The Catholic Church is a bad thing

Firstly, the Children's Crusade was made of the children's own accord, not with the approval of the Church. The Church sent priests to bless them, to give them courage and grace of God, but they were not "suited up and taken to the middle east." Stephen (the leader of the Children's Crusade) rallied followers on his own. http://www.historyguide.org... The Crusades were in response to an actual Muslim threat, and they were trying to defend hundreds of thousands of Christians and other citizens who faced danger. http://history-world.org... Jews and Christians lived in peace before the Moorish invasion, the Jews then opened the invasion to Muslims and betrayed the Christians. The Inquisition was not inherently evil, as the Jews essentially sided with the Muslims in the Moorish Invasion. Initially, after Spain was reconquered, Jews were given the chance to leave with their property. In most cases in history, they would have been executed immediately. As for the methods used during the Inquisition, in 350 years, any from 3,000-5,000 were executed. This number is far lower than many believe. As for the use of torture, it was used very infrequently and only in extreme cases. http://www.strangenotions.com... http://www.sephardicstudies.org... As for Galileo, it's only a myth that he was tortured. He met with the Pope to discuss his ideas, and the Pope made an agreement that he could talk about them, just not declare them to be fact. Galileo had inconclusive evidence and his belief in the heliocentric solar system was only a theory. The Church wanted Galileo to refrain from proclaiming his theory as truth until he had more conclusive evidence to support his theory. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu... https://en.wikipedia.org... While there were of course Catholics who owned slaves, so did Jews, and Muslims, and all other religions during the time of the slave trade. You cannot condemn only the Catholic Church for a practice used by any religion. As for the burning of Protestants, this was a time of conflict between all Protestants and Catholics. The Protestants also engaged in acts of hunting down Catholics as well as sacking and destroying some of the most beautiful of the time that was held in Churches. The English Persecution of Catholics is one example. World History Patterns Ch. 17 I don't know what you mean when you say "injustice of women", however, the Gospel of Luke helped to advance Women's Rights as it shows the Birth of Jesus from Mary's perspective and emphasizes them as just as valuable as men. Pope Pius XII actively worked against the Nazis, such as employing democracy to save victims, and urging the Church to aid all victims and saved another hundreds of thousands of lives. As well as keeping contact with the German Resistance to give information to the Allied Powers and publicly speaking against anti-semetism. As before, you cannot accuse the Catholic Church with intolerance against ethnic groups without also accusing Muslims and Jews, however, Catholics have a far more diverse range of ethnic adherents than both Islam and Judaism. Aboriginal children did experience abuse, however it was only sexual in the most extreme cases, and the Pope himself condemned the members who did this. These situations were not worldwide, they were centralized in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org... https://www.gci.org... The Church was not active in Mussolini's rise to power, however Mussolini did try to work with the Church in order to gain validation. The Church never advocated for Mussolini or act for his rise to power in Italy, but if they had, Mussolini would have attacked the Pope and destroyed the head power of the Church. As for Hitler's rise to power, I already made my point about Pope Pius XII. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk... I would like to say first, the idea of Limbo was never one of doctrine or dogma, it was speculation as to where souls who had never had the chance to choose God, or who had never been washed of Original Sin would go. It was never said for certain that limbo was a place. As for infallibility, the Church has never said it had perfect knowledge of events. The idea of the Pope's infallibility is only in very specific cases on the subject of faith and morals. So the Church does not say it is outright infallible and never stated the concept of Limbo as dogma. http://www.britannica.com... http://www.cuf.org... As for the Rwandan Genocide, how is it that the Church can be blamed for this? They never, for any reason, approved of this kind of horrific murder. The Yugoslavia Holocaust was essentially an expansion of the German Holocaust, so I must again reference Pius XII action against such an event. http://www.ushmm.org... I looked at Pope Benedict's (Ratzinger's) position on condoms, and he was saying condoms were not a solution to the problem of AIDS, not that they were worse. As for the opposition of contraception in general, contraception is essentially preventing the life of a human being. Contraception inherently disgraces human dignity by keeping such beautiful life from being created. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com... I want to make a point, you and I both agree that any form of abuse against children is detestable, yet so does the Church. I want to make a point that it is very difficult to find evidence to support claims like these, and in an institution as large as the Catholic Church, it becomes difficult to tell what is real and what is simply media propaganda. I just want to make the point that the Church often comes under unwarranted attacks by the media, this makes it very difficult to actually be able to find real instances of abuse and where people are simply stirring up trouble. Sorry if my argument is a little long to read, I was trying to clarify a few points, which makes it seem more than a little wordy. I appreciate the chance to voice my argument and eagerly await your rebuttals.