Archbishop Romero and the Egyptian Coptic Christians
killed by the Islamic State in Libya last month, who have been promptly
recognized as martyrs by the Coptic Orthodox Church, illustrate both the power
and the provocation of the New Martyrs.
Originally used
in the Eastern Orthodox Church to describe martyrs killed by heretical
Christian rulers, the term “New Martyrs”
has come to denote Christians who have succumbed under a whole host of
situations of martyrdom, including the Spanish Civil War, the Mexican “Cristero” Wars, the victims of Nazism
and Fascism, persecution under Communist regimes, and countless smaller
groupings—e.g., the so-called “martyrs of charity,” “martyrs of creation,” etc.
Our age is, of
course, not the first time new notions of martyrdom have arisen. The Cambrai Homily from the 7th-century talks
about “red,” “white,” and “green” martyrdom in the Irish church of the time, in
part because the original notion of martyrdom—“red martyrdom,” denoting a
violent, bloody death—had become somewhat rare in an increasingly Christianized
Europe. Other ways of giving up your
life for God had to be recognized, including the strict asceticism of desert
hermits (“white martyrdom”) and the “green martyrdom” of secluding to the forest
to a primitive life of prayer. (Is this
not what Archbishop Romero preached when he said, in a passage quoted
by Pope Francis in January, that “offering of one’s life does not only occur when one is killed for the faith: to give one’s life and to have this spirit of martyrdom means that one is faithful to one’s obligations, to prayer ...”?)
The New Martyrs
of our day do not suffer merely a symbolic martyrdom. Their deaths constitute, indeed, true “red
martyrdom”—albeit, conditioned to the specifics of their particular time and
place. Yet, the departure from the
idealized concept of martyrdom can seem jarring. Consider the elements of martyrdom
in the Catholic Church: (1) a cruel or violent death; (2) freely accepted by
the victim; (3) imposed out of hatred of the faith. Woestman, Canonization:
Theology, History, Process 143 (St. Paul University, 2002). A prominent canon lawyer recently argued
that Archbishop Romero did not satisfy the “freely accepted” prong because he
was not given an ultimatum with a chance to flee (the argument was
based on an incomplete
understanding of the facts). The
same reasoning would apply to the 21 Coptic martyrs, because ISIS did not put
them to a choice of electing to die for Christ: it simply massacred them en masse. (Additionally, it is tricky to say ISIS is targeting Christians when it also kills pluralistic Charlie Hebdo, and hurls suspected homosexuals from skyscrapers.) It is a frequently recurring circumstance for
the New Martyrs.
Both Romero and
the Coptic martyrs have something else in common that ultimate saves us
from small-minded thinking about what a martyr is: they present us with a searing
vision of martyrdom that is hard to belittle.
Romero was killed saying Mass. He
is one of only three bishops in history to be killed in church (the other two
were quickly canonized), and the only one to be killed at the altar. This single fact was the one most often cited
by Pope John Paul and has undoubtedly bolstered Romero’s beatification
cause. As for the Coptic martyrs, while
the number of beheaded Christians are legion, the power of a YouTube decapitation
meant immediate dissemination throughout the Christian world and universal
horror at the barbarity of the crimes, together with a resounding judgment that
the victims were indeed martyrs. In short, we are dealing with two epic icons of martyrdom.
Recently, in
scholarship I greatly admire, Dr. Todd M. Johnson of the Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary proposed to replace the Canon Law definition cited above
with this new definition of martyrs: “believers
in Christ who have lost their lives prematurely, in situations of witness, as a
result of human hostility.”
Clearly, this
new and more expansive definition would comfortably fit Archbishop Romero and
the 21 Egyptian Coptic Martyrs, and perhaps many other twists and turns in the nature
of martyrdom in the topsy-turvy future history of the world. Nevertheless, I for one am opposed to changing
the definition and prefer to maintain the traditional formula. This is because, in my view, martyrdom has
not changed. What has changed are the
methodologies of the persecutors, the state of the art of the machinery of death. While we should recognize that the traditional
definition of martyrdom needs to breathe, we should keep it in place, assured
of the consistency and continuity of Christian witness.
It is notable
that both Archbishop Romero and the Coptic Martyrs were quickly acknowledged as
such across denominational lines. We recognize
martyrdom when we see it.
See also:
Romero and the Peruvian martyrs
See also:
Romero and the Peruvian martyrs
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