christian church

[firestorm]

how many people has the roman catholic church killed in the last 2000 years

[WaldoMcFroog]

Directly or indirectly? i.e. Do you mean at the hands of (say) the Inquisition or under direct orders from the pope, or do you wish to try and include how many deaths could be attributed to the Catholic Church not speaking out for the Jews under the Nazis?

In any case, it's hard to determine. Check this story on the Spanish Inquisition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Death_tolls

and you'll get an idea of how difficult it might be to come to any sort of difinitive number. If you read about the subject, you might be able to come up with some sort of range and justify it, I suppose. It would probably be a very large range, though.

[jameskelk]

One of those questions which no exact number would ever be right.

I had heard that the Catholic Church has been the casue of the death of over 5 Million through their assocciation with witchcraft in the past.

J

[Octavius]

Is this a lame attempt to make a point, or a genuine research question?

As mentioned above, you will need to read the history of time to ascertain how many people - and whether - the "Roman Catholic Church" was directly responsible for deaths. Remember, in most instances religious persecution was carried out by twisted interpretations of the church doctrine (Spanish Inquisition), or purely by mans personal and political greed or ambition (The Crusades and the French Wars of Religion).

There is no doubt that many many people were persecuted and put to (often horrendous) death in medieval times for heracy as dictated by the bishops, cardinals or indeed popes of the time, but to establish an accurate account of numbers would be virtually impossible.

As you say 'killed' in your question perhaps you should also look into the churches refusal to accept contraception and how this has indirectly led to the increase in Aids. Contraversial stuff and not a question to be treated with flippancy.

Waldo's most excellent link above can also be supplemented by another page from that wonderful site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_persecution_by_Christians

Good luck with your research.

[Calvesy]

An Italian Catholic priest is currently on trail for bulldozing a church in Rwanda which killed 2000.
The inquisition and denial of holcaust are already mentioned. What about the current policy of forbidding contraception which results in millions of unwanted children begging the streets of South America until they come to a sticky end?
Then there were the crusades,the conquistadors, the witch hunts, blasphemy laws, the religious wars of medieval Europe. What about the suicides of abuse victims of priests over the centuries?
I'd guess all this adds up to between a hundred million and a billion, up there with Protestant abortions, but even more pathetic is the number of souls currently alive still believing this nonsense, and those who have passed away without having escaped it.

[BigMac]

Why just the Roman Catholic Church and not, say 'Christianity' or 'Christians'?