Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

What is it to administer justice well? As Dominic began to gather a religious order around him this became a pressing question. Justice at the time, the end of the 1100s, was a rather haphazard affair, often organized by local magistrates, that at points would be a matter of some learning and reasonability but more often would be a matter of unlearned fear. What transpired was often something more akin to mob justice than anything else. To go before the local secular authority was often to risk something more akin to the lynch mobs that gathered in our country from the end of the Civil War into the 1960s than anything we would consider justice. The same could often be said regarding appeals to the church for justice.

It was amidst this that the Pope requested that Dominic devote his new order to a better form of justice. Dominic was chosen, in part, because he had consistently desired a peaceful means of dealing with the Cathars, a religious sect that had taken up arms in southern France and just been destroyed by Crusader armies. Dominic’s job was to prevent another war and to provide an alternative to the harsh mob justice that was taking place across most of Europe. It was for these reasons that the Inquisition began.

Dominic’s job was not to reform the set of laws and standards in place, those crimes punishable by death were still punishable by death. The goal of the inquisition was to ensure that those found guilty of a punishment had in fact committed a crime. So, while a mob might drag a midwife before the town magistrate to be put to death for being a witch and the magistrate might do so with no regard to facts… the Inquisition dismissed most superstitions regarding witchcraft and understood the role of healers in a community. So, while a lord might convince a local priest to condemn a competitor and gather the congregation to run him out of town… the inquisition was going to fully investigate the matter before doing so.

The Justice System we now value is much reformed from the reforms Dominic strove to bring about with the Inquisition, to the point that it is difficult for us to even understand the inquisition as a positive reform. What Dominic desired, however, is good advice for all of us: he expected that pivotal decisions should be made after intense inquiry, reflection, and with as much reason and reliance on facts as possible. To this day we can be overwhelmed by group think, allow ourselves to make decisions purely as emotional responses, allow prejudice to prevent us from seeing someone as human. When we find ourselves in this type of situation, we can appeal to Dominic for a moment of clarity…as it was such a moment that Dominic strove to bring to the people of Europe.

Pax,

—Ben