Hmmmm Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by Catholics?..... The Salem witch trials...Catholics? 2000 years of history?
You, the guy in the flame retardant suit... take 5 minutes and list all the Catholic atrocities.
With respect the the activities of the Catholic Church you should read the "Catholic Encyclopedia" which clearly states that the Inquisition used torture on heretics as authorized by Pope Clement V and other popes and bishops. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm
The anniversary of that event is coming up on May 29. France was divided in two by the 100-years war at the time. The English along with their Burgundian allies controlled two thirds of what eventually became modern day France.
Joan of Arc, a 16-year old peasant from Lorraine, convinced the French Dauphin Charles VII, to make her a military commander in order to expell the English. The French army was retreated south of the Loire. The English had invested Orleans and were beseiging the town, the last natural barrier to English domination of France. Thanks to Joan's leadership, French forces won a decisive victory at Orleans and broke the 9 month long seige.
Joan went on to defeat English forces for the next 18 months. She led Charles to Reims where he was crowned King of France at the ancient capital. This was a tremendous psychological blow to the English. That along with her near miraculous skill as a military commander earned her the deep hatred of the English.
When she was captured during an assault on the town of Compeigne, she was sold to the Bishop of Beauvais who was a partisan of the English and Burgundian cause. The English paid all the expenses of her trial. Joan's fate was never in doubt. She was condemned to death as a relapsed heretic (for wearing men's clothes if you can believe that.)
25 years after her death when the English had been completely expelled, Charles VII petitioned the Pope to review her condemnation trial. A great inquiry was held that lasted 7 years but eventually found Joan entirely innocent of all charges. In addition, the original proceedings were found to be deeply flawed and in violation of Catholic legal statues. For example, Joan was not allowed legal representation, a clear violation of the rules of the Inquisition. She was also held in a civil prison and guarded by men rather than an ecclesiastical prison guarded by women as was required under law.
In the end Joan was entirely rehabilitated and her condemnation declared null and void.
On May 16, 1920, Joan was canonized in Rome.
Salem Massachussets wasn't exactly a bastion of Catholicism during the Witch Trials. The people of Salem were Puritans and would likely have regarded a Catholic as being on par with the reputed witches.
You, the guy in the flame retardant suit... take 5 minutes and list all the Catholic atrocities.
'can hardly be done in 5 minutes - where to start, well, here's some excerpts from Wikipedia - hardly an outfit with an ax to grind:
"The Inquisition was an institution within the Roman Catholic Church, charged with the eradication of heresy through peaceful conversion, but also sometimes by violent coercion. Heresy (from the Greek verb for, "to choose") is a natural obstacle to total control by a monarch or religious leader. If enough "heretics" decide to think for themselves, the absolute authority of the Crown and the Pope is threatened. .... Many groups suffered persecution by Papal inquisitions ... In the subsequent centuries there were Arius and his followers Arians and Manicheans; in the Middle Ages there were the Jews the Cathari and Waldenses; and in the Renaissance there were the Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Rosicrucians. Efforts to suppress heresies were initially ad hoc, but in the Middle Ages a permanent structure came into being to combat heresies. Roman Catholicism deemed it poper to convert, sometimes by violent means, people who maintained divergent opinions from their king and/or their Pope."
History>
"There were four Inquisitions; the Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, the Portuguese Inquisition and the Roman Inquisition. One would however be incorrect to presume that ... the inquisition was limited to these discrete events. (continued in Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
"The Cathars of Montsegur were massacred by crusaders in the employ of the Church of Rome.
"the Cathar defenders were burned en masse in a bonfire
"Catharism was for many years the prevalent form of Christianity in large areas of France, Spain and Italy. The Cathars called themselves the friends of God and condemned the literalist Church as the Church of the Anti-Christ. They claimed to be the living inheritors of the true Christian heritage that had persisted in secret and which still had large numbers of adherents throughout the world. Like the original Christians, the Cathars were vegetarians, believed in reincarnation and considered the Old Testament god Jehovah to be a tyrant... The Cathars were respected for their goodness, even by their opponents. The Catholic Bernard of Clairveaux writes: "If you interrogate them, no one could be more Christian. As to their conversation, nothing can be less reprehensible, and what they speak they prove by deeds. As for the morals of the heretics, they cheat non one, they oppress no one, they strike no one."
"Despite this, the infamous Inquisition was set up by the Literalist Church specifically to eradicate the cathars, which it did with ferocious enthusiasm, burning alive men, women and children. From 1139 onwards the Roman Church began calling councils to condemn the heretics. Pope Innocent III declared that 'anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of God which conflicted with Church dogma must be burned without pity'.
"In 1208 he offered indulgences and eternal salvation, as well as the lands and property taken from the heretics, to anyone who would take up the crusade against the Cathars. This launched a brutal 30-year pogrom which decimated southern France. Twelve thousand people were killed at St Nazaire and ten thousand at Toulouse, to give just two examples.
"By 1215, the Council of Lateran established the dread Inquisition. During the next 50 years the toll of those killed by this infamous arm of the Church climbed to one million, more than in all of the other crusades against heresies combined.
********************and that was just the Cathars...
Then there were the Knights Templar and.so on. (Do you know why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky. I was the date, in 1307, that - by the Pope's orders - the Knights Templar were slaughtered. They had more lands, castles and money than the Pope and thought to have the Temple treasures...motive???and the leader was burned at the stake...)
One of the reasons artists, scientists and architects developed codes to communicate with others was to avoid becoming a human marshmallow on the stake.
Both Copernicus and Galileo were hauled before the inquisition, their books burned, forced to recant or burn...
The Church thought it had wiped out the Cathars - but there are Cathars even today.
It is suspicioned that Leonardo was a Cathar -
You have the Internet at your fingertips, which opens up the world of knowledge and history, of libraries and museums of the whole world and you don't even have to leave your chair.
P.S. You probably aught to not make assumptions based on no knowledge: you call me "guy" - I'm a white-haired great grandmother ;o)