[Vigilanteman]

The Protestant Reformation was the best thing that ever happened to the Roman Catholic Church. By instituting a free debate of religion and forcing the church to concentrate on theology and charitable works rather than government and all the corruption which that entails, it became a unified and credible force for good by the time the various Protestant factions devolved into fighting among themselves by the late 17th century.

It was Catholic armies which stopped the invasion of the Muslim hordes at the gates of Vienna and Catholic navies which stopped the Muslim hordes off the shores of Lepanto at the very same time that John Calvin was having people beheaded and burned at the stake in Switzerland for disagreeing with his theology.

This doesn't excuse the crimes of the Catholic Church as a corrupt wielder of political power in the two centuries or so before these events, but it does put it into perspective.

[FredZarguna]

There was plenty of butchery on both sides of the Reformation, and as an agnostic I have no dog in the fight about who was worse.

The point of my post was that claiming the Roman Church was a driving force behind Magna Carter is a preposterous bit of revisionist fiction, and no one who knows the history of the grudging, eventual "acceptance" of Magna Carter by the Bishops of England -- and only then in exchange for a bribe -- can let it pass.