I really don't think this is true, DS. Here's a bit from the History of Christianity by Paul Johnson, who really doesn't have an axe to grind. He was born in '28, he's a Roman Catholic, an Oxford Historian. He can of course be wrong, but so can those who argue with an opposing point of view. He had the guts to admit what needed to be admitted as regards the behaviour of the Church, and not that it was just a few bad apples.
"The idea of Catholic Christians exercising mass violence against the infidel hardly squared with scripture, nor did it make much sense in practical terms. The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature. In Arab territories, Christianity had penetrated heathenism, but usually in Monophysite form - and neither easter nor western Catholicism could find a compromise with the Monophysites in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Arabs, driven by draught, would almost certainly have used force to expand anyway. As it was, Mohammed, a Monophysite, conflated the theological and economic problems to evolve a form of Monophysite religion which was simple, remarkably impervious to heresy, and included the doctrine of the sword to accommodate the Arab's practical needs. It appealed strongly to a huge element within the Christian community. The first big Islamic victory, at the River Yarmuk, in 636 was achieved because 12,000 Christian Arabs went over to the enemy. The Christian Monophysites - Copts, Jacobites and so forth - nearly always preferred Moslems to Catholics. Five centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Michael the Syrian, faithfully produced the tradition of his people when he wrote: 'The God of Vengeance who alone is the Almighty...raised from the south the children of Ishmael to deliver us from the hands of the Romans.' And, at the time a Nestorian chronicler wrote: 'The hearts of the Christians rejoiced at the domination of the Arabs - may God strengthen and prosper it.' The religious pattern froze: The Arab Moslems tolerated all Children of the Book, but would not allow their rivals to expand. Christians were in the majority only in Alexandria and certain Syrian cities. Generally they preferred Arab-Moslem to Greek-Christian rule, though there were periods of difficulty and persecution. There was never, at any stage, a mass-demand from the Christians under Moslem rule to 'liberate.'Three factors combined to produce the militant crusades. The first was the development of small-scale 'holy wars' against Moslems in the Spanish theatre. In 1063, Ramiro I, King of Aragon, was murdered by a Moslem; and Alexander II promised an indulgence for all who fought for the cross to revenge the atrocity; the idea was developed by Gregory VII who helped an international army to assemble for Spanish campaigning, guaranteeing canonically that any Christian knight could keep the lands he conquered, provided he acknowledged that the Spanish kingdom belonged to the see of St. Peter. Papal expansionism, linked to the colonial appetite for acquiring land, thus supplied strong political and economic motives. There was, secondly, a Frankish tradition, dating from around 800, that the Carolingian monarchs had a right and a duty to protect Holy Places in Jerusalem, and the western pilgrims who went there. This was acknowleged by the Moslem caliphs, who until the late eleventh century preferred Frankish interference to what they regarded as the far more dangerous penetration by Byzantium.
...The idea that Europe was a Christian entity, which had acquired certain inherent rights over the rest of the world by virtue of its faith, and its duty to spread it, married perfectly with the need to find some outlet both for its addiction to violence and its surplus population.
What really created the crusade, however, was the almost unconscious decision, at the end of the 11th century, to marry the Spanish idea of conquering the land from the infidel with the practice of mass, armed pilgrimages to the Holy Land. And this sprang from the third factor -the vast increase in western population in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequent land hunger. Cisterian pioneer-farming at he frontiers was one solution. Crusading was another - the first great wave of the European colonial migrations. It was, in fact, deeply rooted in Christian cosmology. The Ptolemaic conception of the circumambient ocean had been accepted by the Fathers, and reconciled with the bible in Isidore's encyclopedia. The three continents were allocated to the sons of Noah after the Flood - Shem stood for the Jews, Japhet for the Gentiles and Ham for the Africans or blacks. Alcuin's commentary on Genesis reads: "How was the world divided by the sons and grandsons of Noah?" "Shem is considered to have acquired Asia, Ham, Africa and Japhet, Europe." The passage then went on to prove from the scriptures that Japhet-Europe was by its name and nature divinely appointed to be expansionist. Within a generation of Alcuin, early in the ninth century we first hear of Christendom an entity judged to be co-extensive with Europe, but with special privileges and rights, including the right to expand. Phrases like the 'defense of Christendom' against the Saracens were used (ninth century) and in the eleventh century, Gregory VII referred to the 'boundaries of Christendom' and the Church being 'mistress of the whole of Christendom.' From the start, then, the crusades were marked by depredations and violence which were as much racial as religious in origin....The fall of Jerusalem was marked by a prolonged and hideous massacre of Moslems and Jews, men, women and children. This episode had a crucial effect in hardening Islamic attitudes to the crusaders."
