Abortion, the
Inquisition and Revisionism in the Encyclopedia Britannica
One
Century of Contrasts. While Cultural Marxism Is Predominant in the Modern Encyclopedia
Britannica, Conservatism Was Predominant in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
By
Julio
Severo
The
Encyclopedia Britannica has been a favorite source of information for
homeschoolers in the United States. In fact, for more than a century, the long,
stately rows of Encyclopedia Britannica have been an important presence on
the shelves of many educated men and women.
Yet,
homeschoolers and conservative Christians in America do not use any
Encyclopedia Britannica. They use its best edition: the 11th edition, published
in 1911. It is highly appreciated by its conservative value.
Modern
editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica are not conservative. For example, the
2015 Encyclopedia Britannica says, in its entry “Abortion”:
Induced abortions may be performed
for reasons that fall into four general categories: to preserve the life or
physical or mental well-being of the mother; to prevent the completion of a
pregnancy that has resulted from rape or incest; to prevent the birth of a
child with serious deformity, mental deficiency, or genetic abnormality; or to
prevent a birth for social or economic reasons (such as the extreme youth of
the pregnant female or the sorely strained resources of the family unit). By
some definitions, abortions that are performed to preserve the well-being of
the female or in cases of rape or incest are therapeutic, or justifiable,
abortions.
Numerous medical techniques exist for
performing abortions. During the first trimester (up to about 12 weeks after
conception), endometrial aspiration, suction, or curettage may be used to
remove the contents of the uterus. In endometrial aspiration, a thin, flexible tube
is inserted up the cervical canal (the neck of the womb) and then sucks out the
lining of the uterus (the endometrium) by means of an electric pump.
In the related but slightly more
onerous procedure known as dilatation and evacuation (also called suction
curettage, or vacuum curettage), the cervical canal is enlarged by the
insertion of a series of metal dilators while the patient is under anesthesia,
after which a rigid suction tube is inserted into the uterus to evacuate its
contents. When, in place of suction, a thin metal tool called a curette is used
to scrape (rather than vacuum out) the contents of the uterus, the procedure is
called dilatation and curettage. When combined with dilatation, both evacuation
and curettage can be used up to about the 16th week of pregnancy.
From 12 to 19 weeks the injection of
a saline solution may be used to trigger uterine contractions; alternatively,
the administration of prostaglandins by injection, suppository, or other method
may be used to induce contractions, but these substances may cause severe side
effects. Hysterotomy, the surgical removal of the uterine contents, may be used
during the second trimester or later. In general, the more advanced the
pregnancy, the greater the risk to the female of mortality or serious
complications following an abortion.
In the late 20th century a new method
of induced abortion was discovered that uses the drug RU 486 (mifepristone), an
artificial steroid that is closely related to the contraceptive hormone
norethnidrone. RU 486 works by blocking the action of the hormone progesterone,
which is needed to support the development of a fertilized egg. When ingested
within weeks of conception, RU 486 effectively triggers the menstrual cycle and
flushes the fertilized egg out of the uterus.
In essence, the 2015 Encyclopedia
Britannica is pro-abortion. This is the reason why, in ethical and moral
subjects, homeschoolers avoid it.
In
contrast, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, loved by homeschoolers, says in its
entry “Abortion”:
Among primitive savage races abortion
is practised to a far less extent than infanticide, which offers a simpler way
of getting rid of inconvenient progeny. But it is common among the American
Indians, as well as in China, Cambodia and India.
In all the countries of Europe the
causing of abortion is now punishable with more or less lengthy terms of
imprisonment.
It is now a statutory offence in all
states of the Union.
In
essence, the 1911 the Encyclopedia Britannica is not pro-abortion. This is the
reason why, in ethical and moral subjects, homeschoolers love it.
Objectivity,
reason and ethics in the 1911 the Encyclopedia Britannica were defeated by the modern,
politically-correct editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Pro-abortion
revisionism has prevailed.
