Joe, it looks like I wasn't clear enough. First off, the post of mine you answered related to a very specific point. The perps in this case described themselves as Christians and it seems reasonable to establish by what rationale other Christians find it safe to disown them. (If they repented now of what they did to Kristy Bamu, but continued to believe that children could be possessed of the devil, would you then readmit them to the faith?)

Second, I had said only two posts earlier:

CS and Eliza are probably right, at least to the extent that this case was more about a lust for power (note that two other victims escaped the worst by saying what their tormentors wanted to hear) and gratuitous cruelty than about Christianity. It might be good if more people cut the same slack for moderate muslims (the vast majority).

On your argument that "this is an issue of torture and murder, not religion and not witchcraft." anyone who followed the case would say it was, beyond doubt, about all four. (Here you need to understand that in the US "witchcraft" has lately taken on a different meaning from the long-established one still accepted in Europe and Africa, as I think CS explained.)

I made the point earlier in the thread that what happened to Kristy went beyond anything previously recorded in Africa or London. But you need to recognise that brutal abuse of children, by declared Christians in the name of kindoki, is widespread in western Africa, DRC and in small fundamentalist Christian churches in areas of London which have communities of west African immigrants.

As for who crucified Jesus, I'd better give warning of thread drift....

I think you're right, Joe. It was the Romans wot done it. But only so the scriptures (Isaiah 53) could be fulfilled, remember? So you could say the Romans were God's puppets: "For God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who truly believe...." Yep, without Jesus's sacrifice, God would not have been willing to forgive us our sins. (Check out 1 Corinthians 15 and various references in Acts, eg 3:18.)

According to your first pope, in his first pentecostal homily (Acts 2), God knew in advance that Jesus had a sticky fate ahead of him. And Jesus himself told his friends that a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do - later railing at his all-powerful dad for forsaking him. All of which, Joe, is taken from Catholic teaching. It is what Catholics (and indeed I think all Christians) are supposed to believe.