Simple question?

Quote: Evenbob

you yourself are
that entity and have the authority
to torture people who don't agree
with you, and even burn them at
the stake if you wish.

A priest can no more defend everything done in the name of the church for two millenium than an American can defened everything in the name of Our Country for the last two and half centuries,

Quote: Pacomartin

A priest can no more defend everything done in the name of the church for two millenium

Yet they keep doing it. Every era
is the victim of the times it lives
in, there is no hand of god
guiding anything. Just the whims
of men..

It is true, no one can defend everything done in the name of the Church during its history. Some is indefensible and truly the whims of evil men. However the hand of God continues to guide us all to choose the good.

Look at the Transatlantic Slave trade: 58% of the African slaves shipped to America were in the fifty years from 1726–1775. In 1740 there were 150,000 slaves out of a population of less then one million in colonial America.

Benedict XIV, Roman Catholic Pope from 1740 to 1758, made it a priority in his first year when he issued the bull Immensa pastorum principis, demanding more humane treatment for the Indians of Brazil and Paraguay.

You have to argue that Pope Benedict was very forward thinking humanitarian.