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Thank you for your reply. I just finished reading Peter de Rosa's Vicars of Christ. De Rosa is a catholic and does not criticize the popes. I am convinced that anyone of the catholic faith who read the history of the popes, their Bulls and decrees to murder millions of people for believing in the scripture above the pope would be horrified. Their quest for absolute power over people and kings was insatiable. They murdered, by fire, 3 year old children, infants, women, children, men after the Inquisitors found them guilty of heresy. They defined heresy as believing differently than they believed. The torture was ordered by the popes and the original Inquisitors were Domincans who swore allegiance to Pope Gregory IX. The Jesuits came in later to become Inquisitors. It is said by Lea, de Rosa and other historians that the killing at the direct order of the popes dwarfed any number of murders by Stalin, Mao, Hitler, over the 600 years+ that it was prosecuted. And never so much as an apology for the popes ordering their deaths. It is true that John Paul II apologized for some deaths during the Inquisition carried out by some catholics, but never the popes. The sheer magnitude of the killing is unimaginable.

How anyone can lay claim that they are vicars of Christ and/or their followers defies logic. To say they follow the decrees of infallible popes on morals and faith.....to order these murders......and say they are followers of the One who said, 'Do good to those who despitefully use you", or 'Turn the other cheek", or "If someone takes your coat, give him your cloak also",........is obscene.

You might be interested in a movie I saw back in the 70s, put out by Bob Jones University, called Flame in the Wind, set during the Spanish Inquisition. It was anything but pretty. The description being, would people choose a system that offered safety, protection and respectability, or Jesus Christ, who offers salvation from sin, and possible torture and death. A stark choice indeed, but a choice made by many. Now, I ask you, would people willingly be burned at the stake for a lie? I don’t believe that for a second. They went to their deaths, knowing they had the truth. Suppose?