Really? How common? The worst episode of oppression in Church history that most people refer to is the Spanish Inquisition. Over a 350 year period, 3-5000 people were executed as part of an overarching effort to drive the Mohammedans out of Spain.
The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition
How does this compare to Calvin's Geneva?
“In five years, 1542-46, Geneva, with 16,000 inhabitants, had fifty-seven executions and seventy-six banishments. All these sentences were sanctioned by Calvin.”
The Protestant Reformation occurred for a reason, you know; it didn't happen in a vacuum. It started because of the offensive nature of certain Catholic doctrines and practices, and it gained traction because it was a way for European nations to break the political power of the Roman Catholic church.
There was corruption in the Church. There's no doubt about that. But this shouldn't surprise Christians since Jesus told us that the weeds would grow up along with the wheat. And the "cure" was worse than the disease.
Papal crowning of kings in Europe is very similar to the church-state theocracies in the Middle-east right now.
Hardly. The Church was normally trying to extricate Itself from affairs of State:
The Church in the Middle AgesFrom the 9th cent. to 1520 the church was simply Western Europe taken in its religious aspect, and no clear line divided spiritual from temporal life. In the West (unlike the East) the religious organization was free for centuries from grave interference from civil rulers. Charlemagne was an exception, but his influence was benign. In the chaotic 9th and 10th cent. every part of the church organization, including the papacy, became the prey of the powerful.
The restoration of order began in monasteries; from Cluny a movement spread to reform Christian life (see Cluniac order). This pattern of decline of religion followed by reform is characteristic of the history of the Roman Catholic Church; the reform goals have varied, but they have included the revival of spiritual life in society and the monasteries, and the elimination of politics from the bishops' sphere and venality from the papal court. The next reform (11th cent.) was conducted by popes, notably St. Gregory VII and Urban II. Part of this movement was to exclude civil rulers from making church appointments—the first, bold chapter in a 900-year battle between the church and the “Catholic princes” (see church and state; investiture).
The 12th cent. was a time of great intellectual beginnings. St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians revived practical mystical prayer. Gratian founded the systematic study of the canon law, and medieval civil law began its development. This double study was to provide weapons to both sides in the duel between the extreme papal claims of Innocent III and Innocent IV, and the antipapal theories of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Also in the 12th cent., Peter Abelard and other thinkers pioneered in rationalist theology.
From early rationalist theology and from the teachings of Aristotle developed the philosophies and theologies of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas (see also scholasticism). This was the work of the new 13th-century universities; to them, and to the friars—the Dominicans and Franciscans—who animated them, passed the intellectual leadership held by the monasteries. St. Dominic's order was formed to preach against the Albigenses (a campaign that also produced the Inquisition). The vast popular movement of St. Francis was a spontaneous reform contemporary with the papal reform of the Fourth Lateran Council. The 13th cent. saw also the flowering of Gothic architecture.
The contest between church and state continued, ruining the Hohenstaufen dynasty and, in the contest between Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France, bringing the papacy to near ruin. Then came the Avignon residence—the so-called Babylonian captivity of the papacy (1309–78), a time of good church administration, but of excessive French influence over papal policy. Except for isolated voices, such as that of St. Catherine of Siena, the church seemed to lose energy, and a long period devoid of reform began. A long-enduring schism and a series of ambitious councils (see Schism, Great) involved most churchmen in a welter of politics and worldliness.
There were popular religious movements, characterized by revivalism and a tendency to minimize the sacraments (along with church authority); they encouraged private piety, and one group produced the inspirational Imitation ascribed to Thomas à Kempis. The popular tendencies were extreme in John Wyclif, who developed an antisacramental, predestinarian theology emphasizing Bible study—a “protestant” movement 150 years before Protestantism.
The Reformation and Counter Reformation
The 15th-century councils did little for reform, and the popes, shorn of power, were reduced to being Renaissance princes. Such men could not cope with the Protestant revolt of Martin Luther and John Calvin (see also Reformation). The Protestants aimed to restore primitive Christianity (as described in the Bible), and they succeeded in weakening the hold of the church in all of N Europe, in Great Britain, and in parts of Central Europe and Switzerland. Politics and religion were completely intertwined (as in England, Scotland, and France); hence the admixture of religious issues in the Thirty Years War.
Within the church there triumphed the most extensive of all the church's reform movements (see Counter Reformation; Jesus, Society of). From it sprang a general revival of religion and much missionary activity in the new empires of Spain and Portugal and in East Asia. In France, Catholicism found new life, beginning with St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul. There, too, began the cult of the Sacred Heart (i.e., God's love for men), which would affect Catholic prayer everywhere. A contrary influence was Jansenism (see under Jansen, Cornelis), an antisacramental middle-class movement.
The numbers are irrelevant to the point: The Catholic church, pre-reformation, killed heretics. Modern Islam kills heretics.
The Protestant reformation helped put a stop to killing heretics. An equivalent Islamic protestant reformation is what is likely needed to do the same in the muslim world.
It is what it is.
How many executions has the State of Texas had in the last five years? Granted, the State of Texas has more than 16,000 inhabitants, but what were the crimes involved, comparing 16th Century Geneva and 21st Century Texas?
Take a look at Foxe's Book of Martyrs
In light of the view the countenance of Iraqi citizens in their elections yesterday, if you still want to denigrate Calvin, hear this:
The Rev. Dr. Wisner, in his late discourse at Plymouth, on the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, made the following assertion: "Much as the name of Calvin has been scoffed at and loaded with reproach by many sons of freedom, there is not an historical proposition more susceptible of complete demonstration than this, that no man has lived to whom the world is under greater obligations for the freedom it now enjoys, than John Calvin."
Cordially,
The great American historian George Bancroft stated, "He that will not honor the memory, and respect the influence of Calvin, knows but little of the origin of American liberty." The famous German historian, Leopold von Ranke, wrote, "John Calvin was the virtual founder of America." John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote: "Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised. Religious liberty owes it most respect."
Cordially,