Again, I don't quite get the aptness of your comments to the actual discussion into which they were inserted. I certainly find the question a bit opaque, but even the last paragraph is a bit odd. Yes, there are circumstances when the Catholic faith considers the embrace of suffering to have value, as when one is contrite and embraces it as penance, or when one is offering one's own suffering up for the aid of another. That does not mean that it encourages the wanton infliction of suffering, nor does it mean approval of all human faults, especially when rationalized through religion.
Now, the business about religious persecution is dicey, of course, but it is also a cultural relic. It was a way of dealing with non- conformity in the Christian community when such was viewed as seditious. As long as there was renunciation (which could, after all, be insincere) there was often leniency, especially for those not leaders. In any case, I do not believe your numbers, and have no idea how one would, for example, get reliable numbers for the results of the conflict with the Arians or the Albigensians, for that matter.
Mostly, the tract you link strikes me as an old fashioned anti- Catholic diatribe of dubious scholarship, only a little better than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion....... |
