Yesterday, its leader, Tucho Cardinal Fernández, compared his own congregation to one of the most horrifying episodes of the past century of horrors, the Holocaust promoted by Nazi Germany:
It is nothing short of astonishing. Catholic apologists spend centuries making sure people understand the historical truths of the Catholic past, so often distorted by the enemies of the Church, and along comes someone as unpleasant and ignorant as Tucho to malign the Catholic name once again.
From InfoVaticana:
On Tuesday, January 27, during the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith held in Vatican City, the controversial Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández gave a speech in which he reflected on the need for “intellectual, spiritual, and theological humility” in the exercise of reason. The conference took place at the historic headquarters of the former Holy Office, an institution of which the current dicastery is the direct legal heir.
In this context, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cited various historical episodes which, in his opinion, illustrate how the absolutization of reason itself or of certain moral criteria can lead to serious abuses. Among the examples mentioned were the Inquisition, the world wars, and the Holocaust.
What Cardinal Fernández said exactly
During his speech, Fernández argued that throughout history, atrocities have been committed when human beings have believed themselves to possess the absolute truth, without recognizing limits or exercising the necessary humility. To illustrate this idea, he integrated various extreme historical episodes, including the Inquisition and the Holocaust, into the same moral reflection.
The cardinal did not literally state that both phenomena are identical or morally equivalent. However, by placing them within the same explanatory category and attributing a common cause to them, he established an analogy that has generated debate due to its historical and institutional scope.
Where these words are spoken
The relevance of these statements lies not only in their content, but also in the position from which they are made. Fernández was not speaking as an outside historian or independent analyst, but as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an organization that, from a legal and institutional point of view, is the direct successor to the former Holy Office, historically known as the Roman Inquisition.
The fact that these reflections were made precisely from the headquarters of the former Holy Office gives the analogy a particular symbolic meaning, as it is the institution historically identified with the defense of doctrinal orthodoxy in the Catholic Church.
An infamous comparison
From a discursive point of view, equating two realities does not require expressly stating that they are identical. It suffices to include them in the same moral category and explain them as the consequence of a common cause. By presenting the Inquisition and the Holocaust as examples of the excesses derived from truth imposed without limits, Tucho establishes a conceptual equivalence that places them on the same explanatory plane.
This type of reasoning is common in contemporary moral discourse, but it is particularly problematic when applied to radically different historical phenomena and, above all, when formulated by an institutional authority directly linked to one of them.
From a historical and legal perspective, the comparison raises serious difficulties. The Holy Office was an ecclesiastical court integrated into the legal system of its time, with written procedures, standardized charges, the possibility of defense, and a fundamentally doctrinal and corrective purpose.
The Holocaust, on the other hand, was a modern, ideological, and racial state project aimed at the systematic physical elimination of millions of people for the mere fact of their existence. There was no trial, no defense, no possible correction, only planned extermination. The difference between the two phenomena is not one of degree, but of nature.
The background to the black legend
The comparison between the Inquisition and 20th-century totalitarian regimes is one of the classic themes of the so-called black legend. This narrative transfers contemporary moral categories to institutions from other centuries in order to present them as direct precursors of modern genocide.
Specialized historiography has shown that the Holy Office acted in many contexts as a force for restraint in the face of uncontrolled civil violence and that the most severe punishments were exceptional and carried out by secular authorities. Recognizing historical abuses does not require accepting analogies that distort the nature of institutions.
An institutional issue
Beyond Cardinal Fernández's subjective intention, his words raise a fundamental question. When the head of the dicastery that inherited the Holy Office adopts, even implicitly, a conceptual framework that likens that institution to tragedies characteristic of modern totalitarianism, the effect is not only rhetorical but institutional.
[In Spanish.]
