The church sponsored intellectual and scintific progress, and resisted many of the hideous philosophies that have led to many of the worst regimes and evils the world has ever seen.

The treatment of heretics may have been cruel and brutal, but the church was the only thing standing between mediaval society and bloody anarchy- an anarchy within which none of the freedom of ideas and beliefs that you desire would have been possible.

Cardinal Pacelli became pope as Pius XII. He congratulated Franco: "With great joy we address you, dearest sons of Catholic Spain, to express our paternal congratulations for the gift of peace and victory, with which God has chosen to crown the Christian heroism of your faith and charity ... As a pledge of the bountiful grace which you will receive from the Immaculate Virgin and the Apostle james, patrons of Spain ... we give to you, our dear sons of Catholic Spain, to the Head of State and his illustrious Government, to the zealous Episcopate and its self-denying clergy, to the heroic combatants and to all the faithful, our apostolic benediction."

The Holocaust, in its most general sense, began in Spain. During the Civil War people were murdered by Franco's troops simply for not being Catholic. After Franco's victory priests made lists of citizens who did not attend mass. They were rounded up for questioning and, often, execution. Hitler's concentration camps, after 1939, evolved into Spanish-style death camps that liquidated not only Communists, but the Catholic Church's ancient enemies, the Jews.

If you think that the catholic church was anti-semitic, then you are wrong. Take for instance the 11th century proclamatic by the pope, in which is was made a crime punishable by exocommunication to kill a jew.

The Catholic Church had a long history of opposing democratic governments, particularly in Italy. Voting by Catholics was treated as a mortal sin until the end of World War I, but then in 1919 the Church organized the Italian People's Party. In elections in 1919 and 1921 it received 20% of the vote, second only to the Italian Socialist Party. However, Pius XI and the Church hierarchy had a great fear of democracy and more radical trends like anarchism, socialism, and communism. The Church favored strong leaders, dictators or monarchs, who would simply crush any political opposition, particularly if they favored allowing only one legal religion, the Catholic Church.

Opposing murder does not make you pro-semitic. Until last century, for example, it was a common policy of italian catholics to covertly baptise jewish children, and then remove them to religious foster homes because it was illegal for a jewish couple to raise a christian child.

Such children were little more than bonded slaves to the church, and were often unwillingly robbed of their puberty to make for castratii.

This is pro-semitic? No? But it's 'broadly good', right? We'd have been worse off without this institutional abuse?

Exactly.

What is spiritual practice? Can there be a religion without spiritual practices?

But what is really new in new ideology? Or rather it's clarification of the old ideas? Let us consider the mechanism of adoption. There comes a teacher to their land and starts teaching them. But there is always certain ground for his teaching which he appeals to. So these new forms are only effects of old causes.

Explain then why democracy (if it have ever been there) failed, but communism find its ground.

Thou toldest me that Muslim violence is the result of their poverty and oppression. I have given thee examples of wealthy Arabs from thriving countries, what's more?

In case of Crusades it was not perversion Christ's words: neither in his life, nor in his sayings there can never be found grounds for violence, it was just ignoring them. Its only part of its spirit inherited from Judaism that was authoritarian.

Islam, on the contrary from its very beginning, implied violent propagation of religion:

Somewhat reluctantly, I need to challenge this statement. If you look into the origins of Islam, it was most certainly not peaceful. It was a martial religion, a 'fighting creed', right from the get-go. Read your history.

(I apologize for my flippancy in earlier comments.)

"The myth that warfare is only justified in Islam under the condition of self-defense is disproved by the account of the Battle of Badr, in which Muhammad sent his men out to raid caravans, then deliberately provoked a battle with the Meccan army sent out to defend them. The case for aggressive warfare is also supported by the fate of the three Jewish tribes of Medina, who were cleansed because they had rejected Muhammad's claims of prophethood (and because the Muslims wanted their possessions).

In many cases, Muhammad waged war for the purpose of revenge, such as the attack on the Lihyan, in which the people were clearly not prepared for war and saved themselves only by fleeing into the hills (Ibn Ishaq 718). Muhammad also attacked the people of Taif as soon as he had the opportunity to avenge their rejection of him (Ibn Ishaq 280 & 872).

Also disproving the myth that Muhammad only fought in self-defense is the account of his first attack on the Christians. There was no compelling reason for him to send an army to Muta (in Syria, where they met with disaster at the hands of the Byzantines). Had this been a matter of self-defense, then the enemy would surely have followed the routed army back to Arabia, but this was not the case (Ibn Ishaq 791).

Near the end of his life, the prophet of Islam directed military campaigns for the mere purpose of spreading Islamic rule.

There is more detail on thereligionofpeace.com/Muhammad/myths-mu-self-defense.htm. Indeed this is from an anti-islamic polemical site however the material seems well supported. If it is all just propaganda, then I am happy to stand corrected.

I don't want to get involved in denigration of other cultures. But even in a limited reading about Islam it is clear there are many passages in the Islamic holy text which justify the violent death and oppression of unbelievers (infidels or kafirs) and that these behaviours have been abundantly illustrated over millenia.

While true that the vast majority of Muslim believers may be good and peaceful citizens, to this day, somewhere in the world, innocent people are killed every day by the small but active minority of Islamic radicals; in fact a majority of the victims are other Muslims. I don't see how pretending this is not true, or saying it has nothing to do with their religious culture, actually helps any of us.

So while it is a lovely image to think that all the various cultures and faiths can live peacefully together and respect each other, it is really only possible by virtue of the creation of the secular state

Where do we get the idea that Eastern societies are more authoritarian than western? Have we already managed to forget Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mussolini's Italy, ect?

No. It's just that we're looking presently and ahead to Mao-ist China, North Korea, etc.

If the question is a religious one, then the answer is obviously "yes." Christianity centers on the immeasureable worth of the individual. Do you doubt it? Then I tell you that the infinite God became a finite man, and that infinite God handed Himself over as a ransom for us finite men as individuals. Did He not address in the singular the Good Thief?

On the other hand...*cough*Shinto.*cough*

Lets not forget that Tibet was a serf system prior to the Maoists taking over.

Essentially, people were owned by the Lamas and many starved and lived off Yak butter tea, while huge stores of foods were sacrificed and the Lamas lived in palaces.

Friendly Fuedalism - The Tibet Myth

Ideologies and reality are rarely equal in society.