From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 15:42:55 MDT
How many people have been killed by Christians since Biblical
times?
VICTIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
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"WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD'S DIVINE
GLORY"
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Listed are only events that solely occurred on command of church
authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List
incomplete)
}
Ancient Pagans
¢As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan
temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were
killed.
¢Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were
slain.
¢Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in
Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in
Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
¢Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis
were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468] ¢Pagan services
became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
¢Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children
executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan
statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all
Christian teachings..."
¢In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
¢In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed
on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
¢The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was
torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob
led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
[DO19-25]
Mission
¢Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling
to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
¢Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating
church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and
children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
¢Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
¢15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages
plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
¢16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and
civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable
beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in
common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other
thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey
Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the
heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were
killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and
should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie", which
effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terrour to the
people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers,
children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage.
[SH99, 225]
Crusades (1095-1291)
¢First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
¢Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary
6/12/96 thousands. [WW23] ¢9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon
(then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
¢Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles
conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
¢after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000
and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children)
killed. [WW32-35]
Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the
enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their
bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres.
[EC60]
¢Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of
the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the
enemies were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert
Aquensis. [WW36]
¢Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims
(jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple]
was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the
blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our
people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off
our debt of gratitude")
¢The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible
to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror;
everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground
was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the
spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all
directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them.
Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves,
dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which
brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the
Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished."
[TG79]
¢Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the
following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the
stench of decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade
alone. [WW41]
¢Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in
the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
¢Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of
victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian.
[WW141-148]
¢Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291
probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish
areas alone). [WW224]
Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian)
chroniclers.
Heretics
¢Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus
and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany
[DO26]
¢Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to
practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful
Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the
Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous
thousands of victims. [NC]
¢Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians.
[DO29]
The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all
rarely sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would
not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth
control. [NC]
Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest
single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Beziérs (today France)
7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims
(including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours
and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
¢Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed.
[WW181]
¢subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half
the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were
exterminated. [WW183]
¢After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to
search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned
at the stake 1324. [WW183] ¢Estimated one million victims
(cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
¢Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites,
and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe
some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of
persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims
(including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the
New World).
¢Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for
10,220 burnings. [DO28]
¢John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was
burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
¢University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in
Vienna. [DO59]
¢Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been
incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on
the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.
Witches
¢from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than
several thousand.
¢in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern
scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at
the stake or hanged. [WV]
¢incomplete list of documented cases:
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times
Religious Wars
¢15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
¢1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England
and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to
go into action). [DO31]
¢1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3
million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were
actually slain. [DO31]
¢1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command
of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
¢17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant
leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body,
"cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then
dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not
worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and]
dragged what was left ... to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be
meat and carrion for maggots and crows'." [SH191]
¢17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany:
roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty
women were found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller,
"and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers."
[SH191]
¢17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40%
of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]
Jews
¢Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by
Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
¢In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was
destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in
Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned
down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of
Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
¢17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property
confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
¢The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities' Jews,
who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed.
[DA453]
¢First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe
12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100
persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten,
Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and
others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech)
[EJ]
¢Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham,
Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
¢Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90.
[DO40] ¢Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain.
[DO41]
¢1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury,
Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated.
[DO41]
¢1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
¢1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze
reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
¢1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two
thousand) burned. [DO41]
¢1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered,
mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than
Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of
Christians). [DO42]
¢1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
¢1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000
were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification
was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all
jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
¢1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World,
more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on
their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
¢1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews
were slain. [DO43]
(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right into
the kilns of Auschwitz.
