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Personally, if we were all force to be nude all the time, hopefully in comfort, there would be no wars. So perhaps clothing causes wars. Ops, original sin, clothes, am I my brother's keeper; Abel is dead his blood cries out from the earth, long life, to you and everyone.

It was established in 1184 in southern France as a response to the Catharist heresy, the Albigenses. This was known as the Medieval Inquisition, and it phased out as Catharism disappeared.

The Cathars then were as dangerous as terrorists today, and brought fear, cruelty, bloodshed and war wherever they had sufficient numbers. In southern France it took the full armed power of the King of France to overcome them. The Inquisition (William G. Most).

In the early Middle Ages investigation of heresy was a duty of the local bishops, now the Vatican takes responsibility..

In his bull Excommunicamus, Pope Gregory IX formally instituted the Inquisition in 1231 as a means of repressing heresy, particularly that of the Albigenses. The Inquisition was first established in Germany, extended to Spain in 1232, and became a general institution by 1233.

Heretics came to be regarded as enemies of society at the time of the Inquisition... they were considered by everybody worse than criminals, because criminals killed the body of others, but heretics killed their own soul and the souls of others.

The crime of heresy was defined as a deliberate denial of an article of truth of the Catholic faith, and a public and obstinate persistence in that alleged error. At this time, there was a sense of Christian unity among townspeople and rulers alike, and most of them agreed with the Church that heretics seemed to threaten society itself.

The Inquisitors did not wait for complaints, but sought out persons accused of heresy. Although the Inquisition was created to combat the heretical Cathari and Waldenses, later extended its activity to include witches, diviners, blasphemers, and other sacrilegious persons.

The main purposes of the inquiries of the Medieval Inquisition were to save the souls of heretics and those close to them, and to protect the unity of the Church... there were "inquisitors of heretical depravity," individuals assigned by the pope to inquire into heresy in specific areas.
When an inquisitor arrived, a month of grace was allowed to all who wished to confess to heresy and to recant; these were given a light penance, which was intended to confirm their faith. After the period of grace, persons accused of heresy who had not abjured were brought to trial.
The defendants were not given the names of their accusers, but they could name their enemies and thus nullify any testimony by these persons. After 1254 the accused had no right to counsel, but those found guilty could appeal to the pope. The trials were conducted secretly in the presence of a representative of the bishop and of a stipulated number of local laymen.
The Inquisitor had, however, to adhere to the established rules of canonical procedure and pronounce the customary penalties.
Torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth. It was not of ecclesiastical origin, and was long prohibited in the ecclesiastical courts. Nor was it originally an important factor in the inquisitional procedure, being unauthorized until twenty years after the Inquisition had begun. It was first authorized by Innocent IV in 1252. The Inquisition used the same methods of punishment of the civil courts at that time.
So, torture was sometimes used as it was in any court in Europe at the time, and using the same methods but mitigated in the Inquisition. Many authorities cite that use of torture was infrequent and probably much less than in civil courts.
The hardest penalties were imprisonment in its various degrees, exclusion from the communion of the Church, and the usually consequent surrender to the civil power... this civil power was the one which had the authority to punish with death sentence, and the usual way at that time is all Europe was by burning the person in a public place.

Separate from the Medieval Inquisition was the famed Spanish Inquisition.

It is the most notorious, for three reasons:

1- It was more cruel precisely because it was administered by the secular government.
2- It was concerned, in large part, with the conversos. These were Jews who had converted either under duress or out of social convenience, and were suspected of secretly practicing the Jewish faith.
3- It has been the main target of Protestant and secular opponents of Catholicism who have fabricated — through pamphlets, “histories,” plays, and even paintings — cruelties and excesses far beyond what actually occurred.
Many Protestants use the Inquisition as a handy stick to beat the Catholic Church, but they tend to forget the Protestant Inquisition
How it started:

The Turks in 1480 attacked the south Italian city of Otranto. 12,000 people were killed, the rest made slaves. The Turks killed every cleric in the city and sawed the archbishop in two. So Queen Isabel sent a fleet to Italy. In September of 1480, when it was clear the Turks might do the same to any coastal city, King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella established the Inquisition. It dealt with the special problem of those who pretended to become Christians, but were not really converted, and might open the gates of the city to the Turks.

