>what's more, the atheist regimes of the 20th century shed orders of magnitude more blood than Catholics of the previous 19, and explicitly appealed to their ideology to justify their evil.
That was just people who happened to be atheists, communists, and socialists. It isn't inherit to the ideology like it is with Catholicism /s.
You're going to have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot (a disciple of Sartre's existentialism), and other explicitly and deliberately atheist regimes, is incidental to their ideology. Even if I were to grant, for argument's sake, that their atheist beliefs were incidental to their crimes, it's pretty trivial to show that such beliefs present no obstacle to said crimes.
You will also have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Catholics are not incidental to their ideology. On the contrary: Catholicism explicitly condemns murder, pillage, rape and all the rest of it, under any and all circumstances and for any and all motives.
I put a /s at the end of my comment. That means sarcasm. I should have been more clear, sorry about that.
Fair enough. I assume sarcasm is easier than presenting a coherent argument.
I've heard thousands of people attack the Church for rape, murder, theft, etc; but the moment you ask them to demonstrate that Catholicism as such is the cause of such crimes, rather than people who happen to be Catholics, they have nothing to say. Which isn't surprising, because their position is hopeless.
Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Murder is the deliberate killing of an innocent person regardless of circumstances or perceived consequences. The Church has always condemned murder. Same for rape, theft, etc etc. So those arguing that Catholics qua Catholics, rather than human beings who happen to be Catholic, are responsible for these evil acts have a tough case to argue.
Edit: what's more, the atheist regimes of the 20th century shed orders of magnitude more blood than Catholics of the previous 19, and explicitly appealed to their ideology to justify their evil.