Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   Simplistic Judgement Date:   3/9/2020 12:28:10 PM (updated 3/9/2020 12:50:10 PM)

Maj:  The problem with simplistic is that it can send the wrong message.  Some simplistic responses to your points and I apologize if I took yours as an anti-Catholic post.  These are many of the same falsehoods spread by anti-Catholics of all stripes.  It does wear thin on me.  MM

Sir, you are correct, we Christians have a violent history. EXACTLY as do the Muslims, we extrapolated from the Bible that we had duty and permission from God to punish the Muslims… hence, the Crusades. At that time the keeper of the Bible was the Catholic Church. Few others could read… not even kings! The position of Pope could be bought by a rich family (e.g. the Medici). There were three of those violent incursions.

The historical reality is that the Crusades (there were many of them) were defensive in nature in response to Islamic conquests and not some "violent incursion".  That view totally ignores the historical fact that prior to the Crusades there were seven centers of Christianity...after them there was one, which was Rome.  The rest were overrun by Muslims.  The reality is that the Crusades were a losing proposition but they did preserve Christian Europe but lost all the rest of the Christian world.  The Catholic Church was more than the keeper of the Bible, it created the canon of the Bible and maintains it to this day.  You are right though that in the middle ages the Church and European governments were intertwined and that was something that needed to and did change.  I would point out that the largest Protestant break from the Catholic Church was actually implemented by a King (so he could get a divorce) and to this day the head of the Anglican Church is the King or Queen of England.  Nowhere in the modern world today is the Catholic Church as enmeshed with government as we see today in England.

Later a Pope decided that the very professional and organized purveyors of the crusade expeditions, Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller were to be hunted to ground and dispensed with (read the history of the Masonic Lodge).

This is absolutely false history.  The Templars were tortured by the government of France to admit to things that were false, retracted their confessions and then under threat of death retracted their retraction.  The Pope (Clement) had nothing to do with hunting them down although he did decide given the persecution by the French government to do what the Islamic invaders could not, disband the Knights.  The Knights were a threat to the government of France and had to be attacked and it was accomplished in a most despicable manner.  This had nothing to do with the Pope.

What about the Inquisitions? This pogrom easily qualifies as stomach churning violence.

If you read the history of the many Inquisitions, these were actually instigated by governments and not the Church and were in no way a pogrom like the Holocaust.  While the Church played a role, and it was not a pleasant one, the reality is that this intertwining of Church and State created the false impression that the inquisitions were Church inspired because the goverment used heresy as a crime with which to attack their real or perceived enemies.  In fact, many victims of the Inquisition requested examination by the Church as opposed to the government because of the hope for some basic fairness. I would recommend you watch a BBC/A&E special from 1994 called The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition.  It exposes the lies told about the reason and nature of the Inquisitions.

With the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the subsequent publication (resurrection) of the Bible, the masses could decide for themselves what Christ believed and promoted. At that point, Christians began to evolve. The evolution of Christian thought and Masonic doctrine brought about the turning of (most) western cultures toward empathy.

This is where your historical understanding goes far off the rails.  The publication of the Bible had nothing to do with the Protestant Reformation. It had to do with the invention of the printing press in the late 1400s and its much greater availablity in the 1600-1700's.  Stories about the Bible being chained in the Catholic Church to prevent people from reading it are lies.  At that time (prior to the wide availability of the printing press) the only way to reproduce the Bible was by hand which is why they were not only rare but chained up to prevent them from being taken.  They were very valuable and it took a very long time to create even one copy.  Even more so, the vast majority of people could not read so owning a bible would have been worthless anyway.  As people learned to read (many millions taught in Catholic schools I might add) then having a bible available in homes actually made sense.  When the printing press became more common the Catholic Church was actively involved in the publication of the Bible, the entire one, including the Apocrypha which Luther removed along with his other convenient edits to support his own particular interpretations.

Trust me, Protestants were no less violent than Catholics in pretty much every century.  The history of violence against Catholics in England beginning with the beheading of St. Thomas More and so on and the history of violence against Protestants by Mary Queen of Scots are both stains on Christianity....but once again it was more about worldly power than it was about faith and it was equal opportunity.  There are many other examples of violence by Protestants all the way to America.  So no, it wasn't the violent Catholic Church being shown the way by peace loving Prostestants.  They were peas in a pod and both evolved away from violence when they separated themselves from governments and the never-ending quest for power by politicians.

Finally, the Masons are not Christian, they are pagan and have embraced secular humanism and many people believe are anti-Christian.  They are most certainly anti-Catholic.  While they do seem to believe in the enlightenment they have  rejected the role of faith in our secular lives.  Regardless, their role in turning western cultures toward empathy is wildly overstated and pales in comparison to Christianity (Protestant and Catholic).