As for the Inquisition, this has been debunked over and over. Firstly, the target of the Inquisition was a very powerful, growing sect of Albigensians that taught that Christ had both the Father and the Devil in him. That God was both Good and Evil. ‘nuff said. They were demonically directed and the spiritual well-being of the Spanish flock was in grave danger. Secondly, the so-called mass executions were wildly, if not laughably overstated. And the executions were not carried out by the Church, but the state. Compared to the ridiculous assertions that have grown over time, the actual number of executions was a mere handful.
Actually I misstated the Albigensian heresy. It’s also known as “Catharism”, which believed that Creation was inherently evil (which, by argument, leads back to God having the capability of committing evil since He’s the Creator). Basically, heresy of dualism. They saw “two gods in one”.
Read more here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism
For a good primer on the Crusades, I recommend (no kidding) “Catholicism for Dummies”. It takes a very complex series of events and boils it down to the key points.
I would also like to point out that when I say a “handful”, I mean a handful relative to what’s been asserted. A study commissioned by the Vatican, employing dozens of historians, found that only 1% of 120,000 people tried in the Spanish Inquisition were executed. Which is not to say that it was “right”, but the Church (JP II) has apologized for any wrongdoing of the Inquisitors.
The problem today is that there’s such a simplistic idea of what the Crusades were and what the Inquisition was. No one woke up at the Vatican and said, “hey, let’s burn some people at the stake, you know, just for the heck of it.”