braces_for_impact

Saying someone else is not, does not make it so. It works both ways Magus.

If you do something another Christian dissagrees with, they can easily say you are not a 'real' Christian. Does this make it true?

Also, an important point was made here. So many protestants thumb their noses at Catholics, and carefully try to distance themselves from them. They slink away and try to pretend that Catholicism didn't lead to their very own religion; indeed the very core of it in most cases.

It is very similar to the way the church (both Catholic and Protestant) tried to distance itself to the fact that Jesus was a jew, until recently.

Krusty

I think God should have stopped these particular "stupid actions" because it was being done in His name. You can say the abusers weren't Christians if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the Christian God was being used to justify their crimes. I can't help thinking that IF the Christian God existed that he would stop these Christ-justified horrors from happening. According to the bible he performs lots of miracles, stopping the crusades would seem worthy of a miracle.

Goliath

A fallacy is a fallacy is a fallacy.

So, go ahead and be wrong. You have every right to do so.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Goliath

If "president of the United States" were a reilgious group, then yes. Since it isn't....

Sincerely,

Goliath

Peregrine

I think this is such a red herring. What happened 500 years ago is irrelevent to what is being done today. You want to talk about numbers killed by the Catholic church, look to Africa. AIDS is destroying generation after generation, and what is the church's position? "Don't use condoms!" The church has fought against every measure to prevent the spread of AIDS, and as far as I am concerned they are responsible for the carnage in Africa. To me this is relevant, and the deaths during the crusades are noting but a red herring.

funinspace

Hum, I guess that means Augustine must not have been a Christian as well. Augustine abandoned his concubine and child so he could become a pious man (lol). He also provided some of the key framework for the defense of violence and torture in the pursuit of a unified society and the Holy wars. Just ask the Donitist's. Oh yes, one can't do that. They were terrorized and subdued to oblivion, because they didn't follow the "true" faith. How does that work again?

DK

Singerian

It's not as if there's no Biblical defence for Augustine's behavior. Christ was a supporter of the Bible.

funinspace

My comment was towards the notion that "it's not Xian, unless it fits my definition of Xianity" mantra. The "Bible" has been used to defend almost everything humans could dream up. Not sure what your point is there? Christ was recorded as believing in the Hebrew books of the Law and Prophets. There was no Xian Bible. There wasn't even an official Hebrew Bible. The definition of Jewish sacred books didn't even come for another generation.

DK

Shake

No, Amos. You're responding to a user whose handle is Occams_Razor. No one was attempting to use the actual Occams Razor.

The point here is that the Catholic Church sat silent when Hitler was busy murder millions of Jews. Your labelling of him as a heretic may be true, but the fact is that the Church did nothing to "deal with" Hitler's rise to power. Rome was either unwilling or unable to prevent his rise to power and subsequent abuse of said power.

[A Few Good Men]
These are the facts of the case.
And they are undisputed.
[/A Few Good Men]

BDS

Blaming the Catholic Church for failing to stop Hitler is a bit silly, isn't it? I mean, nobody stopped Hitler, until 1945, when he was stopped by the atheist, Communist Soviet Union (with a little help from the Brits and Americans). One might as well blame the Buddhists for failing to stop Hitler, or the Bahaiis, or the Quakers, or Mussolini.

H.R. Trevor-Roper (the noted Oxford historian) claims that as many as 500,000 people were executed as witches during the European Witch Craze of 1500 - 1670. About half of these were killed by Catholics, the other half by Protestants.

I'm not sure if the courts convicting the witches were Ecclisiastic -- I think they may often have been secular (unlike the courst of the Inquisition, which killed far fewer people).