Playing The Role of "Martyr"

"It's not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr."
--St. Augustine 

 According to the the National Catholic Reporter, "Pope" Francis has once again called any Christian who is killed a "martyr," regardless of whether they belong to the True Church or just a sect. NCR writes:"Pope Francis has often referred to an 'ecumenism of blood', saying that persecution is uniting Christians. 'They are witnesses to Jesus Christ,' he said in January.'They are persecuted and killed because they are Christians. Those who persecute them make no distinction between the religious communities to which they belong. They are Christians and for that they are persecuted. This, brothers and sisters, is the ecumenism of blood.'"

 Just as disturbing is the fact that, as reported by Religious News Service, Frankie officially declared (on February 3) that "Archbishop" Oscar Romero, assassinated by a right-wing death squad in 1980 while celebrating the Novus Bogus bread and wine service in El Salvador, was a "martyr for the faith", clearing the way for his "beatification." This man was--for all intents and purposes---a Communist in religious garb who was killed because of his political views which he disseminated from the pulpit every chance he had.

 I wish to set forth the traditional Church teaching on what makes a man or a woman a true martyr, and neither Romero nor some strange idea of "ecumenism of blood" qualify for the title. The following points I condensed from Fr. Ronald Knox's wonderful treatise The Theology of Martyrdom (B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, Missouri, (1929)).

1. The word "martyr" means "witness." It means you give witness to the True Faith by your death. Martyrdom implies, not simply losing your life, but giving up your life. Your life is prematurely cut short in the interests of something greater than yourself. Suffering by itself, nor suffering followed by death is martyrdom properly so called.

2. The Church does not bestow the title of martyr upon those heroic priests, nuns, and layman who have persistently attended to the suffering in times of pestilence. St. Aloysius, whose death was brought on by such a labor was not canonized a martyr. These deaths were not the result of the assertion of religious truth against the enemies of religious truth. They laid down their lives for Christ's sake, but not for Christ's quarrel.

3. The faith one dies for can only be the unadulterated, Integral Catholic Faith; the One True Religion. To those who object that non-Catholics can receive Baptism of Desire, and it is therefore hypocritical to deny Protestants who, in good faith, die for a false belief the title of martyrs, it can be demonstrated their argument is without merit.  Baptism of Desire does not deny the objectivity of Truth, as this argument presupposes. The world tells us "Be good and you will go to Heaven, if such a place exists." A martyr is not someone who dies for what they believe, it is someone who dies for the Truth. Thomas Crammer died because he disbelieved in the papacy and the Mass. St. Thomas More died because he believed in the papacy and the Mass. Both cannot be true, so to make martyrs of both means either objective truth doesn't matter or doesn't exist.

4. As an adult, you must have the intention to die as a witness for the Truth. If a Traditionalist is killed in his sleep (unaware he was in any danger) by someone who is an enemy of the Faith, he does not qualify as a martyr. The Church means, by martyrdom, death undergone at the hands of those who hate the True Catholic Faith, for the sake of the True Catholic Faith; and undergone, in the case of adults, deliberately. Infants, killed for the sake of the True Faith, by those who hate the True Faith, die as martyrs without any intention necessary. They receive Baptism of Blood (if unbaptized) and their salvation is assured. (e.g. The Holy Innocents).

5. On the part of the enemies of Christ, a certain odium fidei ("hatred of the Faith") is necessary. A wholesale abandonment of the Faith, or hatred of all beliefs, is not necessary. To hate any article of True Faith/Morals because it is taught by the Church will suffice. Therefore, Henry VIII did not have to abandon every belief of the Church. Denying divorce and remarriage is adultery and hating that belief because the Church teaches it as true, was sufficient without more, to establish an odium fidei.

6. A soldier who takes up arms to fight a just war is not to be considered a martyr if he dies. Hence, the one who dies must not be guilty of provocation---that he died because he didn't kill the other man first. The exception is with captured soldiers who, now unarmed, are given the option of death or apostasy.

7. Notice how different this is from the Moslem conception of committing suicide while killing others (e.g. 9/11 attacks) as "martyrdom"!

Oscar Romero was killed for political reasons. The innocent people killed by the Moslem terrorist group ISIS did not profess the Integral Catholic Faith. Hence, neither qualify as "martyrs." In perpetrating a new definition of martyrdom, Bergoglio has cheapened both the True Faith and its true martyrs. By accepting "ecumenism of blood," you accept moral relativism and  religious indifferentism--the very foundations of the Vatican II sect.