During this period the West was in danger of following the fate of Constantinople and falling under the sword of Islam. Indeed Protestant and Catholic princes joined forces against the threat and at one point the Turkish armies were at the gates of Vienna.

Otherwise, the modern nations of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, 16 miles away from Spain, formed part of a vast imperial system established by the Muslim Turks, a system as powerful and menacing to western Europe as the Soviet bloc was conceived to be in our day.

It was under this threat that the Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 if it should be needed. The kings of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, instituted it two years later. The specific threat that the Inquisition faced was the "conversos." Spain had been freed form Islamic control for only a few generations, after 800 years of oppression... and not completely, because Islam still ruled in Granada up to 1492.

The Spanish Inquisition was independent of the Medieval Inquisition. It was established by Ferdinand and Isabella with the reluctant approval of Sixtus IV. It was entirely controlled by the Spanish kings, and the pope's only hold over it was in naming the inquisitor general chosen by the kings. The popes were never reconciled to the institution, which they regarded as usurping a church prerogative.

The Spanish Inquisition had no authority over practicing Muslims and Jews, only over professed Christians suspected of being fakes and a threat to the country... it remained operative in Spain into the nineteenth century. Originally called into being against secret Islam and secret Judaism, it served also to repel Protestantism in the sixteenth century, but was unable to expel French Rationalism and immorality of the eighteenth... it also took some action against witchcraft though it was very limited compared with the 30,000 witches burned in England and the 100,000 in Germany.

It was a state institution used to identify conversos, mainly Muslims (Moors, Moros), and Jews (Marranos), who falsely "converted" to Christianity and secretly practiced their former religion. Its job was also, and more importantly, to clear the good name of many people who were falsely accused.

Jews and Moors Expelled from Spain in 1492:
After Granada and the last remnant of Spanish Islam fell to the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, policy-makers had to decide how to treat the Moors and the relatively small but influential Jewish community which had flourished in Spain. Fearful of Muslim and Jewish sympathizers in their midst, offered no compromise: Moors and Jews were expelled from Spain by the Government in 1492... and it was precisely the inability of the inquisitorial courts to check Jewish and Moors influence on the conversos that served as a decisive argument for the Monarchs in banishing Moors and Jews from Spain... a total of about 160,000 Jews were deported, including many who were not guilty of any offenses.
A main modern objection about the Spanish Inquisition is that it brought about "a reign of terror throughout Europe" which was responsible for the impoverishment, exile, and death of countless Jews, Muslims, and "heretical" Christians. Jews were singled out for persecution because of their identity as Jews... however, the Spanish Inquisition exercised its authority only in Spanish Dominions, not throughout Europe, and had no authority over practicing Muslims and Jews, only over professed Christians suspected of being fakes. http://www.geocities.com/iberianinquisition

The Jews and the Popes:
Properly to understand this question, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that Spain was at war for more than a half dozen centuries against the Mohammedans with whom the Jews were lined up against the Spaniards. It was a battle of the Cross against the Crescent. This is vouched for by Graetz's "History of the Jews," the "Jewish Encyclopedia," the
"Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge," "Vallentine's Jewish Encyclopedia," and other authorities of foremost standing in Jewry.
To understand this question, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that the popes were the protectors of the Jews, and not their enemies. Rome was a haven of refuge for the persecuted Jews when the Eternal City was ruled by the popes, to which many of the Jews driven out of Spain migrated. You need not take my word regarding the friendliness of the popes, as it is confirmed by Dr. Cecil Roth of London, Jewry's leading present-day historian on the middle ages. He said a few years ago, while addressing the Zionist Forum in Buffalo, N.Y.:
"Only in Rome has the colony of Jews continued its existence since before the beginning of the Christian era, because of all the dynasties of Europe, the Papacy not only refused to persecute the Jews of Rome and Italy, but throughout the ages popes were protectors of the Jews.
"Some Jews have the feeling that the Papacy has a policy of persecuting Jews. But you must remember that English history is definitely anti-Catholic' and your views of Catholicism may have been colored by English history. We Jews who have suffered so much from prejudices, should rid our minds of prejudices and learn the facts. The truth is that the popes and the Catholic Church from the earliest days of the Church were never responsible for physical persecution of Jews and only Rome, among the capitals of the world, is free from having been a place of Jewish tragedy. For this we Jews must have gratitude" (Feb. 25th, 1927).

