Oh, just how cruel were the Christians?

I am reading another page of Acharya S now:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm

I started out answering from bottom:

Rwanda massacres 1994 - the priests murdering Tutsis were feeling the reenacted the French Revolution. Tutsi people were in a way the Aristocrats in Rwanda when it was still a Catholic monarchy. That I learned from Mitteilungsblatt der Priesterbruderschaft Pius X back in the nineties.

Ngo Dinh Diem - was fighting a war. The tactics of his opponent Ho Chi Minh, as described in Che Guevara's booklet Art of Guerilla Warfare were not prettier than what Ngo Dinh Diem started out with. If he went further, it may be he was corrupted by the war he fought. Rather than by his faith.

Jasenovac "Catholic"? - The Franciscan friar who ran it in the end, and who was hanged for it, Miroslav Filipovic, in orders Tomislav Filipovic and as camp leader Tomislav Majstorovic, had been ordered by his superiors to end connexion with the Ustasha while it was still a group of freedom fighters or terrorists (whichever description you prefer), not unlike Irish Republican Brotherhood, while fighting for which even Éamonn De Valera was excommunicated, or even Fenians. He was disciplined by a German military court AND by the Vatican until he came to Jasenovac as a prisoner. - Ustasha's supported by the Vatican? From at least 1941, Alojzije Stepinac tried to help the victims of the Ustasha. He refrained from verbally condemning the régime, own and of occupants, out of concern for 7000 people whose lives he felt was depending on him:

http://o-x.fr/1ac9 = http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article623019/Ich_waere_nichtswuerdig_fuehlte_ich_nicht_mit_den_Kroaten.html

Colonel John Chivington was Methodist, Reverend Rufus Anderson does not sound like a Catholic priest, but Father Damien, working with lepers does. Reverend Solomon Stoddard does not sound like a Catholic, but the priests who came without arms or colonists to Iroquois and Hurons do sound like Catholic martyrs.

John Winthrop was a Puritan and wanted the colony to be a bulwark against "the Kingdom of Anti-Christ", i e in Puritan understanding the Papacy and - on a lesser level - "High Church" Anglicanism or what was later called such: the kind of second generation Anglican bishops who did not identify quite as much as Puritans with Protestant Reformation. Not surprisingly, quite a lot of the people attributing to Roman Catholicism the cruelty towards Indians under these or those Conquistadors or towards Serbs in Jasinovac are Puritans. Though some are also descendants of victims, either Amer-Indian or Serb.

Hatuey was victim to Columbus' first colonisation - an explorer as much as a Christian. Isabela la Católica rectified such doings. Balboa, famed for discovering the Pacific beyond the Panamá area, was a privateer, obeying neither crown nor Church more than he felt he needed.

Stannard's book American Holocaust is cited, one of the men attacked as a butcher was Hernando de Soto. On wiki article I find he served in the conquest of Perú and was absent when Atahuallpa was killed, for a reason, he was friends with the captive Inca, and he was one who insisted he be judged by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V alone. He felt he owed that as he took the Inca usurper prisoner. Even Prescott, not in general pro-Spanish, will tell you that. He was also serving with Manco Inca Yupanqui against Atahuallpa's troops. Back to Spain, married in Spain, back to Americas, Florida and further into present day US. Up to meeting Tuscaloosa no bloodshed on Indians was reported, in the case of Tuscaloosa's city Mauvila, the bloodshed was retaliation after self-defense. It has been claimed by Josephy (1994) that de Soto's troops carried diseases like small pox and measles to Indians - if so, it was not voluntarily. Here is what article on Mississippian Culture has to say:

Scholars have searched the records of Hernando de Soto in 1539–1543 looking for evidence of contacts with Mississippians. He visited many villages, in some cases staying for a month or longer [...]. Some encounters were violent, while others were relatively peaceable. In some cases, De Soto seems to have been used as a tool or ally in long-standing native feuds. In one example, de Soto negotiated a truce between the Pacaha and the Casqui.

De Soto's later encounters left about half of the Spaniards and perhaps many hundreds of Native Americans dead. The chronicles of de Soto are among the first documents written about Mississippian peoples, and are an invaluable source of information on their cultural practices. The chronicles of the Narváez expedition were written before the de Soto expedition; in fact, it was the Narváez expedition that informed the Court of de Soto about the New World.

