The Papacy abused excommunication freely and frequently for political advantage – so much so that a bishop would excommunicate a thief who stole his property!

Sir Thomas Browne (1605) It was on this date, October 19, 1605, that British writer Sir Thomas Browne was born in London, the son of a prosperous silk merchant who died when Thomas was eight. Browne nevertheless studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1626 and his M.A. three years later. […]

Pope Paul III Approves the Jesuits (1540) On this date, September 27, in 1540, Pope Paul III officially approved the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits – through his encyclical, Regimini militantis ecclesiae. Born Alessandro Farnese on 29 February 1468 in Rome, Paul III was pope for 15 years, from 12 October 1534 until his […]

Jules Michelet (1798) It was on this date, August 21, 1798, that French historian Jules Michelet was born in Paris, into a family with a Huguenot past. Of his youth, under the post-revolutionary, reactionary French government, Michelet recalled, I remember that in the dire misfortunes of daily deprivation and fears for the future... unsure of […]

The Last Temptation of Christ Released (1988) It was on this date, August 12, 1988, that Martin Scorsese's film, The Last Temptation of Christ, was released in the United States. Even before it opened in nine theaters across the US (initially), the film had inspired controversy – not only from the usual, narrow-minded fundamentalists, who […]

"The fatwa by Imam Khomeini in regards to the apostate Salman Rushdie will be in effect forever."

Even the “Catholic Encyclopedia” can claim only that "his religion is scarcely more than that of a spiritually-minded pagan."

For sure, it was "just a theory," as creationists like to dismiss the theory of evolution, even though this Copernican theory was as unassailable as science as heliocentricity was dangerous to theology.

"It vexes me when they [clerics] would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures," wrote Galileo, "and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment."

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world," he wrote in a letter to Frederick the Great of Prussia.