The Catholic Church:

As far as the abuses of the Spanish Inquisition are concerned, the Catholic Church is not responsible for them. Those abuses were committed, with a few exceptions, by the civil power, and they were condemned by Popes Leo X, Paul III, Paul IV, and Sixtus IV who reigned during that period of history.

The extreme penalties during the days of the Spanish inquisition were imposed by the state, as heresy was considered to be a crime in those days, and abuses took place on the part of the inquisitors. The Catholic Church, while divinely protected from error in defining matters of faith and morals, does not claim to be immune from acts of abuse of power on the part of some of her children, even in high places. Such an abuse on the part of officials of the Church caused Pope Leo X to excommunicate the Catholic tribunal at Toledo, and to have the witnesses who appeared before its inquisitorial trial arrested for perjury. This was during Spanish Inquisition days. But such an abuse of power was rare, as the spirit of charity dominated those historic inquiries regarding heresy. Persons called before the inquisitors who repented were released after
promising to mend their ways and to do the penances enjoined, such as fasting, wearing a special penitential garb for a time, and imprisonment, which very often was in the houses of the penitents themselves. Torturing and burning were no part of the solemn religious ceremony called the Auto-da-Fe, where the penitents abjured their errors and made public recantation, by making an Act of Faith. Truth about the Spanish Inquisition

It is necessary to bear in mind the fact that extreme punishments meted out during the middle ages, such as burning at the stake, which you and I abhor, were common throughout the world at that time. They did not originate during the middle ages, having been the law before the Christian era. Such punishment did not shock the people then any more than the people of our country are shocked at the present time by electrocution... and at those times "heresy" was considered a worse crime than "murder", because murder kills the body, but heresy kills the soul for an eternity and it is a severe threat to kill the soul of the neighbors...

However, the inquiries became a kind of religious intolerance and even persecution, with abuses and atrocities against the self proclaimed Catholics who were actually heretics or fake Catholics... but we have to put ourselves in those times: Spain was not alone in inflicting religious persecution at that time. Elizabeth I burned heretics, as did her successor James I, as did virtually every Protestant government in Europe until the middle of the seventeenth century, so, it was something not unusual at those times, but a real deplorable stain on Christianity as a whole.

The Roman Inquisition was a system of tribunals developed by the Holy See during the second half of the 16th century, responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of a wide array of crimes related to heresy, including sorcery, blasphemy, and witchcraft, as well for censorship of printed literature. The tribunals covered most of the Italian peninsula and also existed in isolated pockets of papal jurisdiction in other parts of Europe, including Avignon, in France. The Congregation of the Holy Office, one of the original 15 congregations of the Roman Curia created by Pope Sixtus V in 1588, presided over the activity of the local tribunals. While the Roman Inquisition was originally designed to combat the spread of Protestantism in Italy, the institution outlived its original purpose, and the system of tribunals lasted until the mid 18th century, when the Italian states began to suppress the local inquisitions, effectively eliminating the power of the church to prosecute heretical crimes.

The pope appointed one cardinal to preside over the meetings. There were usually ten other cardinals who were members of the Congregation, as well as a prelate and two assistants all chosen from the Dominican Order. The Holy Office also had an international group of consultants, experienced scholars of theology and canon law, who advised it on specific questions. In 1616 these consultants gave their assessment of the propositions that the Sun is immobile and at the center of the universe and that the Earth moves around it, judging both to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy," and the first to be "formally heretical" and the second "at least erroneous in faith" in theology. This assessment led to Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium to be placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, until revised and Galileo Galilei to be admonished about his Copernicanism. It was this same body in 1633 that tried Galileo, condemned him for a "grave suspicion of heresy", and banned all his works.

Among the subjects of this Inquisition were Francesco Patrizi, Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Girolamo Cardano, Cesare Cremonini, and Galileo Galilei. Of these, only Bruno was executed; Galileo died under house arrest, and Campanella was imprisoned for twenty-seven years. The miller Menocchio was also put to the stake on the orders of Pope Clement VIII in 1599.

Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and I Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Psalm 104:5 says, "[the Lord] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "the sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises."

Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the sun does rise and set. In fact, it is the earth's rotation which gives the impression of the sun in motion across the sky.

Many Protestants use the Inquisition as a handy stick to beat the Catholic Church, but they should not forget that from 1184 to 1517, the birth of the Reformation, both Catholics and Protestants were members of the same Church... there were not Protestants at that time!... and they also tend to forget The Protestant Inquisition: "Reformation" Intolerance and Persecution.

