Catholic church to beatify Japanese martyrs
November 24th, 2008 by James
The Roman Catholic Church will hold a ceremony today in Nagasaki to beatify 188 Japanese martyrs who were killed in the 1600’s because they refused to renounce their Christian faith:
The beatification follows a 27-year effort, including research and documentation of the martyrs’ lives, which began with a visit by Pope John Paul II to Japan in 1981, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins said Friday.
“They died for their faith — not for economic or political reasons,” said Martins, who is in Japan to attend the beatification on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. “They died 400 years ago, but they send us an important message.”
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YAAAAAAAY a worthless honor 400 years after it happened! If I lay down my life for something fictional it wouldn’t be anything religious.
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Thanks for your opinion…
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I am surprised it took this long. Especially after JPII went around making saints out of everything he saw (the new patron saint of the Internet is actually the Pope’s old Windows ‘98 Pentium II).
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“They died 400 years ago, but they send us an important message.”
Yeah, that a group of self-delusional zealots can’t get their shit together in 400 years.
Even Santa Claus has a better track record.
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Consider how much courage they had. Consider if you (or I) would have that much courage to hold firm to what we believe in even under torture leading to execution.
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When does courage become fanaticism? Are suicide bombers courageous martyrs as well? How important is it to stand up for your beliefs?
Personally, I’d say anything in this sort of situation, since my main belief is that my life should be long and pain-free….
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You want to talk about courage? Consider the courage of all the people who fought the onslaught of brutal Christians in their crusades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade
http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/crus03.htm
Talk about a lasting impact on Earth. It even brought the Jews and Muslims together for a time! 188 Martyrs? That’s not even a blip on the radar.
“Consider if you (or I) would have that much courage to hold firm to what we believe in even under torture leading to execution.”
Also, consider these Japanese martyrs were convinced they’d spend an eternity in hell for speaking against some barbarian Jewish priest named Jesus, and the Japanese (especially at that time) were well known for “death before dishonor” (恥よりは死を）. These particular Christian Japanese were no exception.
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Umm so you’re anti-Christian. Good for you. Are you also anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish etc etc or are you exclusively anti-Christian ?
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Where did you read that? If we get into a theological debate here it’ll never end, so I’ll refrain from doing so. I’m no more or less anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish than I am anti-Christian.
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The manner in which you express yourself reveals your hatred of Christianity and contempt for Christians. You can’t even acknowledge the simple fact that Christian or not these were very brave people.
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I don’t consider needless suicide bravery. You and I have different definitions.
P.S. – I married my wife who is Christian, so don’t assume to know me.
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The crusades went against principles of Christianity. I don’t see how they would think Jesus was a ‘barbarian’ if they were actually told his story.
Christianity is about free will, so if somebody is trying to force someone to be a Christian, then that’s not a Christian thing to do.
You can’t compare the Japanese victims to suicide bombers. The Japanese of this story stood up for their beliefs and didn’t harm others.
But it doesn’t matter what you or I say. Independent of our opinions the truth exists. And either we’ll never find out what it was, or we’ll all find out what it was in the end.
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If there are 100,000,000 Christians then there are a 100,000,000 interpretations of the religion. About the only thing they agree on is that Christ was God, and they are right.
You certainly can compare Japanese religious fanatics to any religious fanatics. They all went to extremes for their beliefs, secure in the certain knowledge that what they were doing was right. That’s the issue here. We like to say that martyrs are “good” and suicide bombers “bad,” but to themselves, in their own religious ideas, they’re both “good.” And this is bad.
“Independent of our opinions the truth exists. And either we’ll never find out what it was, or we’ll all find out what it was in the end.”
True for the first part, by and large, but you forgot the third option: that many of us will recognise it and many more of us will refuse to.
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You misunderstand me. There are only two options.
No God, and we’ll never find out the truth, because there is no God so no one will have the omniscience to confirm it.
Or there is God, and everyone finds out the truth because there is a God to reveal it to us one day.