In theory, the Pope doesn't have to do a thing, but the reality is that won't work because people remember. And, good faith is established through honesty. I'm not sure what that will mean to the Moslems in the end, because they are irrational, and in kind, their murderous sprees are also different, with suicide bombings and the like, so the comparison is tough. Add to that, there doesn't seem to be even a small portion of 'moderate' Moslems that are visible or audible, that's a big problem. But how is that different than Germany allowing Hitler to come to power and then sitting by as he commenced with his hideous plans? History does repeat itself. I'm not really judging the Germans. Who knows what I would do, if I had to choose between life and death due to such circumstances?
We're going to probably have to kill a lot of Moslems, including women and children. It's best that we think through it all, so that when our children look back on what we probably will have to do, they'll be able to say we tried to avoid so much death.
It sprang from a lot of things - such as the power void in the area after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the weakness of the Church as a unifying force after the Arian and other heresies, etc. But Johnson is absolutely right about the fact that the feeble theological response was because of weak or confused thought on the Trinity and the two natures. Mad Mo thought he had the winning combination by dumping them both and simply creating a weird synthesis of easy-to-understand monotheism, bits of pagan cult and practices, and a touch of Jewish ritual law. And of course, that thing about the armed militias, which were his special personal contribution to the mix, being of bandit stock himself.
In any case, I think Johnson has some inaccuracies or generalizations that are a little too broad; the behavior of the Church has certainly never been beyond reproach, but it has never hit the profound doctrinal level. Also, don't forget that there were times when other Catholic groups (the French and the Spanish, specifically) sacked Rome and attacked the Pope over purely political things. But still, this had nothing to do with Christian doctrine.
On the other hand, with Islam, it has everything to do with doctrine, something of which the Pope (alone) seems to be clearly aware.
BTW, a little off-topic, is it only me, or is anybody else here really terrified about what would happen to women if Islam took over? When I wrote to the Pope, I mentioned that as one of my main concerns.
First, let me say I respect Johnson's opinion and would most likely say his points make a good foundation from which to proceed...with one exception. Aside from history, Christians and Jews and Islamics believe there are spiritual forces at work behind and within the human activity that makes up history as we know it. Johnson has recited (and, well, if I say so) the human forces that make up the history of this period. If one goes back over that first millennium after Christ and lays the human activity over a surmised battle between Good and evil, everything takes on a different hue. One can see the push and pull of those forces over time like a cosmic chess match (the rules are quite clear also). But step aside from that point (you can see the general direction in which it takes us) and look at one final point...
From Rome forward to Agincourt (and beyond), violence was a civilized affair and was the sole means of employment for the nobles. Farming and merchandising were left to more menial peoples and serfs on the vassals'estates. All good men were men of arms. Why is that so? I don't know. I think it was part of the evolution of the concept of honor. Jesus introduces a new kind of honor...and for two thousand years men and women have sought it only to define it as something bound up in the times in which we lived.
Only now, and only in the west, has honor started to find new definition (I think our President is helping...and I think the Pope has just now thrown down the real gauntlet).
Honor as define by Jesus is voluntary obedience to God. That isn't violence but something else that in the end only God can define and man can only seek.
Bottom-line, I don't blame humans much for the earlier tendency toward the sword. The problem is letting go of the sword. Christianity can do it because Christianity can evolve with culture...islam cannot.
Islam's prohibition from rational, empirical examination of itself has trapped it in the 7th century. The Pope IMO is planning to say to the muslim world "none of us is innocent...let's look at the past and make amends."
This I believe will be the great challenge for islam. Some will examine it and see the truth and change islam or abandon it...others will refuse and will face the annihilation you suggest.
Whew!