Here are some statements and facts: from The Inquisition and the Church

Calvin sought to persecute heretics (particularly Roman Catholics) so as to keep Protestant believers in the lands divided by the Reformation faithful to his new teachings. He viciously persecuted the Spaniard, Michael Servetus, having him burnt alive on October 27, 1553. As early as 1545, Calvin had written, "If he [Servetus] comes to Geneva, I will never allow him to depart alive." He kept his promise.

Martin Luther also fanned the flames of intolerance, "Whoever teaches otherwise than I teach, condemns God, and must remain a child of hell."

King Henry VIII of England, who took upon himself the role of grand royal inquisitor, took the lives of some 72,000 Catholics, many cruelly tortured an the grand total of persons killed by the Inquisition in 331 years were an estimated 3,000 to 5,000.

Queen Elizabeth I, proved herself the former's daughter by putting to death more people in one year than the Inquisition had done in 331 years!

Theodore of Beza wrote: "What crime can be greater or more heinous than heresy, which sets at nought the word of God and all ecclesiastic discipline? Christian magistrates, do your duty to God [speaking in Calvin's Geneva of 1554], who has put the sword into your hands for the honor of His majesty; strike valiantly these monsters in the guise of men." He went on to characterize those who demanded freedom of conscience "worse than the tyranny of the pope. It is better to have a tyrant, no matter how cruel he may be, than to let everyone do as he pleases."

Queen Elizabeth I, proved herself the former's daughter by putting to death more people in one year than the Inquisition had done in 331 years!

The Reformation for starters.

From a purely secular standpoint, the merits of the Reformation in "solving" any of Europe's social problems is debatable. If I were still a secularist, I think I would still believe that the Reformation was more bad than good. In many ways, the medieval Papacy served as an early United Nations, keeping peace between the various nations of Christendom. After Luther et al, there was the Thirty Years' War, the great feud between Spain and England, and many other wars caused or defined largely by sectarian differences.

Posted by A Fortiori

Next up, the inquisition and various other acts of violence and hate fueled by religion.

The inquisitions. For this one, my source will be a christian based web site, plus one wikipedia, but I may followup with material from differing sites too.

The hardest penalties were imprisonment in its various degrees, exclusion from the communion of the Church, and the usually consequent surrender to the civil power... this civil power was the one which had the authority to punish with death sentence, and the usual way at that time is all Europe was by burning the person in a public place.

1- It was more cruel precisely because it was administered by the secular government.

It was entirely controlled by the Spanish kings, and the pope's only hold over it was in naming the inquisitor general chosen by the kings. The popes were never reconciled to the institution, which they regarded as usurping a church prerogative.

The truth is that the popes and the Catholic Church from the earliest days of the Church were never responsible for physical persecution of Jews and only Rome, among the capitals of the world, is free from having been a place of Jewish tragedy. For this we Jews must have gratitude" (Feb. 25th, 1927).

As far as the abuses of the Spanish Inquisition are concerned, the Catholic Church is not responsible for them. Those abuses were committed, with a few exceptions, by the civil power, and they were condemned by Popes Leo X, Paul III, Paul IV, and Sixtus IV who reigned during that period of history.

It is necessary to bear in mind the fact that extreme punishments meted out during the middle ages, such as burning at the stake, which you and I abhor, were common throughout the world at that time. They did not originate during the middle ages, having been the law before the Christian era.

King Henry VIII of England, who took upon himself the role of grand royal inquisitor, took the lives of some 72,000 Catholics, many cruelly tortured an the grand total of persons killed by the Inquisition in 331 years were an estimated 3,000 to 5,000.

Queen Elizabeth I, proved herself the former's daughter by putting to death more people in one year than the Inquisition had done in 331 years!

You insipid attempt to blame religion, for all, human invented, wars is, ignoring the fact, that evil persona fide is a religious concept.

The Catholics were not persecuted for their religion but for treason.

By the pope excommunicating Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, he in effect put their lives in danger by assassination through the agency of the catholic believers. Catholic canon law allows for the killing of one who is anathema without penalty.

According to Decreti, pars ii. causa xxiii. quaest v. can. xlvii:

"Those are not to be accounted homicides who, fired with zeal for Mother Church, may have killed excommunicated persons."

