[annalex]

Slightly off-topic but still worth mentioning are two other calumnies against the Church:

• Myth: The Crusades were wars of conquest caused by land shortage
  Reality: The Crusades were wars of liberation of Palestine and North Africa from Muslim aggression several centuries prior; they were undertaken by the West after Byzantium had failed to defend itself and asked for help.
• Myth: The Holy Inquisition was brutal suppession of religious dissent by torturing and burning the dissenters
  Reality: The Holy Inquisition was systematic and lawyerly determination of men who held views that could not be properly called Catholic. The state executed heretics because they were considered traitors. Most of those investigated by the Inquisition were aquitted or given penance, such as tithes and pilgrimages. Very few were released to the state for execution. Only mild torture was allowed. The Inquisition did much to promote modern legal methods of adversarial justice and get rid of corrupt local clergy

[safisoft]

Only mild torture was allowed.

Well, that explains everything! Maybe, some of the ones murdered were also only mildly dead. For a whiff of reality, the Jews of Spain were not "pretending to be Catholic" when they were systematically deprived of property, tortured, and murdered. Putting a pretty face on it is almost as despicable as the Inquisition itself.

I hear that Germany is looking for good revisionists to rewrite the history of Germany from 1932-1945. So, maybe there are some good Catholic historians who are up to it?