Frankly, I would not mind if someone were to provide openly subjective accounts but then were at least comprehensive. Thank you very much for an integrative introduction into the subject.
P.S. Most people, although not always a majority, realize that individuals are fallible and sinful --- worse, capable of inflicting onto others great amounts of undeserved pain, such as the case of the poor Catholic woman you described. Early social psychologists have demonstrated that experimentally (in the 50s, a famous experiment, but the names of the authors escape me at the moment). Consequently, the behavior of individuals from the perspective of their religions is not much of a puzzle.
What is harder to assess is the structure and behavior of institutions. Since the structure determines, to a great extent, the spectrum of actions, one may therefore entertain the question as to the viability of the current structure of that institution. This is what one does when comparing the constitutions. One could argue also that Marxism, to which you alluded earlier, was incapable of the progress achieved in temporal matters by the Christian world, precisely because it is bound to deteriorate into a nightmare; its very structure leads to the perpetual violence against the citizens.
Similarly, when one looks today at Inquisition, for instance, it is hardly surprising to see the ability of people to be so nasty to each other. Regrettable, but not surprising: not after the atrocities of the XX century that dwarfed whatever the Inquisition ever did in scale and degree. The question that is more interesting is whether an institution has checks and balances that prevent it from abuse of the purpose for which it is created. Could the Inquisition have been avoided? Can there be Marxism with the human face?
These are valid lines of inquiry. Unfortunately, it is also convenient for the bigots to be used as a cover. I understand that, as a result, it may not be easy for a Catholic to hear such question. The inquirer's perspective matters: it differentiates the search for truth from venting of prejudice. This is a favorite vehicle of the educated bigots: "See, I am not against Catholics (Jews, Roma, etc.), I am merely discussing an issue." Yet, when you examine the standards of inquiry, they show a different picture. We witness today much the same thing from anti-Semites with respect to Jews ("I am not against them, I just disagree with Israel") and anti-capitalists and Marxists with respect to our country ("I am a real American, I just disagree with Bush"). I think it is precisely because of the admixture of the two that it is hard to come by a decent analysis of social institutions.
Regards, TQ.
I think that Marxism and Catholicism are different in this way: that Marxism believes itself to be scientific, and that it can achieve specific results by using specific measures. It is a central tenet of Marxism that human nature is pliable and that a perfect society can be produced by economic manipulation and force.
Catholicism, conversely, believes that no human society can be perfect and that there will always be sin in the world. Moreover Catholicism believes, per the doctrine of Original Sin, than human nature is essentially inalterable by human means. Catholicism seeks a perfect society in the New Jerusalem after the Last Judgment.
And as far as checks and balances are concerned, Marxism necessarily has none. It is a total and totalizing ideology.
Catholicism has two checks: Scripture and Tradition. Scriptural interpretation in the Church has always been multifaceted - there has never been a literalist majority among exegetes. No Pope can change what his predecessors have taught - although there have been Popes who were absolutely repulsive in terms of their personal behavior, there has never been a "rogue Pope" on matters of doctrine or moral teaching. Alexander VI acknowledged that fornication was immoral even while he practiced it. It would never have occurred to him to declare fornication morally acceptable just because he enjoyed it.
Marxism, by its very nature, demands full control of the State. Even in the middle of the Middle Ages there was a very healthy debate raging between advocates of papal sovereignty and advocates of the distinction between ecclesiastical and secular government. Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy is probably the most famous, the most archetypal Catholic writer and poet in history. He lived at the turn of the 1300s. Yet he openly rebuked Popes he disagreed with and championed the political cause of the Emperor against the Pope even while he lived in the Papal Kingdom.
So within the Church of the Middle Ages there was a freedom of political thought unimaginable to those who lived in the "enlightened" First French Republic or the Bolshevik regime of Lenin - a freedom of political thought analogous to that of the pre-Civil War USA.
And the Church certainly encouraged scientific research. Albertus Magnus reintroduced the methods of scientific experiment to Europe in the XIIIth century by trying to replicate the biological research of Aristotle. He was much admired for his intellectual accomplishments and became the general of the Dominican Order, one of the three most powerful religious orders in the Church. He established schools throughout Germany and France.
One of these schools became the Sorbonne, where a French friar named Jean Buridan formulated a theory which would later become the First Law of Thermodynamics.
And few critics of the Church acknowledge that Copernicus was a Catholic priest who taught at a papally-approved University and that he lectured on his theories quite openly in Rome fifty years before Galileo was born.
This kind of freedom of research contrasts quite favorably with Lysenkoism.