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I will return to your original question:

I would still like an RCC answer explaining how 1200 (nearly) continuous years of crusades, inquisitions, genocides, religious persecutions, torture, rape, pillage, sword, and blood do not represent an errant Church.

It seems you have waged your own crusade through this thread. Throughout history, many uprisings, invasions and wars have been waged in the holy name of God. But here is one big difference.

JIM LEHRER: There was an extraordinary event in Rome yesterday as Pope John Paul II issued an apology for errors of his church over the last 2000 years. Our coverage begins with a report from Peter Morgan of Independent Television News.
A PAPAL APOLOGY

As you will soon discover in reading through that transcript, the apology was not enough for the Jews, not enough for the Orthodox, not enough for anyone ... no matter what the pope or the Catholic Church does, it never seems to be enough ... not even here in this forum.

It takes a great amount of humility to apologize. It takes a charitable person to accept the apology. It's time to move on.

The game of “who was bad in the Crusades” is in part an easy one. All sides acted horribly. But you have to remember a few things.

When the Byzantine Emperor asked for help, he was expecting a few German or Norman knights to help him keep order. Not a mass army. Pope Urban V was actually fighting an antiPope at the time, and used this to drive the other papal claiment out of the Vatican (or where ever the papal palace was at the time). The mass of people that descended on the East surprised and scared the heck out the Byzantine emperor.

Also, the initial push to fight was that Islam had a sword at Europe's throat. They had already pushed through what is now Spain and were raiding southern Italy. The first few Crusades were more of a counter offensive.

But they did horrible things also. Many younger second sons went East to make a name for themselves. Many others went for spoils, or just to have fun playing whack your neighbor (a favorite sport for nobles of that time). The Catholic Church at times encourage this. There were the Northern Crusades, the crusade against the Cathars (from where the line “Let God sort them out” got its origin), and many others that were done by direct approval of Church officials.

However, it was never unanimous. There were many clerics and monks who preached against the various Crusades, some at a cost of there lives. The most famous case was St. Francis who traveled to the Sultan not to kill him, but to convert him (and he may have been partially successful). The Knights of the German Order and the other Northern Crusader knights ended up in trouble with Rome about as much as they were supported by it. Especially after Lithuania and Poland went Christian! (Kind of hard to have a Crusade against fellow Catholics, though they tried!).

So I guess what I am saying is I see both sides. Yes, the Roman Catholic Church did give sanction to some horrible crimes, but many also fought against those crimes from the inside. And the local nobles often ignored Rome and did what they wanted to without sanction, but using Rome's name. The most interesting one for me is in the New Mexico region, where you had Dominicans and Jesuits coming to blows with each other!

In short, it is a very complicated issue. And one that if you really want to study it, you can't have your Catholic or Protestant blinders on. The history is to messy to fit finly into either sides polemics.

It seems you have waged your own crusade through this thread.

no matter what the pope or the Catholic Church does, it never seems to be enough ... not even here in this forum.

It takes a great amount of humility to apologize. It takes a charitable person to accept the apology. It's time to move on.

As I have pointedly declared upthread, my battle is with an errant church. if your Pope's apology extends in sufficiency to the point that the Roman Catholic Church, and it's adherents herein, admit that it was in fact, and in purpose, in error- THAT IT WAS WRONG- and that it's supposed inerrancy is in fact an error, then I will happily be done with it and move on.

Without the understanding that the RCC has made mistakes, and will make more in the future, it is only a matter of time until she repeats herself. I cannot abide that, nor allow her the reign to make her way toward that end. Because of that, I will *not* move on.

It is not the atrocities, sir (ma'am?), as I have said already. It is the lack of admission, and the foolhardy belief of inerrancy, which cannot be defended in the face of such. If not for those, the atrocities themselves are long in the past, and the apologies would not even be needed.

As to the charity, I am prone to it, but if the apology brings with it no admission of institutional guilt (error), then the charity need not extend to the institution either, or so it would seem.