In both English and Spanish, inquisition represents something that should be avoided. However, in the middle ages, inquisition referred to something much more harsh. The term was used to describe the organizations under the Catholic Church committed to thwarting heresy within the church’s realm. Persons would be investigated, punished, and even killed if found guilty. Hence, Muslims, Jewish, or persons not aligned with the Catholic belief system were at risk. The church used compulsion, persecution, and punishment to ensure conformity with the church’s beliefs. Furthermore, the intolerance did not acknowledge one’s freedom of conscience and belief.
I find the act of punishing someone for being different appalling. I have heard of chilling stories of how the Spanish conquistadors carried their intolerant system into their colonies, hence destroying century-old empires and killing thousands of natives who wanted to keep true to their traditional belief systems; acts that were certainly antithetical to the Christian ethos of ‘love thy neighbour,’ but were carried out anyway. However, these acts were not entirely based on faith as they served the political and economic gain of those in power. I understand tolerance as the ability to accept other person’s opinions and preferences even when one strongly disagrees with those beliefs and preferences. Furthermore, tolerance also encompasses the ability to not putting one’s belief on a pedestal above another person’s beliefs.
I believe that tolerance is a moral virtue and should take its place among qualities such as liberty, equality, and respect. People should be free to have their independent beliefs and values without the fear of being punished. By doing so, there would be peaceful co-existence among all individuals, and most of the persistent social problems that exist today would be done away with. Furthermore, there are numerous advantages to being open to other people’s beliefs and ways of thinking. For instance, intolerant persons carry with them a lot of hate and suspicion, which makes them angry and bitter individuals, a state of mind that closes them from happiness and numerous wholesome experiences.
Supposed my contemporary persona lived in the middle ages, I might have just survived inquisition, but I cannot be sure. Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once said that the more things change, the more things remain the same. Although the world might have become a little more tolerant, those in power still operate in the same way, using compulsion, persecution, and punishment to ensure conformity to the systems that put them in power.
It might not be apparent in the west, but China, among many other governments, will punish any public figure that openly disagrees with or questions the status quo. However, people still live in these seemingly intolerant regimes and carry on with their lives just fine as long as they keep it apolitical. Hence, given that I was not gay or suspected of being a witch – things beyond my control, I could have died from other causes other than an inquisition-related death. On the other hand, my educated liberal self would also have easily been drawn to the teachings and works of heretics such as Martin Luther and Galileo, and before long, I would be publicly supporting these individuals, a life-choice that would have been a sure path to death by fire.
Zac Viper 