They owned actual slave plantations, too: https://www.jstor.org/stable/981267

We don't often talk about the thousands of years of human rights abuses by monastic orders, but they are pretty horrific. Even in America in living memory, it includes the torture and murder of children and the coverup of those crimes: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph...

That last read was truly grim.

However, to reject the Rule of St Benedict because some Benedictines lived in egregious violation of it is like rejecting the United States Bill of Rights because the United States has often acted in direct violation of it.

The Rule is, on the whole, a wonderful document, and there are today and have been through history a great many good people who live it day in and day out fairly faithfully. I'm privileged to call some such people my friends.

Here the discussion was a bit broader and the point was about the religious context rather than the Benedictine themselves.

To be fair the Benedictine order wasn't one of the worst orders with respct to whole witch/heresy craze but that kinda furthers the irony of the whole situation: watching to the other side while someone is being persecuted (or bullied) puts you closer to the oppressor than to the oppresed.

> watching to the other side while someone is being persecuted (or bullied) puts you closer to the oppressor than to the oppresed.

This would then dismiss every CoC-related effort, because most enforcers do little regarding humans being persecuted in other countries...

This is a bit of a logical fallacy: the fact that you are not able (maybe even because of your own limited self) to do good in every possible context it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do good in the contexts whee you can!

It is, and that's what I tried to highlight with my comment.

Apply your comment to the monks then.

I'm pretty sure that many monks individuals did the best they could with what they were given. That is very different from it being true for the whole order of the Benedictine.

At the same time I do believe that the spirit of Christianity, Islam and most other religions is inherently good, positive and inclusive and there are definitely people that use that as a guide to improve themselves and their lives.

BUT, even if the spirit is good, the actual history says that these organisation shouldn't be held on a moral high ground for anything because they don't deserve it.

Moreover, even today, chances are that if you are a non-conforming individual in a very religious community you are subject to isolation, bullying and shaming.

And that's why I find it of very bad taste to use this as a CoC that should guide integration: if I have been bullied from my ultra-religious community, for example because I am bisexual, then I'll not find that a very welcoming sign.

Traditionaly, burning heretics was a State matter, guilt was decided by a special group, the Inquisition. Heretics were burned (or had other punishment against them, like fines, emprisonment, prayers or house arrests) because it was a state matter, following the principle of Religion of the King = Religion of the People.

I see what you did there!

Religion and Church are not to be blame, since as soon as there is any blame going around, the State, and not religion / church, is responsible!

Sleak!

Yes, I see what I'm doing here.