http://www.sspx.org/against_the_sound_bites/defense_of_the_inquisition.htm

Izvadak:

"However, the saints who lived in the era of the Inquisition never
criticized it, except to complain that it did not repress heresy severely
enough. The Holy Office scrutinized the spiritual writings of St. Teresa of
Avila to see if this might be a case of a false mystic, because there were
at that time many false mystics among the Alumbrados of Spain.3 Far from
seeing this as a system of intolerance, the saint relied in all confidence
upon the judgment of the tribunal, which, in fact, found nothing heretical
in her writings. Now the saints have never been afraid to denounce the
abuses of the clergy: indeed that is one of their principal functions. How
does one account for the fact that they had nothing to say against the
Inquisition?"
...
"In fact, criticism of the Inquisition by Catholic authors did not begin to
appear until the 19th century, and then only among the liberal Catholics,
since the ultramontanes [clerics believing most strongly in and supporting
most vigorously papal policy in ecclesiastical and political matters â??Ed.]
were vigorously defending the tribunal.4 Prior to the French Revolution,
anti-inquisitorial discourse was the province of the Protestants. The
historian Jean Dumont, who at the present time is the best apologist of the
Inquisition,5 points out that the engravings of the 16th century, which
illustrate scenes of the auto-da-f?Š ["act of faith," usually public, at
which those tried by the Inquisition had their sentences pronounced â??Ed.]
habitually depict gabled buildings. This type of architecture was found at
that time in the "Low-Countries" and in the valley of the Rhine, but not in
Spain. This detail reveals the Protestant origin of the engravings. In
effect, the black legend of the Inquisition is the product of Protestant
propaganda, which was passed down to the 18th century by the philosophy of
the "enlightenment," to the 19th century by Masonic anticlericalism, and to
the 20th by "Christian-democracy."

Nevertheless, the most serious historical studies have henceforth
recognized that the Inquisition was an honest tribunal, which sought to
convert heretics more than to punish them, which condemned relatively few
people to the flames, and which only employed torture in exceptional
cases.6 However, the anti-inquisitorial myth still circulates in public
opinion. Voltaire said that a lie repeated a thousand times becomes a
truth. "

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