The Catholic Inquisition Versus John 18:36

About the “Inquisition,” Catholic authorities admit: “The civil authorities … were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake. … It was first authorized by Innocent IV in his Bull ‘In Order to Exterminate’ of 15 May, 1252 … confirmed by Alexander IV on 30 Nov, 1259, and by Clement IV on 3 Nov, 1265 (p.32) … renewed … by [other] popes … Nicholas IV, Boniface VIII, and others” (Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8, page 34).This should remind us of Hitler and the Holocaust (except the Inquisition lasted for over 600 years), and flies in the face of Jesus’ New Testament teaching in passages like John 18:36: My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight …Notice further what a prominent Presbyterian says about the Inquisition: “The Inquisition was one of the great blights in the history of Christianity. No other institution in the history of the Christian Church was so horrible, so unjust, so ... un-Christian. When it was finally brought to a halt in 1834, thousands of lives had been lost, and tens of thousands of lives ruined through imprisonment and confiscation of property. Whole populations were driven from their homelands, and the Roman Church had earned a blight against its name that still resonates to this day.” (Robert C. Jones, http://www.sundayschoolcourses.com/inq/inquisition.pdf)Another telling quote about the wrongs of the Inquisition from a leading Catholic apologist is: “One should not seek to justify them, but to explain them and, most importantly, to explain how they could have been associated with a divinely established Church and how, from their existence, it is not proper to conclude that the Church of Rome is not the Church of Christ.” (Catholicism And Fundamentalism, page 300, Karl Keating, founder of “Catholic Answers”)I agree 100% with Mr. Keating. The horribleness of the Inquisition should lead us to conclude the Catholic Church is not God’s church that we read about in the Bible.