Atrocious agaist Indians, this de Soto? I think not. But that is the beginning of Christendom in the New World, let us go back to the Old World:

As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.

Pagan temples were also destroyed by Christian bishops, including St Nicolas of Myra. But as for killing Pagan priests, I would like one single of them named. With circumstances surrounding the killing.

Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.

By whom? Under what circumstances?

Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.

Aesculap's Sanctuary? Reputed for fraudulent pseudo-healings.

Aphrodite's Temple on Golgatha? Golgotha means Calvary, it is the main sanctuary of Christian faith, along with Holy Sepulchre, and that temple, dedicated to the goddess of prostitutes and seduction (neither of which is well seen by Christians) and built there after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (an indication by the way that Christ was known as crucified on that spot) was an insult to our faith, and somehow we were not supposed to have destroyed it? The other two examples, I do not know.

I do know that the legend of St Front says that the monster known as La Gratusse or La Couleuvre came from the Temple of Ceres in Périgueux, summoned by the priest of Ceres with black magic, to frighten the Christians of the region. Such things, if true, do tend to antagonise people from such temples.

Some of the following examples in Acharya's page are taken from the Vegetarian Deschner's book Abermahls krähte der Hahn. German wikipedia has an article on this book, and after what critics say, it is fair to claim he was simply not honest. He seems to have based his work on the kind of "theologians" who came to dominate Vatican II with a gigantic guilt complex. I do not take it as a mere coinicidence that the work came out in 1962, same year as the Council started, and in one of the languages bordering the Rhine river - meaning that theologians and even bishops of the region were well before the Council extremely anti-Traditional. Wiltgen was to name his chronicle of the Council "The Rhine Flows into the Tiber", and one piece of the agenda of those men (Germans, Austrians, Swiss, French, Belgian, Dutch bishops, abbots and experts) was arguing against Catholic states or against states forbidding non-Catholic religions as much as against Catholics being persecuted.

He - Deschner - claimed that the Vulgate had been rejected for centuries before being adopted - no case can be made for the rejection, except that it was indeed "adopted" by Trent defending it against slanders from reformers. He mentions that in the Gospels 3500 single places were corrected by St Jerome, as against his immediate source manuscript, without mentioning that this was against previous translation and by access to Greek original. If he is thus inaccurate and tendentiously anticlerical with regards to a perfectly non-violent thing, like a Bible translation, why should we trust his account of violences? Especially as he often refuses to give intelligible references. This reflection comes after what I learned in German wikipedia of Deschner's book.

Acharya may be arguing that as Christianity was exceptionally violent, as opposed to peaceful Pagans (did she ever read Livy about Punic Wars? - she ought at least to have read about Romulus arranging the rape of the Sabine women before same Romulus ascended to heaven), and so, if any religion is right, it cannot be Christianity. But Christianity is not exceptionally violent except in works that whitewash Pagans, especially if victims of Christians, like Hatuey, there was a reason he was expelled from Hispaniola, about as much as they blackwash Christians. Acharya may argue that Christian priests were exceptionally cruel, except that some of her examples are Protestants, and the Catholic priests who were cruel were not well seen by their own Church. And of course, nothing like the idea that Pagan priests could be cruel, like Molochist or Aztek sacrificiers of humans. Acharya may argue that Christianity was exceptionally intolerant, but it was Christianity which began being tolerant of Judaism - even if in doing so it continued Roman tolerance of Judaism - as opposed to previous one religion per area, basically. Or she may say that Japan is more tolerant with Buddhism and Shintoism coexisting, just as philosophy coexisted with the priesthood of Caesar or with augurs, but they seem to answer different questions and thus to be, as compared to Christianity, parts of a single national Japanese religion, hardly more diverse in appeal than Ephesians from Sermon on the Mount in ethics or than Ethics from basic metaphysics or "mythology", and they form a Japanese religion which was very intolerant of Catholicism in Nagasaki, and Acharya simply avoids the question whether relations between Buddhists and Shintoists were always as peaceful.

This aspect of Acharya's work discredits much of her other writings. Much as it is over-rated in certain circles.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
20 April, Wednesday of
Holy Week AD 2011
Paris, Bibl. Chaptal