Posted on 08/08/2016 7:03:09 AM PDT by marshmallow
In the days since Father Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old French priest, was slaughtered at the altar by two jihadists, his murder has become a contested symbol in his country, continent and church.
To many conservative Catholics, Father Hamel is an archetypal Christian martyr — killed in a sacred space by men motivated by hatred of his faith, dying with the words, “Go away, Satan!” on his lips. To cultural conservatives more broadly, he’s a potent symbol of the jihadi threat to Europe’s peace.
But within Catholicism there is also strong resistance to this interpretation. It starts at the very top, with Pope Francis, who has deliberately steered clear of the language of martyrdom — first describing the priest’s murder as “absurd,” and then using one of his in-flight press conferences to suggest that the killers were no more religiously-motivated than a random Catholic murderer in Italy.
Meanwhile, amid calls of “Santo subito!” — “Sainthood now!” – two of the pope’s biographers, Austen Ivereigh and (in these pages) Paul Vallely, wrote essays warning against doing anything that might inflame interreligious tensions or otherwise play into the Islamic State’s bloodied hands.
In this narrative, which is also the narrative that many secular Europeans reached for, Father Hamel’s murder belongs not to the old iconography of a church militant under siege by unbelievers, but to the modern vision of a multicultural, multireligious society threatened primarily by ignorance and fear. So the appropriate response is to reassert the importance of religious tolerance, to highlight commonalities between French Muslims and their Catholic neighbors, to create a broad category of “peaceful religion” and cast jihadists outside it.
These dueling interpretations need not be mutually exclusive. In theory, it should be possible (for a pope, especially!) to plainly call Father Hamel’s death a martyrdom while............
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wow - NY Times even needs to “spin” the murder of the French Priest by a muslim
They have become unhinged
What is wrong with Pope Francis that he is so unwilling to be a leader for the Christian world?
‘What is wrong with Pope Francis?”
The question can best be answered by another Pope who saw what leftist and the profane were trying to do the the Church.
The smoke of Satan has entered the Church - Pope Paul VI
Dr. Edward Peters has counseled caution, not on any political or consequentialist grounds, but on the basis of the definition of the word “martyr.”
Let the facts be gathered. Let a sober judgment be made.
Needless to say, massaging the truth out of a desire to mollify muslims is despicable.
He is a muddle-headed Marxist egomaniac who hates Catholics, that’s what’s wrong with him.
For the education of the NYT writers:
MARTYR
Definition
A person who chooses to suffer, even to die, rather than renounce his or her faith or Christian principles. After the example of Christ one does not resist one’s persecutors when they use violence out of hatred or malice against Christ, or his Church, or some revealed truth of the Catholic religion. (Etym. Greek martyros, witness, martyr.)
MARTYRDOM
Definition
The established fact that if person has died a martyr and is therefore eligible to have his cause introduced for eventual canonization by the Church.
Paul VI should know...given he was responsible for promulgating Vatican II.
The question is..did he have the Catholic Faith? Did he die for the Catholic Faith?
Or did he die as an ecumenist with and for the Vatican II faith?
>>He is a muddle-headed Marxist egomaniac who hates Catholics, that’s what’s wrong with him
Always interesting to see how the nexus of Marxism and...
http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Catholic+Communist+Reductions+Paraguay
...lines up.
It seems the Pope’s fellow fraternal miscreants knew more about the subject than Karl did... before they taught him to be a Marxist.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.