Yes, my immediate thought when reading some of the comments on this thread was that perhaps Japan wouldn't be in the Godless, morally-depraved, barren state it's in now if it had been more sown with the blood of martyrs than having generations of Catholics step on the Face of Christ. I judge no one because I have never been in such a horrific position and I know Christ is merciful to those who are terrified. But objectively speaking, it is not right to step on the Face of Christ to save anyone. The Image of Our Lord is so sacred...To choose to spit on or slap Christ's actual Face isn't much worse, because the witness you are giving to the non-Christians is that your and others' lives are worth more than love and respect to God Himself.
Jesus' revealing of the Holy Face devotion shows just how precious an image of His Holy Face is. It's part of why I'm so horrified to hear generations of families stepped on His Face in Japan. I'm stunned that that aspect of the movie is true. But the truly sinister part is that it's portrayed as being advised by God, like it's the right thing to do. Forgivable by a merciful God, yes, but horrible to do to Christ and detrimental to the Faith.
We will never know if this statement is true or not because it can never be validated in history. There are still thousands of Japanese Catholics who escaped the "stepping on the image test" and hid from the persecution. I believe that they have many great great grandchildren that we are seeing now, in the the present day Japanese Catholics. Also the blood of the earlier Japanese martyrs was used by God to sustain the faith of the beleaguered Japanese Catholics in the succeeding centuries.
It was the catholic-armed uprising "Shimabara Rebellion" against the Tokugawa Shogunate that made the government's resolve to end Catholicism once and for all... "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword."
I was just reading about this passage this morning when I woke up! As well as this I recalled the Early Christian Martyrs , especially the women, some of them pregnant who watched their families die alongside them. This appears madness in human terms and the very opposite of love. They could have said, yes, we will offer up a few grains of incense to the Emperor as God, what does it matter? We know it is all nonsense anyway. But they didn't do this they watched their husbands and children die before their very eyes, even babies and did so singing hymns to God. In a human sense this appears totally mad. But it is the Divine Wisdom of God. These women saw beyond the lies of this present life to the Eternal Wisdom of God.
We cannot judge the people but we can judge the sin. Spitting or stamping on a Cross is Apostasy and a Mortal Sin of the very gravest type and unless they repent they will go into the flames of Hell for all Eternity. We may not judge the sinner but we can most certainly judge the sin. As , Jesus said let your yes be yes and your no be no all else comes from the evil one. I say no to spitting or stamping on a Cross and I don't need to get complicated or confused about it.
Hi Jason Thank you for your info on the Shimabara Rebellion. I googled it an found this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimabara_Rebellion The Japanese were exceedingly cruel and and executions included being slowly boiled. Of course Japan does not have the monopoly on such barbarity. English and Scottish history includes accounts of such executions. The seven brothers and their mother of the old testament were brave beyond the beyond and I understand the law and consequences of apostasy but only God can make the final call. I hope those poor apostates found The Way in their response to that call.
Absolutely spot-on. And it's good that you kept your head. I went back and changed the original post you took me up on a couple of pages back, because in my horror of the evils of torture, I took the matter too lightly. The matter is, as you say, utterly grave. It is the freedom of the will that is being hideously coerced. One cannot compare someone, and there are many these days who would freely and gleefully do such a thing, with someone forced into it under torture or on account of the torture or threatened torture of another. When one puts a bit of thought into the horrors of torture, it really underlines the courage of those faithful who went through it. And the beatings, scourging, crowning with thorns, carrying of the cross and crucifixion that Christ endured for our sake was as bad as any. And Him God.
That was an enormous mistake. Maybe the difference between the near-annihilation of Catholicism in Japan and Japan eventually becoming a Catholic country.
I believe that the Kernel of the Third Secret of Fatima only implicitly revealed by the Church is that there would be an almost total apostasy of the entire Church including that of Pope's, Cardinals and Bishops and which is currently underway. Films like Martin Scorcesse are part of the works of the devil preparing for this by implying that Apostacy is not such a bad thing But it is. As Pope Benedict pointed out, the greatest Persecutions for the Church will not come from without, but from within . ....and I add to that, from the Highest Quarters of the Church first and most
I had a wonderfull old friend now long dead who was a Commando in WWII and took part in operations to liberate Norway. He old me that whenever they took German prisoners they were always tortured for information when success of a mission depended on it. He said that simply resting a burning cigarette on the skin was enough to make most people crack in a few seconds. That sounds like nothing compared to the deaths of our martyrs. Jesus said that his followers would accomplish even greater things than he did. I wonder if these greater things included their deaths, not in any direct salvific potential but in the power of example, through God’s grace, to induce conversion in others. Yes of course apostasy is always mortally sinful when the conditions of mortal sin are fulfilled. I would say that the two words to describe satan’s strategy in our present age are lies and murder. As Jesus Himself said satan was a liar and murderer from the start. False Mercy is simply a lie.
Our Jesus Christ revealed his Divine Mercy to us in the last century, but Satan countered this move with False Mercy...
...and maybe that was the reason pagan Rome was converted by the Catholics and martyrs, and Japan wasn't. There was never an armed rebellion in pagan Rome by the persecuted Catholics.... You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well."
Jesus said “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” His thirst is to offer Mercy and for us to accept His offer in Truth and Justice. We agree that false mercy denies The Truth: denies Jesus. We agree that the source of false mercy is satan. I had an atheist highly intellectual and academic friend who denied objective truth. I said to him “you say there is no objective truth. Is that objective truth?” Praise to Jesus. I am not that clever.
Such stories emphasise how glorious and brave were the martyrs. I'm reading a history of the Templars by Piers Paul Read, at the moment. The Order was cynically suppressed by a French king (Philip the Fair), with the compliance of the pope of the time, Clement V, both having an eye on the Templars' wealth. False accusations of blasphemy and sacrifice were used against them and in nations where torture was then allowed, principally France, most of their Templars confessed to the accusations under torture. In countries like England, where torture was not permitted at that time (unlike in the twentieth century), almost nobody confessed. Bearing in mind that many of these Templars were among the most devout and dedicated Christians of their time, many repeatedly having risked their lives against the Saracens in the Holy Land, it's clear that torture can have dreadful effects upon the human will. As your story says, most men will quickly cough up information, if they have it. Men will also confess to something they didn't do, no matter how dreadful, to avoid the horrific pains and crippling damage of torture, which is therefore an unreliable instrument of extracting truth. Any martyr willing to endure such evil suffering deserves Heaven. They endure Hell, to gain Heaven. Such cruelty is of the deepest recesses of Hell and it is not one of the better aspects of Church history that She, with the best of intentions and ignorant of its inadequacy, became involved, through the Inquisition, in its use. Christ advised to 'turn the other cheek', as He did Himself, but He never suggested we be the ones to strike. It's a difficult, upsetting subject.