This may make it appear that it is still religion at the core but in reality one has to recognize that the Catholic church has long ago gone from providing spiritual leadership to being a political leadership through the misapplication of religion or more aptly the invention of one. Wolves in sheeps clothing as Jacobus relates in his post about the pope being the UN of the dark ages.

I have not posted on this thread for a few days. I was writing a response to a certain poster, and in preparing my repsonse, I was researching "credible sources" on the reasons for torture and murder, and looked at myself, and realised I was disgusted with myself for even preparing such a response. I felt like a rat had shat in my mouth. I feel sick at the comments on this thread. It is poison to me.

Now, I have a strong stomach. I can understand all sorts of people, and have laboured to understand the motives and motivations of serial killers, despots, and many things that are abominable in this society. But this is too much for me. I can no longer participate in a thread that shows such anger, rage and no respect for human life, in attacking others and claiming that others are the source of evil.

The posts on this thread are poison to me. I would hope that I would never see some of the posters on this thread, in real life, ever in my lifetime, or in a million reincarnations.

For this reason, I don't want to post on this thread again.

Translation: you aren't going to offer counter-arguments anymore.

Regardless of your reasoning, you're giving up.

The Order of the Solar Temple also known as Ordre du Temple Solaire (OTS) in French, and the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition or simply as The Solar Temple was a secret society based upon the new age myth of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar (see Origins of the Solar Temple below). According to historians[citation needed], OTS was started by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret in 1984 in Geneva as l'Ordre International Chevaleresque de Tradition Solaire (OICTS) and renamed Ordre du Temple Solaire. It is believed that other members were also involved who have remained unknown to the public.

The Solar Temple is among a number of contemporary groups that perceive themselves as fulfilling the tradition of the Knights Templar

In October 1994 Tony Dutoit's infant son (Emmanuel Dutoit), aged three months, was killed at the group's centre in Morin Heights, Quebec. The baby had been stabbed repeatedly with a wooden stake. It is believed that Di Mambro ordered the murder, because he identified the baby as the Anti-Christ described in the Bible. He believed that the Anti-Christ was born into the order to prevent Di Mambro from succeeding in his spiritual aim.

A few days later, Di Mambro and twelve followers performed a ritual Last Supper. A few days after that, apparent mass suicides and murders were conducted at two villages in Switzerland, and at Morin Heights — 15 inner circle members committed suicide with poison, 30 were killed by bullets or smothering, and 8 others were killed by other causes. Many of the bodies when found were drugged, possibly to prevent the members from objecting. The buildings were then set on fire by timer devices, purportedly as one last symbol of the group's purification.

In western Switzerland, 48 members of a sect died in another apparent mass murder-suicide. Many of the victims were found in a secret underground chapel lined with mirrors and other items of Templar symbolism. The bodies were dressed in the order's ceremonial robes and were in a circle, feet together, heads outward, most with plastic bags tied over their heads; they had each been shot in the head. It is believed that the plastic bags were a symbol of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race after the OTS members moved on to Sirius. It is also believed that these bags were used as part of the OTS rituals, and that members would have voluntarily worn them without being placed under duress. There was also evidence that many of the victims in Switzerland were drugged before they were shot. Other victims were found in three ski chalets; several dead children were lying together. The tragedy was discovered when officers rushed to the sites to fight the fires which had been ignited by remote-control devices. Farewell letters left by the believers stated that they believed they were leaving to escape the "hypocrisies and oppression of this world."

A mayor, a journalist, a civil servant and a sales manager were found among the dead in Switzerland. Records seized by the Quebec police showed that some members had personally donated over $1 million to the group's leader Joseph Di Mambro. There was also another attempted mass suicide of the remaining members which was thwarted in the late 1990s[citation needed]. All the suicide/murders and attempts occurred around the dates of the equinoxes and solstices in some relation to the beliefs of the group.

Michael Tabachnik, an internationally renowned Swiss musician and conductor, was arrested as a leader of the Solar Temple in the late 1990s. He was indicted for "participation in a criminal organization," and murder. He came to trial in Grenoble, France during the spring of 2001 and was acquitted. French prosecutors appealed the verdict and an appellate court ordered a second trial beginning October 24, 2006. He was again cleared less than two months later on December 20.[1]

It is believed that The Solar Temple group continues to exist, with thirty surviving members in Quebec at the St-Anne-de-la-Pérade center, with from 140 to 500 members remaining worldwide.

