On the church’s abuse of power

The history of the church is both horribly fascinating, and sometimes amusingly fascinating, when it comes to corruption. I mean, the Renaissance popes are only the most obvious example of a kind of complete collusion with power and wealth in the later Middle Ages. And yet we see it lots of other places too, where Christian clergy are very happy to use the power of the state to stamp out their religious enemies, as well as their political enemies; to seize lands, and houses, and people from their enemies and appropriate them for themselves. So Christian history is littered with instances of Christians behaving badly when they have a chance to pull the levers of power.