You can’t have the third option because if you knew it for certain you’d be God and then there would be a God.
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No, I did not misunderstand you. We *can* know there is no God. That is what I meant by the third option. We don’t need omniscience to figure it out – the Bible is perfectly adequate. The Bible says “God does such and such, or says such and such is so,” and we find out it ain’t that way at all. It was not done by God, so no God.
Anyway, let’s not let this get into a theological argument. They never go anywhere.
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As the great Bowie said, “Knowledge comes with death’s release.”
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re: hl’s comment
your “3 options” actually leave open several other possibilities. For example–what if God loved humans so much, he wanted them to have a choice to accept him or reject him? If God simply created people who blindly follow him, or automatically reject him, he hasn’t really created a people with “choice”–he’s created automatons who do his bidding. To have true partners, he would have to create people (and a world) which on an individual basis gives a chance for revelation… but leaves enough doubt as to give each person a choice as to believe and follow God, or to reject Him. This is the world which Catholics (and christians generally) believe we inhabit.
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And if that God were a good and just God, then he would also (a) leave some decent proof behind, not one clumsy book and and whole lotta conjecture (plus a great deal of evidence that contradicts that book), and (b) not make the punishment for not worshipping him an eternity of hell. You truly think that a choice of “worship me or burn for all time” is really a choice? if that’s free choice, then North Korea truly is the worker’s paradise….
Here’s how a good and just God would do it: Create humans, lay the facts out before them, assure them nothing bad at all will happen if they don’t worship him, nor bribe anyone with promises of heaven if they do, and just let people make up their own minds, genuinely of their own free will, whether or not to worship.
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Nice to know exactly how God would do things. Here’s what Catholics believe however:
God gives us a choice between choosing Him, or choosing anything else that’s more important to us than Him (idols–which can be money, sex, power, what have you).
If you choose God, you go where He is (Heaven)
If you don’t, you are eternally separated from God (Hell).
Ultimately, the existence of heaven and hell derive from the nature of God giving humans the choice to accept Him, or not to accept Him. To loosely paraphrase C.S. Lewis, forcing someone who has rejected God to be with God (in heaven) would be hell of an entirely different sort. To say that the existence of Hell/damnation “disproves” God only begins by assuming that Heaven (eternally joining with God) is what everyone wants.
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How do you square that concept of Hell with Revelations? Or, for that matter, with what preachers have been going on about for millennia? Isn’t this modern non-painful Hell just a construct of modern theologians to try and get over this very question?
In a slight tangent, it’s actually very impressive what has been come up with in attempts to reconcile the airy claims of the Bible with logical or practical reality.
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On the contrary–i didn’t claim that hell isn’t painful. In fact, I would imagine its excruciating. Total separation from God means total separation from all that brings joy to hte world (not a world I would like to live in). Revelations describes the fire and pain of existence in Hell, but many theologians believe that many of the representations in Revelations are symbolic (much like other books in the Bible–i.e. Genesis, Job, etc; which some theologians believe not to be “literally” true, but are more like analogies to tell a certain message). How excruciating would it be to live in a place where there is no connection to God? Where all things have been corrupted and are evil?
This is hardly a “modern” theory, as its concept comes from St. Augustine. Also, rather than simpmly make an empty claim of “illogical” or “impractical”, you should actually make a knowledgable arguement.
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The Crusades were a response against Islamic aggression. It even says so right there in the link you provided. Atrocities and war crimes were committed on both sides of the fence, so contrary to what you’re claiming it wasn’t Good Guys vs. Evil Christians.
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Never said either side was evil for any specific incident. Look at the whole picture – They’re all mistaken. (Even “my people”.)
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What is required of any religion is to suspend reality and reason. This includes martyring yourself for your chosen deity. The point to life is to strive to live pain free, avoid trouble, and procreate. Only religion calls these bad and encourages to seek pain, cause trouble, and procreating a sin. Some are still more primate than human, and belief in old myths that counter reason prove it.
