Why? Because as people sinful Protestants are no different than sinful Catholics. You know, the priests who take celibacy vows and have sex with any and eveything. The Inquisition and murder of hundreds of thousands of people in the name of Christ. Or just wanting a bible in their own native tongue, maybe getting a chance to read it. Propping up the nazis as the national church.
We all can point to problems in each others’ religious histories. To say that invalidates one branch of Christendom, it must invalidate all then.
Yes we can. That's why I make it a point not to do that--it leads nowhere. And there are plenty of REAL scandals enough in the Catholic Church that we don't have to go inventing new ones. To wit:
You know, the priests who take celibacy vows and have sex with any and eveything.
This is an honest to goodness scandal.
The Inquisition and murder of hundreds of thousands of people in the name of Christ.
See now here we get into trouble. Where you are getting "hundreds of thousands"? The most accurate figures I've seen on the Inquisition have been in the low thousands or tens of thousands--and that was over some 500 years. Maybe you are lumping in the Crusades as well?
Or just wanting a bible in their own native tongue, maybe getting a chance to read it.
Again, here's a problem. The Vulgate *was* a native tongue Bible when Latin was the language of the Empire. The Church blessed the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius who translated the Bible and the liturgy into Slavonic. And there were vernacular translations of the Bible in practically every European country by the 1400s--many of them produced by the Universities (which were Church sponsored). The Church never had a problem with the vernacular per se. It had a problem with the vernacular being used as a vehicle for heresy.
Propping up the nazis as the national church.
Again....what??? Pope Pius XII was regarded by the Nazis as a Public Enemy. They routinely excoriated him. The Church was very anti-Nazi. There was absolutely no "propping up", and in fact, Pius XI wrote a stinging encyclical in German condemning some of the errors of Naziism.
See what I'm saying here? The "facts" which many people have about the Church are often completely exaggerated or even a tissue of lies made of whole cloth. I say again, there are PLENTY of honest, historically valid Catholic scandals to pick on without having to resort to these. Bring up Honorius. Bring up the Papal States. Bring up simony.