Most people don’t know a darn thing about the Inquistion or the Church, it’s a handy, quick way to bash Catholicism, the stories of it have become so twisted as to be about as accurate as “The Da Vinci Code.” Which Inquisition? There were two, one led by the Church which was extremely benign (accused criminals would beg to be tried by a Church Court rather than the Civil Courts because they knew they would get a less severe sentence), and the later one, led by the State, the government of Spain, which is the one notorious for torture. Of course, because there was not separation of Church and State as we have today, I’m not completely exonerating the Church from cooperation with the Spanish authorities, and there were evil bishops then just like now, and also many who would not participate in evil.
I’m a Jew. I should mourn the Turkish loss at Lepanto. Spain, and rest of Catholic Western Europe threw us out, while the Ottoman Empire welcomed us with open arms. Furthermore, since the Spanish Inquisition was the bad one, and it was Spain that led the Naval coalition at Lepant, I should wish for the destruction of the Spanish fleet, as we did when reading about the battle in the English Channel in 1588. But it was what it was. Two civilizations, both of which would be considered monstrous evils by the standards of the USA of our lifetimes, fought a decisive battle. It was not the high water mark of the Ottoman Empire, the siege of Vienna perhaps marked that, it may have been the high water mark of the Spanish Empire.
To celebrate the victory of one side, because it labeled itself with a C, while the defeated side labeled itself with an M, is to place a moral superiority of the C over the M, which, at the time, it did not have.
Then to say that the election of 2008 is our modern day equivalent is to denigrate all the sacrifices in the real, shooting wars of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, in which we turned back real evils.
If there is any historical comparison of the 2008 election to Lepanto, it is that we have an evil candidate facing an even more evil candidate. At Lepanto, take your choice, in 2008, I don’t think you have any doubt.