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Gotta love opinions from ‘enlightened’ people who have no knowledge of catholicism or christianity spouting vile opinions. Just because a certain honor means nothing to you, doesn’t mean it means nothing to an entire belief system which millions of catholics believe in. I happen to be Japanese and catholic, and I also happen to believe in life after death. Beatification has 2 purposes, its recognition by our church of the sacrifice made by people for their faith, as well as a ‘go-ahead’ by the catholic church for catholics to venerate and as for assistance from great people to serve as examples for our conduct.
The particular people who were martyred here have nothing at all (literally, they were thousands of miles away) to do with the crucades. If you want to bring up the issue of the crucades and its barbarity, sure, its legitimate to knock any saints or beatified individuals who participated or had a hand in it. But to knock 400 individuals who lived in a nation wherein Christianity was made illegal (at the pain of death) and refused to renounce their faith in the face of crucification is beyond ignorant.
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Ah yes, double standards. If the Catholic church can condemn non-Catholics, why can’t non-Catholics condemn the Catholic church?
How do you know people here have no idea about Christianity or Catholicism? I feel I know a lot more about the bible than many Christians even do, and I’m not Christian. I think it’s because I’m not Christian that I understand – I analyze instead of regurgitate in blind faith.
Christianity flourished on the Crusades, so it has everything to do with this. If you say they have nothing to do with it, then we can dismiss Islamic terrorism as well, because it’s such a small piece of the whole pie.
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“Just because a certain honor means nothing to you, doesn’t mean it means nothing to an entire belief system which millions of catholics believe in.”
I’m not Catholic, but I totally agree with this view. Those 188 people were honored in the context of the Catholic church. The powers-that-be within that system have agreed that their actions represent pure and peaceful devotion to the ideals of Christianity. I think that’s great, particularly if it sets a good example for others. More power to ‘em.
So, maybe those people became Christian through some indirect cause of the crusades (to the extent that the crusades expanded Christian influence, at least in Europe and a bit east of it. But actually, we’ll never really know if Christian missionaries would not have come to Japan had the crusade not happened). But to try to draw a direct connection between those people and the crusades is like blaming Japanese people alive today for the Manchurian incident, or even accepting that Islamic suicide bombers represent the views of all Muslims. In fact, it’s even more of a stretch.
And it seems strange to me to compare those Edo Japanese people with religious fanatics today who choose methods of suicide with the intention of hurting others. They didn’t die by choice, and as far as we know they didn’t set out to punish anyone for not being Christian.
Also, I don’t see any double standards being expressed in Rem’s comment. Quite the opposite since Rem actually wrote “its legitimate to knock any saints or beatified individuals who participated or had a hand in it (the crusades)”.
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“They didn’t die by choice”
Yes they did. At any time, they could have stamped on the fumi-e and ended it. The direct connection between these people and others is the level of fanaticism that leads them to do what is unthinkable for normal people: bring about their own death. I’m not singling out Japanese either – anyone who kills themself for religion will do. That is the power of religion. I am reminded of Conan The Barbarian, and the Riddle of Steel. Steel, Thulsa Doom reminds us, is weak – what is the blade to the mind that wields it? And he demonstrates this by beckoning a young follower of his religion to jump off a cliff.
Actually I don’t support a link between this and the Crusades – the Crusades were a political venture, with religion used to sell them, and the people fighting in them certainly didn’t intend to die if they could help it.
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If the Crusades were merely a political venture, then surely the campaign in through Nagasaki was an economical one?
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Call it fanaticism or whatever, but it doesn’t change their actions which were deemed as virtuous, nor the value and the meaning of the honor that was given to them.
And I suppose you’re right, they died by choice… in a sense. That is, they chose death over renouncing their faith; in the end they were faced with that choice. That’s part of the honor, actually. But they didn’t “bring it about” as you say. You actually think they went out and found some authorities and said “Hey, look at me! I’m practicing a religion that is punishable by death around here, and to make a point I’m gonna let you torture and execute me!”
