It's not that I want to defend Catholicism or anything like that, I don't care I'm an atheist. Any Orthodoxy is closely connected with the authorities of the country where it was located, in the sense that it always adjusted to the authorities, even in the USSR Orthodox priests wrote denunciations to the KGB against those who, during confession, said something bad about the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or about the Soviet regime as a whole. The Vatican has been an independent player relative to other states for most of its history.
Okay, it had good things too, for example the Gothic cathedrals and all the tremendous artistic development that flourished around it, for example in the Sistine chapel
But we must ask ourselves if its good aspects outweigh the negatives in the first place.
I am reading a book called "Priest's Mirror" where all the evil committed by the Catholic Church, the papacy and the priests are listed and analyzed and it is horrendous, there is no way to defend Catholicism as an institution.
These guys rose up as a kind of priestly monarchy, enriching themselves by deceiving the people and commenting on all the excesses that were and were to be: Prostitution, lust, gluttony, murders, extortions, deceptions, the list of corrupt and evil popes and priests is extensive.
There are even lists of cases where ABORTIONS were committed, yes, fucking abortions within the Catholic Church.
The argument used to counter these facts is something like "all those who have power commit excess because power corrupts", but this is another level.
Some popes were called demonic names because of how evil they were.
And of course what irritates me the most: The suppression, censorship and absorption of the indigenous pagan cults of the people of Europe by a religion born from Judaism.