You have to admit that Christians who left Rome’s orbit were persecuted. Just because I do not believe that the sacraments (bread/wine) are actually Jesus...I do not deserve to be burned at the stake. In the protestant dominated world, we “live and let live”...
Actually, it went both ways, especially in England and Ireland. Oliver Cromwell’s stated intent in Ireland was to drive all Catholics “To Hell Or Connacht” (the harsh, unfertile western part), and sold over 100,00 Irish Catholics into slavery in the West Indies.
Persecution is one area where neither side should claim clean hands.
“In the protestant dominated world, we “live and let live”...”
You were forced to. Since no Protestant sect could make a claim to authority more sound than that of any other, and since Protestants fought one another wherever they were or went, the only way they could live in peace was to embrace secularism and indifferentism. This ultimately leads to atheism. That’s happening now. Pope Pius X said this would happen more than a century ago.
“The error of Protestantism made the first step on this path; that of Modernism makes the second; atheism makes the next.” Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, no. 39.