Here's an area where we can agree. None of the state churches had clean hands and I don't think any difference in numbers mitigates unchristian behavior.
I am instead taking issue with the pat idea that Protestantism proved an ideological bulwark in the New World against religious oppression exemplified by Catholicism.
The Roman Catholics may have been there first, but the churches that emerged during the reformation did their share. Would you agree that it's understandable to a degree that there would be an inherent distrust/dislike for RC's because they were the dominant church for so long and had a longer history of persecuting Christians who did not submit to their authority?
The great thing about our country is we do not have a state mandated religion. No doubt this is because of what came before.
Understandable certainly. I think we Catholics need to come to terms with the fact that the festering corruption for century upon century within the Church made it very easy for people to just say nuts to the whole thing and look for something plainer and simpler. If we believe that the Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, we darn well better live that way...and if we don't, we are feeding the fires of heresy and schism. Some of the saints at the time of the Reformation, in fact, said exactly that: we share the blame for what happened.
The history behind Church persecutions is complex. Heresy/Apostasy against the state religion have always been crimes, even in pagan times. That's why Plato was executed. That's why the Christians were persecuted for not offering a pinch of incense to Minerva or to the Emperor.
When Christianity became the religion of the state, it naturally inherited that legal framework. So Theodosius and later rulers had laws specifically outlawing heresy against Nicene Christianity. These were *state* laws, not ecclesiastical laws.
However, there was a HUGE problem giving the state the power to prosecute heresy. Officials could very easily trump up heresy charges to make false convictions....and I pretty much guarantee that if I get an interrogator to cross-examine you on the Trinity you'll say something heretical in five minutes even if you are completely orthodox. So some corrupt nobleman can bring some poor landowner in, fire a bunch of virtually incomprehensible questions at him about the modes and operations and wills of the Trinity and then...bam....looky here, a heretic! That's a shame....well, I guess I can execute him and confiscate his land then!
The Inquisition was actually an attempt to reform this process by saying to the state....no way king/duke/mayor, YOU don't have any authority to determine heresy. That's the CHURCH's job. So the Church took over the fact-finding on heresy for the state...it did all the interrogating, etc. And then it made a recommendation to the state. If the guy was an obstinate heretic and would not recant, he would, in the language of the time, "be handed over to the secular arm to be burned." But it was always the state doing the executing, and not the Church.
I actually don't have problem with a state religion...and I think Christians shouldn't generally. Heck...even though the Constitution outlawed federal establishment in this country, the states often had their own established religions until the mid-1830s.
But using the power of state religion to prosecute heresy is where it gets REAL dicey, especially given Christ's admonition to leave the tares in the wheat until the final judgment. We have a different tradition in this country with all the sects that came over--we kinda went back to the way it was in the Roman Empire when no one group was completely dominant and the state was not taking sides one way or the other.