Isidore Gabriel’s explanations of Catholic slave-owning

REGINALD DUMAS

THEODORE LEWIS

ISIDORE GABRIEL has offered a critique of articles on Christian church slave-owning written separately, and without collusion, by the two of us. Since the articles in question did indeed indict Christian churches (Anglicans, Catholics, and Presbyterians) as having been slave-owning, it is important that we reply, offering further grounds for our separate but correlated statements. In the light of Gabriel’s remarks, we shall be focusing on the Catholic case.

Where Anglicans are concerned, the Archbishop of Canterbury has already publicly apologised for slave-owning by his church in the Caribbean. For his part, Gabriel, drawing a distinction “among the various Christian churches and communities,” seeks to defend the role of the Catholic Church. He charges us with, among other things, bias and dishonesty, arguing that while it was “true some Catholics owned slaves, including members of the clergy…it has never been the overall policy of the Catholic Church to support or encourage slave-owning.”

But if the Catholic Church “never” had such a policy, how does he explain the Papal Bull (an edict from a pope) issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455 on the treatment of “black Gentiles?” That document granted Portugal the right to enslave sub-Saharan Africans. Church leaders of the era contended that slavery was a natural deterrent to, and Christianising influence on, “barbarous” behaviour among pagans. Against that background, the pope authorised the Portuguese king, Alfonso V, “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever…and reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.” (Nicholas had issued a similar Bull in 1452.)

There are other sources Gabriel may wish to consult. In his widely acclaimed book Slavery and Social Death, the Jamaican scholar Orlando Patterson, Harvard historian, speaks of “the apparent anomaly that has baffled many Anglo-American historians, that of a Catholic church stoutly declaring slavery a sin, yet condoning the institution to the point where it was itself among the largest of slaveholders.” Patterson noted that the five major countries that dominated slavery and the slave trade in the so-called “New World” were either Catholic or still retained strong Catholic influences: Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands.

In his article “Slave Mortality and Reproduction on Jesuit Haciendas in Colonial Peru,” Nicholas Cushner chronicles the slave-owning exploits of Jesuit Catholic priests. He writes: “On the largest haciendas owned by Jesuit colleges in colonial Peru the stable labour force was composed of black slaves. Each college supported itself by a variety of economic activities...but by far the most substantial portion of their incomes was derived from sugar plantations, vineyards, and cattle ranches…By the time of Jesuit expulsion from Latin America in 1767, 5,224 slaves were distributed among the Society's holdings.”

There is more research and reading for Gabriel. It recently came to light in the US that Jesuit priests had deployed African slave labour in the construction of Georgetown University in Washington DC. To its credit, the American Catholic establishment has been contrite about this aspect of its past, and has embarked on a course of truth and reconciliation, in the form of published confession through the instrumentality of the Slavery, History, Memory and Reconciliation Project. On their website, the Jesuits have published details of their involvement in the enslavement of African people in America.

One of their more recent posts states: “The Society of Jesus participated in the institution of slavery from the colonial era until the passage of the 13th Amendment. Their involuntary labor helped establish, expand, and sustain Jesuit missionary efforts and educational institutions in colonial North America and, over time, across the United States. The Jesuits’ use of enslaved labor is a legacy shared by all Jesuits and Jesuit institutions…Jesuits began relying on Native American and African enslaved labor in the Americas during the colonial period. Jesuits owned close to 2,000 individuals on cash crop plantations in the Caribbean and New Orleans.”

We assume that Gabriel will agree that the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus, were not, to use his phrase, “civil authorities, Catholic in name only, (who) refused to follow the pope’s wishes” to “improve the conditions of those subject to slavery…” How, in any case, does one “improve” a slave’s condition? Why not seek, in conformity with what is said to be one’s policy, to free the slave altogether?

Gabriel asserts that Bartolomé de Las Casas “rallied against slavery.” In fact, Las Casas did exactly the opposite. Because of his concern for the welfare of the indigenous peoples in the western hemisphere, who were being enslaved, tortured and murdered by his fellow Catholic Spaniards, he successfully advocated the introduction of African slaves to replace the indigenes (the Portuguese were already in the slave-trading business). In all fairness to him, however, he much later expressed remorse for his proposal. But the damage had been done.

It has been suggested to us that Gabriel is really a stalking horse for someone else. We make no comment on that, but wonder whether Archbishop Jason Gordon, who not only heads the local Catholic Church but also writes a weekly newspaper column, could join the conversation and set out the positions, over time, of his church on slavery? His words would be an important contribution to the current discussions generated by the UN-declared International Decade for People of African Descent.