Well Happy Belated Birthday

You do realize that was almost 6 centuries ago, right? Those 'fringe extremists' were the entire church. No need to deny reality, man.

That is... Correct

That's funny, I've heard that line somewhere before...cannot quite put my finger on it. Thought it might apply here, but I guess not.

It doesn't apply because of the 6 century gap. The Catholic Church back then was controlled by the Pope completely, so all recognized Catholics as a result had to follow the same ideals. So everyone thought Copernicus was a heretic back then. But that was 6 centuries ago. I also understand what you were trying to reference. You knew the above full well, and just wanted to be disproven, so that you could turn it around and say 'see, then why do you say that Islamic terrorists are 'fringe extremists', huh?' The problem is that, like Christianity as a whole, Islam has many different sects with many different ideologies. If the 1billion+ Muslims today ALL believed in extremist Islamic ideals, as all RECOGNIZED Catholics did extreme Catholicism in the 16th century, then we'd all be dead now cuz there's no way we can stop 1billion+ organized suicide bombers and shooters from killing everyone. So yes, unfortunately, your comment really didn't work.

It's a joke. Laugh, shrug, it doesn't matter what you think of it, it has no greater meaning beyond what it says. And I'm pretty sure a lot of catholics were peasants and couldn't read the bible, and far outnumbered the knights, kings, and priests and popes, and only followed them around because it was "the will of god".

Depends on whether it was before or after Martin Luther did the thing.