"the idea of bringing it [The Spanish Inquisition] back is awfully tempting" - William Donohue, in an April 22, 2005 Catholic League press release.

It's hard to escape the impression that Catholic League head William Donohue lacked an awareness that Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, et. al did parodies, not documentaries, and so learned about the Spanish Inquisition from Monty Python skits.
In a recent Catholic League press release, Donohue downplayed the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition and has even said in the past that it mightn't be a bad thing to bring the institution back.


Donohue seems to think the Inquisition was a "pillows and comfy chairs" operation rather than a business that was known, at its most prosaic, to burn people alive or, waxing creative, to use fire to scare rodents into gnawing through the torsos, hearts, lungs, and entrails of victims and out the other side: not to mention "The Pear", The "Judas Chair", or the "Iron Maiden". The Catholic Church itself has apologized for the horrible affair the Inquisition truly was... but not "Wild Bill" Donohue.

Frank Cocozzelli, for Talk To Action, busts Donohue for both downplaying the Inquisition, via dubious revisionist history, and shines a light on apparent abuses, on the part of both Donohue's Catholic League and the Opus Dei related Fidelis, of their federal nonprofit tax status as they mount apparently coordinated public attacks, with partisan political overtones, on political candidates. ( see extended story )