifty percent are under the age of 18.
Of this, Holy Mother Church has spoken. From as early (or as late, depending on how one looks at it) as 1965, the Church had passed a categorical judgement against slavery. Many would be familiar with the following passage taken from a document promulgated at the Second Vatican Council concerning human dignity:
Whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torture inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children ... all these things ... poison human society, dishonour the Creator, and do more harm to those who practise them than those who suffer from the injury... Human institutions, private or public .... should be bulwarks against any kind of political or social slavery and guardians of basic rights under any kind of government. [Gaudium et spes, 1965, points 27 & 29]
What many are not entirely aware of, however, is that the outright condemnation of slavery here seemed to be a watershed in the life of the Church. In fact, for 1,500 years prior to this document, the Church had never before so outrightly condemned slavery as an insult to the dignity of the human person.
For the first fifteen centuries of the Church’s life, it had seemed that the Church was giving a prima facie endorsement of slavery as a legitimate practice. Consider the following:
At the local Council of Gangra in 340 AD in Asia Minor, the Council decreed that slaves had the Christian obligation to submit themselves to their masters as they would submit themselves to God. The verbatim decree sounded as follows: “If anyone, on the pretext of religion teaches another man's slave to despise his master, and to withdraw from his service, and not to serve his master with good will and respect, let him be anathema” (Canon 3. C.J.C. Decriti Gratiani, 11, C.XVII, Q.IV, c.37).
Six decades following this Synod of Gangra, St Augustine similarly propagated that slaves should resist the inclination to abandon their masters’ homes and run to freedom. Rather, he taught, they should remain in their positions as slaves and render faithful service to their masters with an appropriate Christian attitude.
The decrees of the Council and St Augustine’s teaching were subsequently canonised and remained the official position of the Church until the promulgation of the new statement at the Second Vatican Council. On the face of it, it would naturally seem that the Church was, together with larger society, enforcing the institution of slavery and the accompanying separation of social classes.
In the seventh century, Pope Gregory I explained that even though all humanity was equal before God, by His providence, a “hierarchy of merit and rulership” had emerged as a result of sin. This “hierarchy of merit and rulership” spoke of the stratification of men into different social classes that was a segregation “ordained by divine justice”.
Subsequently, St Isidore of Seville further clarified this notion by explaining that certain persons were considered by God as being unable to bear the weight of freedom, and were therefore mercifully subsumed into slavery as a divine measure of mercy. It would seem that St Isidore of Seville had declared that the role of the slave master was a divinely appointed one for the purpose of regulating the intrinsic savaged nature of certain groups of persons.
Furthermore, St Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, had purportedly attempted to reconcile the practice of slavery with the patristic tradition of the Church.
In the light of this pattern of teaching in the history of the Church with regard to slavery, one must ask, what happened between then and the outright condemnation of slavery at Vatican II? Had the Church changed her mind?
In the same way that Jesus Christ and St Paul are today accused of having been sexist by modern standards, many theological scholars have employed the facts stated above to demonstrate how the Church has been an ally of slavery and a partner in the crime of human oppression and segregation. But before the passing of any such judgements upon the Church, one needs to first understand the ethos in which the Church existed in yesteryears.
The labour of slaves had largely contributed to the development of much of the European continent. Likewise, industrialisation in these nations could very well be attributed to the phenomenon of slavery. Against this background, it was understandable that slavery might not have been perceived as something evil, as long as slave masters were not unnecessarily ill-treating their slaves. Slavery was perfectly legal and it was absolutely legitimate as a trade.
Furthermore, notice also that the Church from the time of the Apostles emphasised the common participation of both slave and master in the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether or not slavery was to be seen as moral, it was a fact that out of that system of slavery, there were those slaves and masters who had come into the bosom of the Church, thereby subjecting themselves to her teaching and discipline. To these, the Church did not directly address the morality of their relationship as slaves and masters. However, she did impart to them the principle of common brotherhood and natural equality of men. In other words, a slave who exercised the virtue of submission towards his master, and the master who exercised mercy and patience towards his slave, exhibited the virtue of godly excellence. This teaching specifying the moral duties of both slaves and masters towards each other was perhaps a divine anticipation for a future appropriation of a fuller justice in which practical equality and liberty among men was to be realised.
The Church existed in these eras duringwhich slavery was an incorporated reality of society. It was unlikely that any sort of outright reproach against the practice of slavery would have yielded much good. But she did bring about a code of conduct regulating the duties of slaves and masters within the given societal framework of the day. Before the Church spoke up for the abolishment and immorality of slavery, she first conscientised the slaves and qualified them for the enjoyment of their natural rights. This act of qualifying the enslaved for the enjoyment of their intrinsic freedom was as crucial as the subsequent act of abolishing slavery. The enslaved had to be prepared for the enjoyment of freedom, and the masters had to be prepared to grant it to them at the appointed time.
Thus, the wise manner in which the Church handled this situation, even if only providentially, was to be observed in how she regulated the conduct of master and slave as a matter of church discipline in the light of their common relations to the Church. She prescribed duties to each and exacted obedience in ways which would give rise to the preparation of each for the subsequent condemnation of slavery.
Obviously, the Church has shown herself to have moved on since then. And this is perhaps how we may best understand the seeming change in the Church’s teaching on slavery, that she has grown into a fuller recognition and understanding of God’s revelation in Christ rather than that she has changed her mind. Slavery is now no longer perceived merely from the perspective of a social norm or a legitimate trade, but more so from the perspective of intrinsic human dignity which is to be accorded without prejudice to any man.
One final note: Let us remember also that the Catholic Church does not stand alone in having seemingly “condoned” the practice of slavery for centuries. Together with her were also the rest of the churches and ecclesial communities. But the Catholic Church is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church that has today emerged with an officially carved position in outright condemnation of slavery.
Of all this, something of the divine must be acknowledged. The song Wade in the Water could have been providentially prophetic when they sang:
Wade in the water;
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water;
God's gonna trouble the water.
