[Cicero]

There is a modicum of truth in this article, but I'm sorry to say that James Q. Wilson is an anti-Catholic bigot of the first water. Several times he comes out with cliches about Catholic intolerance and killing, never noting that the intolerance and killing were very much a two-way street. Queen Mary burned Protestants; Queen Elizabeth hanged, drew, and quartered Catholics. French Catholics killed Huguenots; French Huguenots killed Catholics. The Spanish expelled the Jews, but only after having fought a dreadful Islamic invasion for hundreds of years, which put them in the frame of mind that "either you are with us, or against us." In the 30 Years War, Catholics and Protestants killed each other indiscriminately, and in the end to no purpose.

The idea of freedom was carried into the Renaissance and the modern world by CHRISTIANITY. And that included Catholicism. Catholicism preserved the best of the classical legacy. Long before the modern age, St. Augustine was already talking about Christians living in two cities. Their primary allegiance was to the City of God, but they also owed a duty to the City of Man, as long as it did not conflict with their primary religious obligations.

The whole of the middle ages was given over to a struggle among Popes, Bishops, Emperors, and Kings for ultimate power. Thankfully this struggle gave people more freedom than they ever would have had under a single rule. Paradoxically it was the Reformation that for a while married secular to religious authority more closely than it had ever been before.

In contrast, Islam has NO history of separation of Church and State, priest and king. The Muslim ideal is a single supreme authority, who imposes Sharia Law. It's a good question whether Islam can "modernize" the way Christianity and Christians have, because modernity, although it conflicts with Christianity in some regards, is nevertheless fundamentally a product of Christianity. Equally, freedom in the modern world is a product of Christian patterns of thought.

[beckett]

James Q. Wilson is an anti-Catholic bigot of the first water...

A bigot? Please. There is nothing in Wilson's remarks that differ significantly from your own account! He simply collapsed a lot of history into a few paragraphs, and quite skillfully, in my opinion. Nothing in this piece rates the overheated charge of "anti-Catholic bigot of the first water."

[secretagent]

In contrast, Islam has NO history of separation of Church and State, priest and king.

But not a monolithic Theocratic State, either. See JasonC's account above.