[safisoft]

Regarding specifically Spanish Jews, the Holy Inquisition concerned itself only with the dishonest Conversos, that is, precisely, Jewish converts to Christianity that secretly maintained their Jewish faith. By definition, the Spanish Inquisition was not interested in a Jew (or a follower of any other religion beside Catholic Christianity) who would declare himself such. Jews that kept their faith suffered expulsions and other injustices at the hand of the King's government, to be sure, but not at the hand of the Inquisition.

Sick stuff. Making excuses for the shameful past of the Roman Church ("Holy Inquisition", what a sick phrase!) is disturbing to say the least. All I can say is thank G-d for the Reformation if it took at least part of the world away from this sick stuff.

[annalex]

You won't be coming to the Church soon, I am afraid. Whenever you are ready, we are.

[d-back]

Safisoft, your ignorance of the Inquisition is astounding.

Since there was no such thing as the separation of Church and State in Spain during this time period--as in every time period but our own--the Church was concerned with supposed "converts" who had not really converted, but claimed to do so to obtain political benefits, which were limited by the Crown to those who were Catholic. Some of those fake converts were Jews (Marranos), some Muslims (Moriscos), and when their true religious allegiance was discovered, they lost their positions of power, they sometimes lost their property, and they sometimes lost their lives. It had taken the Catholic Spaniards five hundred years to remove the Moslem invaders and their collaborators of all religions from the Iberian peninsula, and the Crown and the Church dealt with fake converts with understandable seriousness.

If President Bush found out that one of his cabinet members had falsely taken his oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and had instead pledged allegiance to worldwide jihad, what would the US do? How do we treat those who would falsely pledge allegiance to our principles and assume positions of power? Removal from office, prison, death?

Damn right we have such penalites, and so did the Inquisition.