They were strongly religious and they died for some reason connected to that. That’s about all the connection you can draw between them and those that try to take others with them. The circumstances behaind it are hugely different.
And I’m not sure if self-sacrifice in the name of one’s beliefs is necessarily unthinkable for “normal” people. Were these people abnormal or something? Maybe it’s unthinkable for normal people in “normal” situations, like comfortably sitting in front of the computer with a cup of tea commenting away on a blog (probably at work, tsk tsk) with no immediate threats to our life.
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“They were strongly religious….”
But that is all the connection you need. And that they were willing to die for it. Not “some reason connected to it,” but for that precise reason.
And yes, I think they were abnormal, given that most people don’t go that far, because if they did, then martydrom wouldn’t need to be considered such an honour. The question we need to consider is, why is it considered an honour? Whose purpose does this honour serve? It’s just like the ideal of samurai honour really. Ideals to serve the master, not the servant. The church values loyalty; demands it, in fact, with the most terrible threats it can make up. Those who lay down their life for the ideals of the church are held up as saints, because it suits the purpose of the church to have such single-minded devotion.
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No, that’s all the connection YOU need.
You seem to put those Edo Japanese people and other serious “fanatics” in the same basket because they happen to share the same blanket characteristic of religiosity. Well, I think you’re inappropriately generalizing over space and time. I don’t find fault in their actions, or the recognition given to them. If anything, they deserve admiration (as others have expressed) because in the end they didn’t sell out to the Man (a trait admired by many “normal” people).
But to each his own, I guess…
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You have completely failed to understand my point that it is not merely “the same blanket characteristic of religiosity” but the same EXTREME blanket that is the shared characteristic.
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No, I understand. That’s why I mentioned the other SERIOUS “fanatics” (i.e. those who will go to extremes to punish others for not accepting their views and kil themselves doing so). That is not the case for these 188 people, and I don’t think the loose connection you draw of (fine, extreme) religiosity is sufficient since the circumstance of their lives are unique.
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That’s because you are still looking at it in terms of how much they harmed others. It’s not the end result that I am looking at so much as the process – the state of mind that leads them to such extreme acts. It’s not relevant whether we consider those end acts “good” or “bad” – the process itself is sinister. How are people manipulated into such extremes?
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Kabocha: “…because in the end they didn’t sell out to the Man”
Depends on which The Man you’re talking about. They sold out to the Pope, and he is definitely a The Man. They sacrificed their lives for their beliefs.
Why? It was a statement. It was a radical demonstration. Their God didn’t require it of them – He doesn’t need any one to protect him; he’s almighty. In fact, it was selfish because it didn’t contribute to this world at all, and they threw away the very bodies they believed God had given them. Do you see any parallels here?
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Not that I don’t agree with you on some points, but:
The first commandment makes his views on denouncing him in favor of other gods pretty clear:
And those preachers who converted the Japanese martyrs probably told them that denouncing their god would lead to an eternal punishment in the fires of hell.
The Bible also provides quite a few passages that suggest that dying for your faith is a great thing:
Revelation 2:10
Revelation 20:4
Matthew 16:24-25
Your earlier cited Bible quote about one’s body as a temple could very easily be interpreted to mean that such a temple is the exclusive property of the one true god, and those who cast him aside to save their temporary earthly lives will face eternal punishment.
You mention a point touched on earlier: Interpretation. It’s the difference between peaceful observers and radical terrorists, and there is no “right version” because humans are the interpreters. You’d think that God, in all of his power, could have made The Book a little less ambiguous.
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“You’d think that God, in all of his power, could have made The Book a little less ambiguous.”
Hey, I tried! At least with the main points! Like this one:
Thou Shalt Not Kill
Four monosyllabic words. I really don’t know how I could have made that any clearer. It doesn’t say “Thou shalt not kill unless the other guy believes something different” or “Thou shall not kill unless the other guy looks at you funny” or anything like that. But idiots keep coming along and thinking they know some secret way around those four words…
They don’t. When I said “Don’t kill” I meant “Don’t kill”. Period. No ifs, ands or buts! So if anyone tells you “God told me to kill those guys over there” he’s lying! I said no such thing! Got it? Good!