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India's towns and cities were swept by rioting between Muslims and Hindus on Monday, leaving more than 200 people dead and hundreds more injured a day after militant Hindus destroyed a 16th-century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya.

The strife unleashed by the Hindu militants' attack poses a severe threat to India's constitutional foundations as a secular state. Although predominantly Hindu, the country has tens of millions of Muslims and many other religious minorities. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in religious violence when the country was created from the 1947 partition of British India after attempts to resolve Hindu-Muslim animosity broke down. Rioting involving Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and other groups has taken thousands of lives since.

Lundgren was born in Missouri, U.S. and grew up as a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church). According to his allegations (supported by some of his former neighbors) he was severely abused as a child, particularly by his father. His mother reportedly did not defend him. Lundgren was, by most accounts, a loner when he was in middle and high school. He became an expert hunter when he began to spend time with his father as a teenager. The pair would go on hunting trips, and Lundgren became a gun expert, learning shooting and maintenance techniques.

Lundgren and his family soon abandoned the religious group, and Lundgren began to feel a call to teach the Bible in the way he understood it. He formed his own sect soon after. Membership never exceeded more than twenty.

Lundgren began to offer Bible study services at his home. He sought to convince his congregation that he was God's last prophet. He asked for money from his supporters, and some would give him their life savings, which often were calculated to be thousands of dollars.

Lundgren then proclaimed he had received a call from God to move to Kirtland, Ohio, a small town near Cleveland which is the historic centre of the RLDS. According to Lundgren, he was told by God that he and his supporters would soon witness the second coming of Christ if they moved to Kirtland.

By this time, seven of Lundgren's 12 followers had moved in to the family home. The remaining five were members of the Avery family. Lundgren felt that the Averys were committing a sin by not living in his house. The Avery family father, Dennis, sold his Missouri house in order for his family to move to Ohio. Avery decided to set apart a relatively small amount of money for his family's use, with a bank account. Once again, Lundgren considered this a sin, because he wanted all of his followers' money to be given exclusively to him.

In 1984, Lundgren, his family, and his followers moved to Ohio. In Kirtland, Lundgren received a job as a tour guide at the Kirtland Temple, the first temple of the Latter Day Saints, and now primarily a tourist museum preserved by the RLDS church.
In time, Lundgren convinced his followers that they had to seize the temple, from which he had stolen about $40,000, and to kill anyone who stood in their way. He changed his mind, however, and started telling his followers that they had to kill a family of five instead if they wanted to see God. As punishment for their "disloyalty," he chose the Averys. At some point, he referred to the slaughter of the Avery family as "pruning the vineyard,"[1] most likely a reference to the allegory of the olive tree found in chapter 5 of the Book of Jacob, part of The Book of Mormon.

On April 10, 1989, Lundgren ordered two of his followers to dig a pit in the barn, in anticipation of burying the Averys' bodies there. The anticipation was that there could be five bodies buried in the pit. Lundgren told the rest of his followers, including the Averys, that they would go on a wilderness trip. A week later, on April 17, 1989, he rented a motel room and had dinner with all of his followers. He then called his group's men into his room. He questioned each as to their purpose in the action. All of the men assured Lundgren that they were with him in the sacrifice. Dennis Avery was not invited to the meeting in Lundgren's bedroom.

According to followers' admissions, Lundgren later went inside the barn, with a church member named Ron Luff luring Dennis Avery into a place where the other men awaited by asking him for help with equipment for the camping trip. Luff attempted to render Avery unconscious with a stun gun; the stun gun had a mechanical failure. A stun bullet struck Avery but did not knock him out.

Avery then was gagged and dragged to the place where Lundgren awaited. He was shot twice in the chest, dying almost instantly. To mask the sound of the gun, a chainsaw was left running. Luff then told Avery's wife, Cheryl, that her husband needed help. She was gagged, like her husband, but also had duct tape put over her eyes, and dragged to Lundgren. She was shot three times, twice in the breasts and once in the abdomen. Her body lay next to her husband's. The Averys' 15-year-old daughter, Trina, was shot twice in the head. The first shot missed, but the second killed her instantly. Thirteen year old Becky Avery was shot twice and left to die, while six-year-old Karen Avery was shot in the chest and head. Both died.