In
an article titled “Wikipedia Or Encyclopedia Britannica: Which Has More Bias?”
published by Forbes magazine, author Michael Blanding recognizes that topics in
the modern Encyclopedia Britannica “can be quite subjective or even
controversial.”
“If
you read 100 words of a Wikipedia article, and 100 words of a Britannica
[article], you will find no significant difference in bias,” says the article.
That is, in left-wing ideology Britannica and Wikipedia are essentially equal.
In
the article titled “Corruption of a Venerable Brand,” published by the National
Review, author Matthew J. Franck says that “Encyclopedia Britannica Debases
Itself” and that “At this rate, the editors of Britannica seem determined to make
Wikipedia look good. It’s a sad declension.” Declension, according to the
Oxford Dictionary of English, is an archaic term for “a condition of decline or
moral deterioration.”
To
treat abortion as a serious legal problem worthy to be banned and criminalized
(as presented by 1911 Britannica) to a medical issue legally allowed by
virtually any reason (as presented by 2015 Britannica) is sheer declension.
But
the moral deterioration in Britannica is not evident only in abortion. The
Inquisition is another example.
The
2015 Encyclopedia Britannica says, in its entry “Inquisition”:
All of the institutional inquisitions
worked in secrecy, except for closely regulated public appearances. Their
secrecy permitted those who opposed them to speculate about and often
fictionalize dramatically their secret activities, producing many of the myths
about inquisitions that are found in European literature from the 16th century
to the present.
While
past editions of Britannica addressed “The Inquisition,” the 2015 Britannica
talks about “inquisitions,” as usual in the revisionist perspective. In fact,
one of the main authors in the article about “inquisitions” in the 2015
Britannica is the notorious revisionist author Edward Peters. If modern
Britannica can be revisionist on abortion, why not on the Inquisition too?
Revisionism
is an essentially socialist concept. The Oxford Dictionary of English, in its
entry “Revisionism,” says:
“n. [mass noun] often DEROGATORY a
policy of revision or modification, especially of Marxism on evolutionary socialist
(rather than revolutionary) or pluralist principles. The theory or practice of
revising one’s.”
Before
the politically-correct, revisionist trend, what did the 1911 Britannica say on
the Inquisition? Historian Toby Green defined the Inquisition in the title
itself of his book, “Inquisition: The Reign of Fear” (Macmillan Publishers UK,
2007). And the 1911 Britannica defined it as “reign of terror,” saying about
the crusade against Albigensian, created by inquisitors: “These executions en masse
certainly created a definitive precedent for violent repression.”
Britannica
defined it,
THE INQUISITION (Lat. inquisitio, an
inquiry), the name given to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction dealing both in the
middle ages and in modern times with the detection and punishment of heretics
and all persons guilty of any offence against Catholic orthodoxy.
Random
excerpts from the 1911 Britannica show:
The punishment of death by burning
was much more often employed by the Spanish than by the medieval Inquisition;
about 2000 persons were burnt in Torquemada’s day.
[In the 1700s,] a great number of
[Jews] were denounced, sent to the galleys, or burnt, for having returned to
their ancestral religion, on the flimsiest of evidence, such as… abstaining
from swine’s flesh.
During the 16th and 17th centuries
the Inquisition in Spain was directed against Protestantism. The
inquisitor-general, Fernando de Valdés, archbishop of Seville, asked the pope
to condemn the Lutherans to be burnt even if they were not backsliders, or
wished to be reconciled, while in 1560 three foreign Protestants, two
Englishmen and a Frenchman, were burnt in defiance of all international law.
But the Reformation never had enough supporters in Spain to occupy the
attention of the Inquisition for long.
Countless numbers of… men and women,
clerks and laymen… perished in the fires or the dungeons of the Inquisition.
Mateo Pascual, professor of theology
at Alcala, who had in a public lecture expressed a doubt as to purgatory,
suffered imprisonment and the confiscation of his goods.
In 1521 the Inquisition took upon
itself the examination of books suspected of Lutheran heresy.
