ebrown_p wrote:Shame Petros,
Not only is your rant hateful, it is factually wrong.
1) Christianity was not primarily spread peacefully. Starting with the rule of Constantine, Christians killed thousands, including my ancestors (Germans) and many of my family (Latin Americans).
2) Muslims and Jews lived pretty much peaceably together before the beginning of the 20th century. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was much better to be Jewish in a Muslim community, than a Christian one. Ever heard of the Pogroms?
3) Hitler arose from Germany, a Christian country. Christian anti-semitism was present in Germany for generations before Hitler... Starting at least with Martin Luther.
4) There are very few historians-- even Christian ones, who support your view of the Crusades. You are quite extreme indeed.
5) The slave trade was prevalant in Christian countries (e.g. the United States).
6) 7) 8) 9) 10) and 11) I don't have time to go on.
I despise people who fan religious and ethnic hatred with lies.
No, rather, shame on you! It is hateful for one to ignore the actual recorded facts and a careful reading of their details, just to hold onto false notions.
1)3)For three centuries before Constantine, Martyrs gave their own blood unviolently and all places that Constantine ruled had already swelled great Christian Communities before his birth! How can you ignore that? All of these ante-Nicene Christian Communities were victims of heathen murder from the first, yet had never retaliated, as can be gleaned both from Ecclesiastical Records and from the Edicts and other writings of the Roman persecutors of the Church.
Every Catholic knows that it is mortally dangerous to be without the Sacrament of Communion, Which can only be celebrated with a Priest present. Those Conquestadors that liberated Mexico's larger number of peoples from human sacrifice by one oppressive tribe let the greater number of the Aztecs live on to enjoy a better life with them. The Conquestadors that struck the Incas were neither half as good-hearted, nor at all like-minded - they were not Catholics, but merely Spanish! It is racist to call them Catholics for their ethnicity! They purposely left "Catholic" Spain without bringing a single Priest with them - that is to every Catholic the most appalling proof of their not acting as Catholics, right along with their murders. When Catholic families came (not failing to bring Priests, I might add), these were appalled at the atrocities of the Conquestadors, and sent back to Spain for government-supported Ecclesiastical aid for the Incas' people.
Many native tribes were already committing genocide on one another when Europeans stepped in and had to either pick sides, or chance making a wrong alliance. Christians have often stepped into the middle of situations that either potentially or actively demanded a battle plan.
Those in Latin American places today that are generally violent are also apt to include Priests in their violence, while still Catholic people in those places are some of the warmest, most hospitable people anywhere, hoping for a change in the society they too are oppressed by.
Nazis and potential Nazis were all as a group excommunicated early on, where there was any suspicion or worry of a Catholic becoming one. It was Germanic "knights" considered unruly to practicing Catholics that did the Jew-killings in Europe, and killed Christians in neighboring kingdoms, and sacked Constantinople, etc. Out of these came the Lutheran mindset, which turned against Jews most ferociously, and led up to Naziism. Most Nazis came not out of Catholic backgrounds but protestant ones, and Hitler sought to kill not only Jews but Catholics, many of whom died saving Jews (though some protestants did too) - and these are Germanic heroes.
The Germans came into Europe as torturing barbarians killing and raping Catholics, as Arians (antitrinitarians). When they later halted these actions, they always showed a contrary streak nationally, and often still propagate lies found not in documentary evidence, but in the vanity of the moment in their hearts. (I am part German - one quarter, and there is North American native blood in my family). I am not against being German, but against the conspiracy of a certain chain of nations, that displaces easily locatable fact with nonsense fiction where it suits their culture's cause.
In Japan, what Christian ever was violent? The Church was nearly killed off because the Gospel the Jesuits preached taught nothing of self-defense, but only selfless kindness.
In Canada, the first (and true generation of the Jesuits were wronged (with the worst tortures), but wronged none back. It was these peaceful true Catholics that enemies disbanded as an Order.
2)Pogroms were in deed bad enough, but again, muslims outdid those pogroms long before. The countries exercising these were either traumatized nations in which Spaniards copied to some extent the things they endured 700 years under an islamic yoke, acting out aggression in those that were bitter, who wrongly took it out on Jews (and on Catholic Saints, as far as Inquisitions go - none of the Inquisitors are considered Saints); or the guilty countries held on to a behavior they displayed since their entry of Europe, becoming split off from the Catholic Unity. I have much more to say about the pogroms when I have more than a few minutes before bed.
4)There are very few modern historians that are unapologetic about the facts, and few that refer to many documents of the times referred to, rather than to modern monograms that provide them with a ready patch-work.
5)Even from the beginning, there was a steady effort made to end human slavery, as well as every other kind of evil. For example, if Paul had not really thought that Onesimos should be set free, he wouldn't have tried to impress it on Philemon's mind. The Church has recorded that Onesimos was in deed liberated, and became a Bishop in the Church. Ransom was always a big deal in the Church's history.
Even the heretical literature of countries wherein islam now oppresses women (who are not free there as they might be in America), show that the Gospel showed women they didn't have to sleep any further with one they were not meant to be married to. Such literature could never grow in Syria today.
Every free nation has a Christian effort behind it. Every free nation that abuses its freedom (with pornography, etc.) does so as also turning its back on its benefactor.
