How do you handle the inevitable Crusades and Inquisition charges?

[777]

patricius:

No, atrocities like this don’t “prove” anything, but I think it’s entirely reasonable that people should expect the Church to seem *good *in at least some sense. After all, the whole rationale for belief is that God made us and wants us to be happy, so we should do what He tells us-- but if what he tells us to do is (or seems to be) somehow intrinsically repugnant, then I think that repugnance is a valid prima facie objection to the truth of the existence of that god, or of that particular divine command.

In other words-- associating oneself with an organization that was involved in the Crusades and the Inquisition can seem to a lot of people to be against the spirit of love and of Christ’s preaching, especially if they have a distorted understanding of history. The mortal-venial distinction is intuitive, and even non-Catholics will understand that sins committed by modern church leaders (of all denominations) are not as serious as some of the charges levelled against Catholic leaders of that time. Defending the Church’s “reputation” against these charges-- not by lying or concealing, but by plain honesty-- is part of letting our light shine among men!

Don’t firget women and children as well!!

 

[caroljm36]

Axion:

French Revolution (close to 1,000,000)
Under Stalin and Lenin (6,000,000)
Under Mao (at least 6,000,000)
Under Pol Pot (1-2,000,000)
Even under the anti-Christian Hitler. (6,000,000)

.

Actually your numbers are off quite a bit for Stalin. Where did you get these? Stalin’s good for 200+ million between executions, kulaks and gulag.

 

[Axion]

caroljm36:

Actually your numbers are off quite a bit for Stalin. Where did you get these? Stalin’s good for 200+ million between executions, kulaks and gulag.

200 Million is a bit off! That’s more than the population of russia at the time!!

I try to use the most conservative figures for the umbers of people killed by Atheist regimes to avoid the charge of exaggerating. The figures are quite huge enough anyway.

 

[Axion]

Going back to the main subject.

With the crusades and the “Inquisition” we are looking at subjects which have been used a great deal by enemies of the Church to bash Catholicism. Our knowledge and view of what happened historically is therefore often coloured by exaggerations, blatant distortions and twisting of the facts designed to put Catholicism in a bad light. And if they can’t find anything, they just invent it (as in the Film “King Arthur”, or the "Da Vinci Code). So people are often walking around with assumptions about both the Crusades and the “Inquisition” that are just plain wrong.

A case in point: How many witches did the Inquisition kill?

1,000,000
50,000,000
5,000,000
50,000 ?

Answer: None of these. It is unlikely that the “Inquisition” in any of its forms (Spanish, Roman, Medieval) ever killed more than a hundred witches in 500 years. But the above figures continue to be bandied about. There were witch killings - maybe running into a few thousand all across Europe, Protestant and Catholic, but most of these were by **secular ** courts, and the Inquisitions in fact tended to avoid becoming involved in witchcraft trials.

What we tend to find is anti-Catholics scouring through history books looking for something to blame on the Church. We are told “Crusaders” slaughtered Jews in the Rhine Valley. Look into the allegations in detail, and what do you find? The massacres took place months before the main crusade set off! Not only were the people who conducted the massacres, unofficial mobs, and not Crusaders, the local Bishops did as much as they could to protect local Jews. Yet people tell half-truths and act as if the Church were to blame! This is like blaming the US Government for the actions of the LA rioters!

The crusades were in fact a defensive war against an aggressive and expansionist Islam. In the war, as in all wars, evil deeds were sometimes done. But strangely enough only the Christian deeds are picked out.

 

[Anna_Elizabeth]

stillsmallvoice:

When did Abraham & Moses extort anything from anybody?

Re Abraham:

Genesis 20:1-16 Abimelech, believing Abraham"s half-truth, takes Sarah. God intervenes, filling Abimelech and his people with fear. He asks Abraham why he has brought this guilt to them, and proceeds to give Abraham not only his wife back, but animals, slaves, land and money as “exoneration.” (NRSV)

Re Moses:

Exodus 12:33-36 The Egyptians are eager for the Israelites to get out or “We shall all be dead.” Then “the Israelites had done as Moses told them; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold, and for clothing, and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so they let them have what they asked. And so they plundered the Egyptians.”

Where I come from this sort of thing is considered extortion. OTOH, if God is the author of these events, as you say He was in the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Joshua and King Saul, then the actors are summarily “off the hook,” right?

Be well,

Anna

 

[penny0314]

I have found most of the Catholic sites dealing with the Inquisition and the Holocaust are treated like our American history books dealt with the American Indians and our war against them. They greatly downplay what happened and then coat it in cotton candy. On the other side, fundagelicals (fundamentalist/evangelicals) tend to overplay and report it as far worse than it was. The truth is found in neither side, but somewhere in the middle. Not as many died as reported by some, but many more died than the Catholics generally report. All of the Inquisition was a political power play. It was a shameful thing in both Catholic and secular history, and, frighteningly enough, continued well into the 19th century in some parts of Italy. I urge you to go to independent sources for accurate history, just as you need to for the American-Indian wars. Interesting point: the Catholic Church has said they “regretted” the Inquisition, but Peter of Verona, a murderous inquisitor, is still on the canon of saints, and now some want to add the most vicious one of all–Torquemada–to that canon.