[aMorePerfectUnion]

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.

[dangus]

You mean the Protestants in Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, and Great Britain. IOW, pretty much every Protestant state in existence. (Yeah, the French king was a Crypto-Calvinist.)

(Actually, out of fear of the Swedes, Denmark-Norway actually fought with the Catholics.)

[dangus]

And actually, since the German CATHOLICS' invented of the printing press, for the purpose of disseminating the bible as far and wide as possible by reducing the recently astronomical cost of bible owning, the demonic treachery of the German princes is far more relevant than the Spanish inquisition, which was thrown in just for cheap shots against Catholicism. But since another major category of crime by Catholic priests in Spain (although one which rarely resulted in corporal punishment, contrary to the Black Legend) was "Rosicrucianism", the German alliance of Lutherans and Muslims is very key to understanding the Inquisition. (The Lutherans went so far as to adopt the Rosicrucian emblem as their own emblem; Luther's family even named their castle, Rosencrantz, the Germanic form of Rosicrucianism.)

[dangus]

Should I condemn the Inquisition?

In the Middle Ages, nominally Christian kings in poorly evangelized lands claimed that the Christian faith entitled them to do horrible, wicked things, such as torture their political opponents while accusing them as heresy. Correctly perceiving that this discredited Christianity and slandered Christ, the Catholic Church created the separation of Church and State by demanding that the State had no right to try and punish heresy.

Instead, the Church itself would conduct any trial of heresy through the establishment of the papal inquisition. As a revolution in jurisprudence, Torture was prohibited by the Papal Inquisition (defined as any form of interrogation that causes permanent injury or disfigurement, or inflicts pain for greater than 15 minutes, or inflicts pain more than once)

The Spanish reconquistas (who liberated Spain from the Muslims), however, complained that the Islamic practice of subersion through taqiyya made separation of Church and State impossible. THerefore, the Church granted a unique privilege to Spain to allow the blending of civil and ecclesiastical (church) trials. This was allowed only in this one instance, because the Church recognized the inherently corrupting effect.

Therefore, I join the Catholic Church in condemning the excesses of Torquemada and his inquisitors. I also condemn the vigilantes who led the King of Spain to drive the Jews from Spain in an unjust attempt to maintain civil order, but I emphasize that these vigilantes operated outside the law as imposed by the Church, and were condemned even in their day by every ecclesiastical authority. But I found it irrelevant to reaffirm the condemnations of the Catholic Church, since those people are no longer alive. I find it only relevant to defend the Catholic Church against the absurd slanders it so frequently faces, including the legitimate purpose of the Inquisition, because, unlike the sinners of the 15th and 16th centuries, these slanderers, liars and frauds are still all around us.