Native Peoples
¢Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be
Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual
understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
¢Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he
encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off
six native people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and]
would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that
they belonged to no religion." [SH200]
While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves,
as many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo,
Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they
eat when they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they
feel like it." [SH204-205]
¢On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross,
"making the declarations that are required" - the requerimiento -
to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And
"nobody objected." If the Indians refused or delayed their
acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:
"I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully
enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall
subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall
do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and
refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]
¢Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of
Massachusetts Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the
intended Plantation in New England ... to carry the Gospell into
those parts of the world, ... and to raise a Bulworke against the
kingdome of the Ante-Christ." [SH235]
¢In average two thirds of the native population were killed by
colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a
great sign of "the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to
the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the natives, they are near all
dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what
we possess." [SH109,238]
¢On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population
(Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island
of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned
50,000 dead. [SH204]
¢The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement
and spanish raids.
¢As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they
could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead
everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous." [SH69]
¢The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured
and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a
Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his
soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey
replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would
rather go to hell." [SH70]
¢What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd
cruelties ... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to
touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen
[natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve
Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and
they were burned alive." [SH72]
Or, on another occasion:
"The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another,
and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up
beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique,
were thus slain like brute beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty
of them to be torn to pieces by dogs." [SH83]
¢The "island's population of about eight million people at the time
of Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a
half before the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's
natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to
import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the
same fate. Thus "the Caribbean's millions of native people [were]
thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century".
[SH72-73] "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human
being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years
resident in their homeland, had been exterminated." [SH75]
¢"And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of
Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun.
The exquisite city of Tenochtitlán [Mexico city] was next."
[SH75]
¢Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish
conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican
civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
¢"When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had
moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than
60,000,000 natives were dead." [SH95]
Early American Colonists
¢Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without
native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the
Indians. Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather
harmless, in comparison to European standards, and was meant to
avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the words of some of
the pilgrim fathers: "Their Warres are farre less bloudy...", so that
there usually was "no great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "they
might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." What is more,
the Indians usually spared women and children. [SH111]
¢In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among
the (generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to
leave Jamestown - "being idell ... did runne away unto the
Indyans," - to live among them (that probably solved a sex
problem).
"Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed:
'Some he apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be
broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to
deathe'." [SH105] Of course these elegant measures were
restricted for fellow englishmen: "This was the treatment for those
who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in
the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia"
methods were different: "when an Indian was accused by an
Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English
response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire
community" down. [SH105]
¢On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of
the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become
known as the "Peqout War". The killers were New England
Puritan Christians, refugees from persecution in their own home
country England.
¢When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by
Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge.
Despite the Indian chief's pledge they attacked.
Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after,
because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time
foes of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the
Pequots and burned their villages.
The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre
wrote: "And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let
fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the
very Flames, where many of them perished ... God was above
them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to
Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge
among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies": men,
women, children. [SH113-114] ¢So "the Lord was pleased to smite
our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an
inheritance". [SH111].
¢Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy,
there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately
follow:
"Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt
utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20)
¢Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was
the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured
his readers that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and
children must perish with their parents". [SH114]
¢Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The
colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to
devour children from their mothers breasts, in the colonists' own
words: "blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze
them." (This was inspired by spanish methods of the time)
In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots
was near. [SH107-119]
¢The surviving handful of Indians "were parceled out to live in
servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor
asking for 'a share' of the captives, specifically 'a young woman or
girle and a boy if you thinke good'." [SH115]
¢Other tribes were to follow the same path.
¢Comment the Christian exterminators: "God's Will, which will at
last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How
Great is his Beauty!"
"Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to
lick the Dust!" [TA]
¢Like today, lying was OK to Christians then. "Peace treaties were
signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians
'grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State
in Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise
them, & cutt downe theire Corne'." [SH106]
¢In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800
defenseless Indian men, women and children. [SH107]
¢In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676
some "600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather,
revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to
the slaughter as a 'barbeque'." [SH115]
¢To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western
Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered
12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive - a
destruction rate of 98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered
more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920 - 95%
destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about
30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed.
The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty
years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed. [SH118]
These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living
before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All
this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had
occurred. And the carnage was not over then.
¢All the above was only the beginning of the European
colonization, it was before the frontier age actually had begun.
