Modern secularists often paint a naive view of the medieval church. The reality was far more complex
One of the frustrating things about the conflict between religious traditionalists and atheist secularists is that its participants are rarely debating the same thing. Angry atheists such as Richard Dawkins attack a vision of faith that is far removed from theological or historical reality. They lift passages at random from religious texts or take isolated events in the history of religion, present them to the believer and say: ‘How can you worship a God that is so capricious?’ or ‘How can you attend a church that is so cruel?’
The problem is that the historical record is far more nuanced than the professional sceptics make out. Take the Catholic church’s stance on slavery in the New World - often invoked as evidence of its inhumanity. In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull called Dum Diversas that granted Portugal and Spain ‘full and free permission to invade, search out, capture and subjugate unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be … And to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery’. This was taken at the time - and still is today - as a fulsome endorsement of the enslavement of the Americas.
A papal bull isn’t necessarily a statement of doctrine as supported by the Catholic catechism. Although it is presupposed to be theologically correct, surprisingly few papal bulls have been identified as examples of papal infallibility. In the case of Dum Diversas what is striking is how it contradicts a lot of other things that Rome had to say about slavery, which Thomas Aquinas regarded as an unmitigated evil.