Isaiah 55:8-9 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

9 For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.

This verse is foundational and fundamental to all theology and scriptural interpretations. This verse speaks to many posts concerning biblical topics including the ones on nations. 

God is very different from you and me. It seems like some people are creating God in their image. God conforms to them. That God thinks like them. ...But that is not what that verse says. 

What is Scripture?  Scripture is God's ways and thoughts. It is God who doesn't condemn slavery. Would not God have His Wisdom?  Surely God knows better, right? Reading some of the posts here, it seems that God changes His spots and God conforms to them. And another thing they don't understand is  the real, original Natural Law. Aristotle speaks on one of the laws. Nature does things incrementally. Does not God follow His own Law?  The unfolding of God just did not begin in the New Testament and ends there. The New Testament is the capstone, not the whole ball of wax. 

Greg writes that slavery conflicts "with the ethics of the New Testament". Well, the New Testament is NOT the whole enchilada!  Jesus said, "Man lives by EVERY word that proceeds out of the mouth of God".  Not just the New Testament! The Old Testament matters just as much!  Jesus Christ is the walkin', talkin' Old Testament. Almost everything Jesus said is in the Old Testament! Why would Jesus countermand Himself?  He doesn't. The Old Testament is God's way, God's thoughts---Not yours. Again, this is the Heresy of Sola Gospel. St. Paul even said ALL scripture is there for teaching, reproof and correction! It is NOT sola new testamento.

Then DanielCC writes Catholic morality is based on

The Father of the Faith, Abraham, was a slave owner! All the Patriarchs of the Bible were slave owners! If you condemn slavery, you condemn Abraham. 

You make the point of "chattel" slavery. Chattel means, "movable property"; it applies to furniture, automobiles, and to animals. So you are making a false distinction. Abraham had chattel slaves. 

Israelite law distinguished between two types of slavery both legal and moral, chattel slavery as in Lev. 25 and indentured servitude. Foreigners were held in chattel slavery. No Hebrew could be held in chattel slavery but they could be held in indentured servitude for only seven years, or until the Year of Jubilee when all indentured servants were released. 

The Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of Christian morality. Slaves are mentioned in the last of the Ten commandments. If slavery is wrong, then the Ten Commandments are wrong in their protection of the institution. The mention of slavery in the Ten Commandments is Chattel Slavery. 

Actually American Chattel Slavery was quite good because it produced leisure and created an elite, the natural aristocracy and it provided wealth that made this country strong. Slavery afforded George Washington and Thomas Jefferson leisure to conduct the American Revolution. If Washington and Jefferson and others had to personnally work the fields, they would have been too tired to revolt. The wealth provided by slavery meant arms and munitions could be bought. The war of 1812 fought in New Orleans to a winning conclusion for Americans, was, one can surmise, possible because of the wealth and leisure created by slavery.  Also because America was practically new to agriculture, land had to be cleared and planted. That was only possible thru the introduction of slavery. Slavery provided the new country with wealth to break away from Britain and leisure for the elite to write and read. 

And the slavery mentioned by the Church canon above is chattel slavery. Rome always had chatte

It seems today that many people are fooled by the propaganda of the modern age. 

At. Georgetown University, a Catholic university, black students are demanding reparations for slavery; https://jonathanturley.org/2018/02/17/slave-descendants-demands-reparations-from-georgetown/comment-page-1/

I have also heard Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity, and quite a few so-called "conservatives" say that slavery is morally wrong. 

Socrates went around saying that the "unexamined live is not worth living". It looks like a lie was started and everybody just kept repeating it. 

Slavery is not morally wrong. Ancient civilization would not have been possible without slavery. What is slavery?  Slavery is the expansion of the family, in order to do work; it is an institution. Scripture doesn't teach that slavery is wrong. The Holy Tradition of the Church doesn't teach that!  Christian morality is based ON Scripture and Holy Tradition. 

In Scripture, the Old Testament said that the Israelites could take slaves from the surrounding nations. 
 

LXX Lev. 25.44 

"And whatever number of man-servants and maid-servants thou shalt have, thou shalt purchase them from the surrounding nations."

In the New Testament, St. Paul asks slaves to be obedient to their masters and in the Letter to Philemon, St. Paul is returning a slave to his master. 

In Canon III, Council of Gangra, 325-381A.D., it states: 

If any one shall teach a slave, under the pretext of piety, to despise his master and to run away fro his service, and not to serve his own master with good-will, and all honour, let him be anathema.

Christian morality is based on the Deposit of Faith, "once delivered to the saints". Does that canon express the idea that Slavery is morally wrong?  ....No. 

The Institution of Slavery is an unpleasant one, but is not morally wrong. Early Christians did go to the slave markets, purchase slaves, only to rel

I know plenty of smokers and alcoholics. They are addicted. 

If you think that addiction story is made up, there are plenty of animal studies out there. A monkey was hooked up to a shunt of heroin, I believe. The monkey could press two keys, one for a shot of heroin, and the other a lever that released food. The monkey stopped pressing the lever for food and customarily only pressed the heroin lever. The monkey I believe committed suicide. I read this story a long time ago. 

Your thesis is broke because animals can be addicted to drugs. 

Addiction is real. Physically, emotionally, psychologically. One or a combination of those factors contribute to addiction. Sometimes, it takes the Grace of God to break it. 

Now, there is a discussion. Now, people are laying their cards on the table. Now, there is some knowledge being passed around. FZM seemed to me to play dumb, but now I see the guy is quite knowledgeable about Central Europe and Orthodox teaching. A lot of good points laid out that we all should get to.
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First, there are a lot more parameters to throw out there in part of this discussion for consideration--which has to put into the hopper. I put out a paper on the many forms of genocide and posted it earlier in this thread. Only one person availed it. Philosophy is about Knowledge. And when people don't want to learn more--they can not come to the truth, or apprehend it, understand it. 

I sense an undercurrent in the thread and that is Libertarianism. Libertarianism is quite favorable amongst many Catholics. I believe Dr. Feser is a Libertarian. Libertarianism is an ideology of individualism. That runs counter to race/nation. It is on purpose that way. Again, I guess I am the only one to bring up Aristotle's scientific observation on the essential character of man--and that is being a "Social Animal".  The Greek word is "politike" and many translators and others calque the word into "political", but that is not the meaning of the word in Greek. The word in Greek means "social". 

[1253a] [1] and self-sufficiency is an end, and a chief good. From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it （like the “ clanless, lawless, hearthless
” man reviled by Homer,[url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a#note1]1[/url][color=#000000] for one by nature unsocial is also ‘a lover

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