Touché.
To be fair, the Book of Promises is meant to drive people mad who read it, whilst you just had to be educated to read the Bible in Latin (or Greek).
Also the heresies and crusades were the highpoints of reform in the church, not the low points. Catholicism defined itself theologically largely through its discourse and conflict with "heretics" and "schismatics", whilst the rise and fall of the crusades were due to the popular desires of the clergy and laiety to do so. Following the Reformation the Catholic Church began again to redefine itself through the Counter-Reformation, which is another example of a revitilisation pushed forward by conflict/discourse with heretics. To bring this back to the point of the discussion you could say that the attitude of the players makes it almost impossible to persue heresies and holy wars with any real conviction.
