Actually, the article goes further. It suggests that the Inquisition was enlightened. That it advanced justice by giving the unjustly accused a better chance of acquital, and saved lives. And the article is backed by pretty much the entire scholarly world in asserting this.
The problem is that those who want to hate the Church cannot allow themselves to see it as a good force in protecting the faithful. The secularists hate it for punishing for the sake of religious beliefs (which they regard as meaningless superstition rather than meaningful for the eternal life of a person's soul), and the anti-Catholics hate it for punishing their own personal beliefs about Christianity. Normal historical inquiry takes a back seat to those so agendized.
You can say that the Inquisition was "enlightened." if one confines oneself to the field of jurisprudence. I think its rules of procesure was an advance over the Civil Law. Still I can justify it only by remembering that sometimes it was dealing with people as rabid in their rejection of convention as the radical Islamists who cut off the head of Mr. Johnson. When someone as mild and rational as St. Thomas can accept its actions, people like the Cathars must have been something else.
Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed.
1%?!? I don't think any modern madman was "successful" enough to achieve that rate. Never-mind, I have something more important to question.
Here it is. To understand the Inquisition we have to remember that the Middle Ages were, well, medieval. We should not expect people in the past to view the world and their place in it the way we do today. (You try living through the Black Death and see how it changes your attitude.) For people who lived during those times, religion was not something one did just at church.
Gonna pause here, cuz I have to comment on this before going further. Death was more common during medieval times. Is the author trying to say life was more or less precious to those living at that time? Are our beliefs different & less important to us without a healthy fear of an immanent death? Is that the meaning of religion? Religion is something we're just supposed to do at church?
It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth.
When did it stop being about the universal truth?
Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community.
IMO, this is just as true now as it was then. Should I try to make the author of this piece part of my mere 1%?