In 1558 the penalty of death and
confiscation of property was decreed against any bookseller or individual who
should keep in his possession condemned books. The censure of books was
eventually abolished in 1812.
the inquisitors… played the part of
absolute dictators, burning at the stake, attacking both the living and the
dead, confiscating their property and land, and enclosing the inhabitants both
of the towns and the country in a network of suspicion and denunciation.
Already in 1210 massacres of Jews had
taken place under the inspiration of Arnold of Narbonne, the papal legate.
In 1278 [Pope] Nicholas IV commanded
the general of the Dominicans to send friars into all parts of the kingdom [of
Spain] to work for the conversion of the Jews, and draw up lists of those who
should refuse to be baptized.
In the 14th century the massacres
increased, and during the year 1391 whole towns were destroyed by fire and sword,
while at Valencia eleven thousand forced baptisms took place.
In the 15th century the persecution
continued in the same way; it can only be said that the years 1449, 1462, 1470,
1473 were marked by the greatest bloodshed.
The emperor Frederick II defined his
jurisprudence more clearly: from 1220 to 1239, supported by Pope Honorius III,
and above all by [Pope] Gregory IX, he established against the heretics of the
Empire in general a legislation in which the penalties of death, banishment and
confiscation of property were formulated so clearly as to be henceforth
incontestable.
The pope no longer hesitated as to
the principle or the degree of repression.
Women, children or slaves could be
witnesses for the prosecution, but not for the defence, and cases are even to
be found in which the witnesses were only ten years of age.
No witness might refuse to give
evidence [against the accused individuals], under pain of being considered
guilty of heresy.
The next step was the torture of
witnesses, a practice which was left to the discretion of the inquisitors.
Moreover, all confessions or
depositions extorted in the torture-chamber had subsequently to be “freely”
confirmed. The confession was always considered as voluntary. The procedure was
of course not litigious; any lawyer defending the accused would have been held
guilty of heresy.
In effect, handing [the accused individual]
over to the secular arm was equivalent to a sentence of death, and of death by
fire. The Dominican Jacob Sprenger, provincial of his order in Germany (1494)
and inquisitor, does not hesitate to speak of the victims ‘quas incinerari
fecimus’ (“whom we [the inquisitors] caused to be burnt to ashes”).
The Inquisition preferred to draw its
revenues from heresy.
Soon the papacy managed to gain a
share of the spoils, even outside the states of the [Catholic] Church, as is
shown by the bulls ‘ad extirpanda’ of [Pope] Innocent IV and [Pope] Alexander
IV, and henceforward the inquisitors had, in varying proportions, a direct
interest in these spoliations.
In Spain this division only applied
to the property of the clergy and vassals of the [Catholic] Church, but in
France, Italy and Germany, the property of all those convicted of heresy was
shared between the lay and ecclesiastical authorities.
At first they tried a compromise; the
unfortunate victims had to pay twice, to the pope and to the Inquisition. But
the payment to the pope was held by the Inquisition to reduce too much its own
share of the confiscated property, and the struggle continued throughout the
first half of the 16th century, the Curia finally triumphing, thanks to the
energy of [Pope] Paul III.
Besides, this system of wholesale
confiscations might reduce a family to beggary in a single day, so that all
transactions were liable to extraordinary risks.
But it is undeniable that [the
Inquisition] frequently tended to constitute a state within the state. At the
time of their greatest power, the inquisitors paid no taxes, and gave no
account of the confiscations which they effected; they claimed for themselves
and their agents the right of bearing arms, and it is well known that their
declared adversaries, or even those who blamed them in some respects, were
without fail prosecuted for heresy.
The [Inquisition] allowed the accused
an advocate chosen from among the members or familiars of the Holy Office; this
privilege was obviously illusory, for the advocate was chosen and paid by the
tribunal, and could only interview the accused in presence of an inquisitor and
a secretary.
Napoleon, on his entry into Madrid
(December 1808), at once suppressed the Inquisition.
In 1816 the pope abolished torture in
all the tribunals of the Inquisition.