The barn where the incident took place was demolished November 13, 2007[2][3]

Human sacrifice was an aspect of historical Aztec culture/religion, although the extent of the practice is debated by scholars. The Spaniards who first met the Aztecs explicitly stated in their writings that human sacrifice was widely practiced in Mesoamerica. For example, Bernal Díaz's The Conquest of New Spain includes eye-witness accounts of the remains of sacrificial victims. In addition, there are a number of second-hand accounts of human sacrifices written by Spanish friars, told to them by native eye-witnesses.

Presently, scholars largely accept that human sacrifice was practiced in the Aztec Empire as well as throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Since the late 1970s, excavations of the offerings in the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacán's Pyramid of the Moon and other archaeological sites have provided physical evidence of human sacrifice among the Mesoamerican peoples.[1][2][3]

The practice of human sacrifice was widespread in the Mesoamerican and in the South American cultures during the Inca Empire.[6][7] Like all other known pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifices. The extant sources describe how the Aztecs sacrificed human victims on each of their eighteen festivities, one festivity for each of their 20-day months.[8] It is unknown if the Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice before they reached the Anahuac valley and started absorbing other cultural influences. The first human sacrifice reported in the sources was the sacrifice and skinning of the daughter of the king Cóxcox of Culhuacán, this story is a part of the legend of the foundation of Tenochtitlan.[9] Several ethnohistorical sources state that under the guidance of Tlacaelel the importance of human sacrifice in Aztec history was given extra emphasis.

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Sacrifice was a common theme in Mesoamerican cultures. In the Aztec "Legend of the Five Suns", all the gods sacrificed themselves so that mankind could live. Some years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, a body of Franciscans confronted the remaining Aztec priesthood and demanded, under threat of death, that they desist from their murderous practice. The priests defended themselves as follows:
“ Life is because of the gods; with their sacrifice they gave us life [...]. They produce our sustenance [...] which nourishes life.[10] ”

What the Aztec priests were referring to was a central Mesoamerican belief: that a great, on-going sacrifice sustains the universe. Everything is tonacayotl: the "spiritual flesh-hood" or "bodily [sacrificial] presence" of the gods on earth. Everything —earth, crops, moon, stars and people— springs from the severed or buried bodies, fingers, blood or the heads of the sacrificed gods. Humanity itself is macehualli, "those deserved and brought back to life through penance".[11] A strong sense of indebtedness was connected with this worldview. Indeed, nextlahualli (debt-payment) was a commonly used metaphor for human sacrifice, and, as Bernardino de Sahagún reported, it was said that the victim was someone who "gave her service".

The Taiping Rebellion (or Rebellion of Great Peace) was a large-scale revolt against the authority and forces of the Qing Government in China. It was conducted from 1850 to 1864 by an army and civil administration led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan. He established the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace with capital Nanjing and attained control of significant parts of southern China, at its height ruling over about 30 million people. The theocratic and militaristic regime instituted several social reforms, including strict separation of the sexes, abolition of foot binding, land socialization, suppression of private trade, and the replacement of Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion by a form of Christianity, holding that Hong Xiuquan was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.

In the mid-19th century, China under the Qing Dynasty suffered a series of natural disasters, economic problems, and defeats at the hands of the Western powers--in particular, the humiliating defeat in 1842 by Great Britain in the First Opium War. The Qing Dynasty (ethnically Manchu) was seen by the Chinese majority (ethnically Han) as ineffective and corrupt foreign rule. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes, and it was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic visionary Hong Xiuquan, a member of the Hakka minority, a Han subgroup. After Hong failed to pass the examinations that would make him one of the elite, he studied the bible with the help of a protestant missionary. One day he had a vision that gave him the impression that he was Jesus' brother. After his vision, he felt it was his duty to spread Christianity and overthrow the Manchus so that they would not be under foreign rule.

Hong's associate Yang Xiuqing was a former salesman of firewood in Guangxi, who frequently claimed to be able to act as a mouthpiece of God to direct the people and gain himself a large amount of political power.

The sect's militarism grew in the late 1840s, initially in response to its struggle to suppress groups of bandits and pirates, but persecution by Qing authorities spurred the movement into a guerrilla rebellion and then into full-blown civil war.