¢A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both
Americas) were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an
average two thirds by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves
some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and
slavery.
¢In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues
even today.
More Glorious events in US history
¢Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most
esteemed religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the
Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial
wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt
Indians as they do bears'." [SH241]
¢Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John
Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still elder in the
church ("I long to be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of
about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the
chiefs' waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.
>From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty
squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl
about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not
proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the
squaws in that hole were afterwards killed ..." [SH131]
More gory details.
¢By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed
the carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native
population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as
tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was
only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the
amputation of diseased members of the body'." [SH244]
20th Century Church Atrocities
¢Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World
War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In
the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous
extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator
Ante Paveliç, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then
pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for
children!
In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a
Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial
number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic
Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent
enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims
were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them
being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny
country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities
were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi
"Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching, to complain about them to
Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and
did nothing to prevent them. [MV]
¢Catholic terror in Vietnam
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally
defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which
by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than
$2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to
all (most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge
anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the
South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and
Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who
later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of
Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections
which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in
the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was
made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general
assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and
villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were
given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be
supported was Roman Catholicism.
The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its
American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential
order which read:
"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and
common security may be confined by executive order, to a
concentration camp."
Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters
and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest
dozens of buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks
poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note
that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend
to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in
the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic
protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is
estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least
24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were
executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about
500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-
89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands
of American GI's lost their life.
¢Christianity kills the cat
On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a
teachers college in Germany, died: she starved herself to death.
For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and
apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit
approval of the Catholic bishop of Würzburg - additionally
pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist
rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was
littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical
Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for
medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary,
Miss Michel's grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for
a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth
century Würzburg was notorious for it's extensive witch burnings).
This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and
has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80]
¢Rwanda Massacres
In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few
months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered,
apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.
For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy
actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of
involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even
anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a
station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:
"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of
having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of
a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in
Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church
of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most
brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding
Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a
bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two
years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the
threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a
certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established.
There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees -
women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the
crucifix.
According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis
and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine
nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian
monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to
survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to
several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery.
By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were
murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The
other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the
murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report
that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and
without showing response. She is even accused of having
procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn
their victims alive..." [S2]
¢As can be seen from these events, to Christianity the Dark Ages
never come to an end.
References:
[DA]
K.Deschner, Abermals krähte der Hahn, Stuttgart 1962.
[DO]
K.Deschner, Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987.
[EC]
P.W.Edbury, Crusade and Settlement, Cardiff Univ. Press 1985.
[EJ]
S.Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders, Madison 1977.
[LI]
H.C.Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, New York 1961.
[MM]
M.Margolis, A.Marx, A History of the Jewish People.
[MV]
A.Manhattan, The Vatican™s Holocaust, Springfield 1986.
See also V.Dedijer, The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican,
Buffalo NY, 1992.
[NC]
J.T.Noonan, Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the
Catholic Theologians and Canonists, Cambridge/Mass., 1992.
[S2]
Newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany, 10/10/96, 12:00.
[SH]
D.Stannard, American Holocaust, Oxford University Press 1992.
[SP]
German news magazine Der Spiegel, no.49, 12/2/1996.
[TA]
A True Account of the Most Considerable Occurrences that have
Hapned in the Warre Between the English and the Indians in New
England, London 1676.
[TG]
F.Turner, Beyond Geography, New York 1980.
[WW]
H.Wollschläger: Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem,
Zürich 1973.
(This is in german and what is worse, it is out of print. But it is the
best I ever read about crusades and includes a full list of original
medieval Christian chroniclers' writings).
[WV]
Estimates on the number of executed witches:
¢N.Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the
Great Witch Hunt, Frogmore 1976, 253.
¢R.H.Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology,
New York 1959, 180.
¢J.B.Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Ithaca/NY 1972, 39.
¢H.Zwetsloot, Friedrich Spee und die Hexenprozesse, Trier 1954,
56.
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