The [Catholic] Church was originally
opposed to torture, and the canon law did not admit confessions extorted by
that means; but by the bull ‘Ad extirpanda’ (1252) [Pope] Innocent IV approved
its use for the discovery of heresy, and [Pope] Urban IV confirmed this usage,
which had its origin in secular legislation (cf. the Veronese Code of 1228, and
Sicilian Constitution of Frederick II. in 1231).
St John Chrysostom considered that a
heretic should be deprived of the liberty of speech and that assemblies
organized by heretics should be dissolved, but declared that “to put a heretic
to death would be to introduce upon earth an inexpiable crime.”
An
effort to sanitize the Inquisition would be akin to an effort to sanitize legal
abortion. This is just what the modern Britannica has done!
Why is a pro-life website advocating
the revisionism of the Inquisition? Christians defending the Inquisition are
like Christians defending abortion and Christians defending abortion are like
Christians defending the Inquisition.
Yet,
this is just what LifeSiteNews, the largest Catholic pro-life website in the
world, has been doing.
LifeSiteNews
published an article titled “Debunking the anti-Christian myths about the
Spanish Inquisition,” by Joseph Pearce. This title is malicious because the
cruelties, tortures and executions of the Inquisition were never “myths,” and
it is completely anti-Christian to treat the Inquisition as a “myth,” just as
it is anti-Christian to treat the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews as “myth.” By
the way, both the Inquisition and the Holocaust preferentially tortured and
killed Jews.
So
if LifeSiteNews treats the Inquisition as a “myth” this is not different at all
from what Muslims do to their own genocide against Christians. The Islamic
website Islamicity has an article titled “Untangling the truth from the myth of
the ‘Armenian Genocide’” that says,
“The controversy surrounding the
so-called Armenian genocide has again been stirred up by no less an important
individual than the Catholic Pope Francis himself when he called it ‘the first
genocide of the 20th century.’ The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu
has vehemently criticized the pope's remark. ‘The pope’s statement, which is
far from the legal and historical reality, cannot be accepted,’ he tweeted.”
Just
as Muslims do not accept what they did to Christians, LifeSiteNews does not
accept what the Catholic Inquisition did to Jews and Protestants.
It
is significant that in Spain the Jews, who frequently were persecuted by the
Inquisition, were called “Marrano” — Spanish for pig.
The
LifeSiteNews article mentioned President Obama’s reference to the Inquisition
at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC in 2016 by exploiting it on
behalf of historical revisionism, which is usually loved and used by the Left.
In answer, I quote Franklin Graham, a
conservative adviser to Trump who said,
“Today at the National Prayer
Breakfast, the President implied that what ISIS is doing is equivalent to what
happened over 1,000 years ago during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Mr.
President, many people in history have used the name of Jesus Christ to
accomplish evil things for their own desires. But Jesus taught peace, love and
forgiveness. He came to give His life for the sins of mankind, not to take
life. Muhammad, on the contrary, was a warrior and killed many innocent people.
True followers of Christ emulate Christ—true followers of Muhammed emulate
Muhammed.”
Advocacy
of the historical revisionism of the Inquisition is compatible with the
left-wing mindset, but incompatible with pro-life principles. I agree with
Graham: the Inquisition emulated Muhammed and his violent spirit.
In
another article, titled “Refuting anti-Catholic falsehoods,” LifeSiteNews said,
“The Spanish Inquisition, for
example, suffered literally from very bad press. Among the first works churned
out by the early printing presses of Protestant Holland and England were hundreds
of false accounts of the Inquisition murdering tens of thousands of Jews, Moors
and Protestants. Bad historians since then have inflated the death count…”
If
the Inquisition “suffered” — the lunatic view is always that the oppressor, not
its victims, “suffered” — “very bad press,” what about abortion in the 1911
Britannica? What about socialism and Nazism? Did they also suffer “very bad
press”? In the perspective of pro-abortion activists, socialists and Nazis,
abortion, socialism and Nazism suffered “very bad press.”
