CatholicDigest11/1997pg100
Catholic Digest 11/1997 pg 100
The question:
A Baptist family who lives across the street gave me a book called the
“Trail of Blood”, by J.M. Carroll. It attacks Catholic doctrine on infant Baptism, indulgences, purgatory, and so on. But I am writing to learn if there is anything in history that would justify the following quotation:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The world has Never seen anything to compare with the persecution heaped upon the Baptists by the Catholic hierarchy of the Dark Ages. The Pope was the world’s dictator. This is why the Anabaptists before the Reformation called the Pope the Anti-Christ”. Then: “Fifty million died by persecution over a period of 1200 years because of the Catholic Church”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The answer from Fr. Ken Ryan of Catholic Digest:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“There weren’t any Baptists until 1609, generally thought of as a year occurring after the Dark Ages. (that is why the article above includes Anabaptists) Anabaptists (means anti-baptism of infants – so they re-baptized them as adults) means “re-baptizers” and was a name given to groups existing in the 3rd, 4th, 11th and 12th centuries but they had no connection with the violent civil-religious (Catholic) reformers who appeared in 1521 at Zwickau in Saxony. These 16th century Anabaptists rejected Catholic doctrine on infant Baptism and Lutheran justification by faith, among other things, and intended to substitute a new “Kingdom of God” for the social and civil order of their time. John Leyden was proclaimed King of New Sion at Munster where museums and libraries were destroyed and polygamy was introduced.
This group AND Many others were Exterminated during the Peasants Wars by a Combination of civil and religious authority.
Whether they were persecuted or punished depends on your point of view”