As for those Catholic priests, that was over a 300 year history, at a time when the Protestants were burning witches by the thousands at the stake for imagined heresy in German. So what did the dozen or so priests sentenced to death do? Pedophilia, illicit homosexual relationships, simony, etc. You sure you want to condemn the reformers cleaning up the Church against corruption? Really? I'll defend fighting pedophilia over killing women for turning people into newts, any day.
Was the taking of human life "excused?" It was primitive jurisprudence, and severe, and the Catholic Church finds that the rule of law is now firmly enough established that it opposes the death penalty in the Western world. Compare to Luther preaching that peasants were born to be slaughtered as fodder in war, and Calvin ordering the murder of anyone who attends a mass.
This article has nothing to do with wrongful actions of protestants in Germany, which I condemn equally. Yet you haven’t condemned the behavior of the Inquisition...
All your post does is justify the sinful behavior of purported church leaders.
“I’ll defend fighting pedophilia over killing women for turning people into newts, any day.”
See, there’s the problem. It’s not an “us vs them” issue. Protestants killing witches in the name of God is just as wrong as Catholics killing heretics in the name of God. Neither act is justified, but if you let your sectarian prejudice get in the way of moral judgement, I guess you can lose sight of that.