A Comment Received on Facebook

A couple of days ago I shared this picture & comment on FB.

 

"The French Revolution caused more deaths in one month in the name of atheism than the Inquisition in the name of God during the entire medieval period and throughout Europe"

Pierre Chaunu, historian and protestant (alas).

What follows are some comments I received from a friend on Facebook:

You already know this but I need a rant. It was atheism and the ironically named "Enlightenment", which put France on a path from which it has never recovered. People don't get that the punishments associated with the Inquisition were part of the civic government's way of rooting out threats to Christendom, which Protestantism proved itself to be, throughout Europe.

Queen Mary is the only Tudor with a bad rep but Henry and Elizabeth racked up a much heftier tally of dead Catholics, particularly priests. (See my post 'Bad Queen Bess' for a comparison ~ JW.) To be an ordained Catholic priest was deemed treason for which the torture and execution were horrendous.

Isabel of Spain has also been tarred and feathered, but having apostates and false converts open the gates of Christian cities to invading Muslims was a problem that needed solving.

Again not the numbers racked up by the Muslims and that doesn't even factor in castrated Christian slaves and forced conversions and rapes of Christian women. Or, the fact that Muslim nations today rest on the bones of Christian martyrs, especially along the Mediterranean, in Northern Africa, and the Levant. Our pastor was born in Malta. He cringes every time he hears Islam referred to as the religion of peace. He told me you can burst that balloon by viewing the height and thickness of the walls around Malta. And, the horrors of the Middle Ages still being perpetrated on Christians and Jews.

The target for slander is always painted on the backs of Catholics. Violence is and never was a Church sanctioned method of conversion and expansion, except in the lore of Her enemies.

After asking if I could blog her comment and asking if she wanted attribution, I received this:

No attribution needed. The truth is out there if Catholics would get out of Downton Abbey and read Catholic authors. We especially need to get our kids out of public schools and Catholic schools that use market-driven history AND science textbooks.

There is a trilogy of historical fiction written by Robert Hugh Benson that turns history on its Protestant ear. For credibility that there is a lot of history in these books, he was an Anglican, the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, who converted and became a Catholic priest.

The biography, Isabel of Spain, the Catholic Queen by Warren H Carroll debunks "common knowledge" of Isabel and the Muslim and Inquisition propaganda. As well as hokum about Columbus and the enslavement of Native populations in the New World. Elizabeth I, pfft! Isabel could out rule her while giving childbirth.

Some day, people need to look at the stats regarding Protestant executions of other Protestants as well as Catholics. If I remember correctly, they far exceed the numbers thrown around about Catholic pesecutions.

There is an updated version of Triumph: the Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church; a 2,000-Year History, by H.W. Crocker, III. Our pastor read it in seminary and said it tells the unvarnished truth, which is still vastly different from the world's propaganda. He wants to borrow it to read the updated years.

I think it should be required reading in Catholic high schools, colleges and the people in the pews. This is the info I learned in Catholic grade school back in the days when our texts were written by Catholics and published by Catholic publishers. The laity is largely illiterate of history and even the last 30 years of information overload is driven by folks with animus toward the Church. It irks me to no end that we have become so assimilated and weak-kneed in a country whose founding documents are based on Catholic teachings of natural moral law and God's objective commandments. Given our demographics, abortion should never have become a thing. But JFK said, as a bishop coached him, I wouldn't but... I would rather not had a Catholic political class and driven the culture from a base of faith than end up where we are.

Sorry, this was a long rambling answer to a short question.

After I sent her the link to my post 'Bad Bess', she responded:

[G]reat summation! The statistics, though, don't take into consideration the countless deaths of those dispossessed from livelihoods, refuges for elderly and orphans, and medical care provided by the Church, when Henry took over the monasteries and abbeys. His people suffered starvation, privation, and abandonment at the hands of their sovereign. Neither the Protestant religionists nor the new occupants filled that gap.

My English, Quaker great-grandmother used to say the world would have been spared a lot of grief if God had only taken hold of that island and shaken it like a dusty rug.