LifeSiteNews
makes appear like the Protestant Holland and England were exclusively
responsible for “false accounts of the Inquisition murdering tens of thousands
of Jews, Moors and Protestants.” LifeSiteNews rules out the fact that even if
there were no Protestant in the world, for centuries there have been
independent Jewish writers and historians recording the torture and death of
thousands of Jews under the Inquisition.
The
father of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a massive work of
1,500 pages titled “The Origins of the Inquisition,” published in 1995. Does
LifeSiteNews think that Netanyahu’s book is “bad press” to make the Inquisition
suffer? If I burn this book, will it reduce the “suffering” of the Inquisition
and its advocates and revisionists? Does LifeSiteNews think that Netanyahu’s
book was influenced by the “false accounts” of the Inquisition from the
Protestant Holland and England, instead of independent Jewish historic
accounts?
If
LifeSiteNews alleges that “bad historians inflate the death count,” is
Netanyahu a “bad historian” who has inflated the death count of Jewish victims?
Are also historians who denounce abortion, socialism and Nazism “bad
historians” who have inflated the death count of their victims?
To
help the Inquisition not “suffer,” should we give it only good press? Also, to
help pro-abortion activists, socialists and Nazis not to “suffer,” should we
give abortion, socialism and Nazism only good press?
The
gathering of data 100 years ago was not so good as it is today. Muslim Turks
use it to say that the Armenian Genocide, committed by them against about
1,500,000 Christians 100 years ago, was not genocide and that the numbers were
very small. Radical Catholics use the same expediency and time of 500 years ago
is actually a very favorable expediency for them. They say the same thing about
the Inquisition, even though Independent Jewish historic records show that what
LifeSiteNews and other Catholics call “myth” and “bad press” was actually a
historic fact.
From
the Muslim Turkish perspective, talk of Armenian Genocide is just “bad press”
against Islam or Turkey. For them, such “bad press” makes Turkey and Islam
“suffer.” So radical Catholics are not alone in their complaints of “bad
press.”
A
pro-Inquisition Catholic Church has no moral to denounce abortion. But the
current Catholic Church has not defended the Inquisition. Only some of its more
recalcitrant members have done it.
How
can such recalcitrant Catholics denounce legal abortion and its torture and
death of innocent unborn babies if they excuse, minimize and even defend the
same reality in the Inquisition?
As
a conservative pro-life evangelical, I will do what U.S. homeschoolers and
other conservatives are doing. I will use the 1911 Britannica to defend a
conservative stance on abortion and on the Inquisition. I totally reject the
modern Britannica and its revisionism of both abortion and the Inquisition.
But since LifeSiteNews is pro-life,
it should be consistent. If it wants the conservative 1911 Britannica and its pro-life
stance on abortion, it should accept its conservative stance on the
Inquisition. If it prefers the modern liberal Britannica and its revisionism of
the Inquisition, it should also accept its equal revisionist stance on
abortion. Basically, the modern Britannica sees the torture and death of
abortion and the Inquisition as equally “myths.”
The
1911 Britannica is consistent in its conservative stances against abortion and
the Inquisition.
The
modern Britannica is consistent in its revisionist stances equally defending
abortion and the Inquisition.
LifeSiteNews
has not been consistent; it has accepted the revisionism of the modern
Britannica on the Inquisition, but not on abortion.
LifeSiteNews
and the minority of recalcitrant Catholics should choose which consistency they
prefer: Conservative or revisionist and liberal.
Pro-abortion
activists use millions of poor explanations, studies and research to excuse,
minimize and defend abortion. Recalcitrant Catholics should stop using less
than one dozen of poor revisionist explanations, studies and research to
excuse, minimize and defend the Inquisition.
In so serious ethical topics as
abortion and the Inquisition, which involve the human rights of an untold
number of innocent victims who suffered torture and death, the 1911 Encyclopedia
Britannica, which is steeped in conservatism, is a much better guide than the
modern Encyclopedia Britannica, infected by cultural Marxism and its
revisionism.
Recommended Reading about the
Inquisition:
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