To stand against a cause, or a government crack down against known Christians are reasons to die a martyr. Your faith is known by all. Your works are evident by many. There is no way out. Unless you recant.
Recanting your faith in the face of such duress makes martyrs. Why? Because such a witness, over time, has changed nations, ended brutal regimes and great conflicts, even restored or brought peace.
But this Oregon killer was neither a cause nor a government force. He was an insane, brutal murderer, to whom no one owed allegiance. To announce your faith, or to intelligently deny your faith to a weakling individual on a killing high is not much of a dilemma or a question for me.
Line me up in front of this @$$hat who is killing those who confess their faith, and electing to only knee cap the ones who go dumb, I choose to go dumb.
I pray for the Holy Spirit and my conscience to correct me if I am mistaken, but there is something about bowing to death before some, one, sick-o, I just can’t get there. It reminds me of abortion. All those aborted, who could be saints.
In this case, it is the same feeling in me. Those who denied the faith, in Oregon, are alive to love their Lord, to become saints, to do His will in a fallen world as they pilgrim on, carrying whatever is there Cross in life. They chose to live, *to respect life*.
(I realize possibly the odds that some of the deniers of the faith may not have been Christian, or even may have been only marginally Christian, but who knows, among them a great Christian can emerge, because they chose LIFE.)
It is not a question so much of how many folks come to know of the Christian witness of the martyr or whether the martyrdom is at the hands of the demented Oregon punk or at the hands of government gone terribly wrong. The vitally important audience is God and God alone. I find it hard to believe that he wants us to join Peter in denying Him. In that respect, Peter was the first pope but he was a frail and cowardly man on the night before Jesus Christ died for our sins. We need not expect any pope to be perfect. All have sinned and fallen far short of the glory of God.
Choosing to go dumb is choosing to be knee-capped apparently rather than being shot in the head and killed. But, worst case scenario: You go dumb, effectively denying Jesus Christ and the Trinity, and the killer kills you anyway. You arrive for your judgment with your last act being a denial of God.
Years ago, you may remember, there were a series of killings at Columbine High School in Colorado in which the Goth killers also demanded that the Christians identify themselves. One courageous fifteen year old Reformed Christian young lady was shot to death immediately upon identifying herself as a Christian. Who cares what the world thinks? What matters is what God knows and I would bet that young lady enjoyed an immediate and spectacular reception in heaven.
As Catholics, we believe in the Church Militant (on Earth), the Church Suffering (in Purgatory) and the Church Triumphant (in Heaven). Above all else, our goal is to reach membership in the Church Triumphant whether or not we spend time in the Church Suffering.
On April 9, 1945, Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in a Nazi concentration camp, just two weeks before the camp was liberated by allied troops. He was accused of being part of the Oster Conspiracy against Hitler's life. I suspect that at the moment of his murder, he heard the voice of God saying: Well done, good and faithful servant.
As to the aborted, my late client and pro-life hero Fr. Norman Weslin often preached that he believed that the souls of all the aborted are at the throne of God urging the salvation of each and every sincere pro-life activist. The late Congressman Henry Hyde, though a flawed sinner, was certainly a pro-life hero in Congress. I heard him at a conference in Boston express his identical belief. Both of them believed that each and every aborted infant IS a saint.
In spite of all of the foregoing, there is much to be said for your post and your side of the underlying issue has much to recommend it. I am not rejecting it but rather expressing the other opinion as one who suffers human cowardice and might well fail my own test.
Also, we have eternal life. Mere death does not extinguish us. If we make it to heaven, we will be in the Presence of the Beatific vision, praising and loving God above all else, no longer subject to the distractions of this world or to the temptations offered by Lucifer.
Meanwhile we, as Catholics, have a Church which has Apostolic Succession, a proper love and respect for God's Mom, the Truth, the validly consecrated Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance for the forgiveness of our sins, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There are people who, in the future, will act to persecute and martyr us over those things. Some may be governments, and some will be Satanic evil individuals with no governmental power whatsoever. And it won't just be Catholics who are martyred either. The victims at the Africa Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, were murdered for attending a Bible study at their Church.
A dark night is falling and it is time to quell the intramural squabbling among various flavors of Christians before it is too late to serve our Savior in this world. You and I belong to the same Roman Catholic Faith. Let us pray for all Catholics and all of our separated brethren and for all others that they may see the way to conform themselves to the will of God.
May God bless you and yours, Rita, as always!