The revolt began in Guangxi Province. After a previous battle of small scale that resulted in the rebels' victory in the late December 1850, in early January 1851, a ten-thousand strong rebel army organized by Feng Yunshan and Wei Changhui routed Imperial troops stationed at the town of Jintian. Heavenly Kingdom forces successfully drove back the Imperial reprisal, and on January 11, 1851, Hong Xiuquan formally declared the Jintian Uprising on his birthday (lunar calendar). Subsequently, in August 1851, Hong declared the establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace (Taiping Tianguo) with himself as absolute ruler.

Most accurate sources put the total deaths during the 15 years of the rebellion at about 20 million civilians and army personnel.[11] Some historians estimate the combination of natural disasters together with the political insurrections may have cost as many as 200 million Chinese lives between 1850 and 1865[12]. That figure is generally thought to be an exaggeration, as it is approximately half the estimated population of China in 1851[13]. Modern estimates are that China’s population had been about 410 million in 1850 and, after the Taiping, Nien, Muslim, Panthay, Miao and other smaller rebellions, amounted to about 350 million in 1873.[14].

At the Third Battle of Nanking in 1864, more than 100,000 were killed in three days.

The rebellion happened at roughly the same time as the American Civil War. Though almost certainly the largest civil war of the nineteenth century (in terms of numbers under arms), it is debatable whether the Taiping Rebellion involved more soldiers than the Napoleonic Wars earlier in the century, and so it is uncertain whether it should be considered the largest war of the nineteenth century.

Your cut and paste provides ample evidence that it was secular/civil authorities that were behind much of the evil that took place during those era's, not the religious.

This may make it appear that it is still religion at the core but in reality one has to recognize that the Catholic church has long ago gone from providing spiritual leadership to being a political leadership through the misapplication of religion or more aptly the invention of one. Wolves in sheeps clothing as Jacobus relates in his post about the pope being the UN of the dark ages.

I would question the authenticity of this supposed quote. It appears only on a select few anti-Catholic propaganda websites like Jesus-is-Lord.com (good grief).

One reason I question it is because this notion appears nowhere in the writings of St. Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor of England and #2 man to the King, who was beheaded by Henry VIII for refusing to accept Henry's annulment and title of Supreme Head of the Church in England

The site may be somewhat anti-catholic, but does that necessarily make the Decreti, pars ii. causa xxiii. quaest v. can. xlvii as printed by the website incorrect? If the website quotes the decreti correctly, then it is not unreasonable to think that some catholics, back in the reformation days may have taken those words as canon, and thus permission to commit regicide on an excommunicated king/queen.

If he had put that in writing, he may have very well been executed much earlier. In such a position, only a fool would reveal innermost and very personal insights like religiously motivated regicide. As well, why would you question this quote based on what Thomas More DIDN'T say?? You are assuming that More was so devout a catholic that he MUST have publicly mentioned the decreti... perhaps that wasn't the way of it at all. How would you know either way??

Not at all.

No, it may have possibly existed. However, it's happened in my experience that the Jesus-is-Lord.com website often posts quotes attributed to Catholics that were entirely made up, often drawn by propagandists of the 19th century (example: "Maria Monk's" description of early American convents as whorehouses for priests, and the alleged oath taken by Jesuits which involves dashing Protestant babies against walls, LOL).

One problem I have with finding the Decretal in question is that the citation doesn't tell me which set of Decretals to look in. They usually belong under the name of a particular pope in history. To cite "Decreti" is a lot like citing "the Letters". In other words, it doesn't say anything. However, from the sets of Decretals I've browsed so far, I haven't been able to find the quote, whether in original Latin or in English translation.

Religion can be beautiful. But it can't be beautiful in an ugly world. And I feel that religion has been distorted for a very long time. So distorted, so long ago, that few people appreciate it for it what it was supposed to be

They use it as a weapon, or a moral guide, something that gives them a mission. Everybody wants to fullfill some mission, appear usefull but never be usefull. Religion helps. And that's all it was supposed to do. Help.

Hey Jacobus hope you're having a happy easter,

Until we can come together under one God or just believe there is no God, these seperations could be the death of us. Thats evil.

Until we can come together under one God or just believe there is no God, these seperations could be the death of us. Thats evil.

Hitchens challenge still has not been met: name me one moral action performed, or statement uttered, by a believer that couldn't have been performed by an unbeliever.

And then name me one immoral action that COULD ONLY have happened because of faith.