Sheesh.
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But God, the Bible has examples of you directly instructing your chosen people to kill! What gives, huh?
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Tell me, God – Is it an eye for an eye, or turn the other cheek? And what was all that business with Noah’s Ark and killing every living creature save for one ship’s worth? Doesn’t the parent have to set an example for the rule to work?
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Deranged cultists yay.
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The people beautified by Rome this week are collectively referred to as “Peter Kibe and the 187 Martyrs.” I think Peter Kibe, who represents the entire group of these people, deserve some recognition.
http://www.hawaiicatholicherald.org/Home/tabid/256/newsid884/1775/Default.aspx
Imagine being born in Japan in the early 1600’s, and as a kid you enter a seminary because your parents happened to be converts to this new religion. Then he really began to develop a strong religious mind, so much that he was willing to give up all the earthly things, such as money, sex and honor. When the Tokugawa shogunate outlawed Christianity, he by his own decision went to Macau, so that he could continue his studies to become a priest. In Macau he faced many hardships, which included racial discrimination by his European superiors. He witnessed all the ugly aspects of European colonialism, but he still believed in God. Then the Portugues suddenly closed down the seminary and all Japanese students were let go. They beame homeless. Some decided to give up their faith and found ways to return to Japan. Some went to Manila to continue studying. Peter Kibe took a part time job on some European ship and traveled to India. And from India, he headed for Rome, manily on foot. I repeat, on foot! It is said he must have joined some Muslim caravan crossing the Persian desert, through Iran and through Iraq. Surely he witnessed what the Islamic religion was all about, and the hostility between the Muslims and Christian Europeans. He is the first known Japanese who reached Jerusalem. Then from Jerusalem, he got his way into Rome. He knocked on the doors of the Jesuit siminary there, and was allowed to complete his studies there. He was ordained a priest in Rome. He could have stayed there, with a stable job and place to live in peace. But he came back to Japan, via Lisbon, South Africa, India, Thailand, the Philippines, and finally Nagasaki. He encountered several shipwrecks, and many more attacks by pirates. It must have been such an adventure. Perhaps he can be said as the first of the Japanese backpackers. Then in Japan, where Chirstianity was outlawed and persecuted, he went around the country delivering religious services in the underground church. He was one day captured, and was requested to renounce his faith. He did not. So finally the authorities decided to torture him, for days, to force his renouncement. He did not renounce. The torture was done by hanging him upside down above a pit filled with human excrements. How awful. Even his former superior, an ex-Jesuit Portuguese priest, and the Shogun Tokugawa Iyemitsu hinmself, personally observed the interrogations and urged him to renounce his faith. Wheather you like Catholicism or not, I admire him for his strong will, to believe in a certain goal and to stick to it no matter what. In the 1600’s, there is no doubt that he probably was the one Japanese guy who was most familiar with what was going on outside of Japan, and how the Europeans in general viewed Japan and its residents as a barbaric and backward kingdom. Nobody else in Japan at that time must have known the streets of Jerusalem or Rome, and probably he was the only Japanese guy who was familiar with Islam as well. He was a cosmopolitan traveler, a guy with a strong mind with a sense of never giving up, and simply a great man.
By the way I, a Tokyo resident, was in Nagasaki this week and attended the ceremony. It was a very emotional and moving moment which I will cherish for life.
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“Wheather you like Catholicism or not, I admire him for his strong will, to believe in a certain goal and to stick to it no matter what.”
Exactly. That’s the danger. That the church can create this amount of fanaticism.
“The torture was done by hanging him upside down above a pit filled with human excrements. How awful.”
Could be worse – they could have used a longer rope….
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It’s not touching – They died for an institution, not their own God. It’s the same as anyone sacrificing their own life for their leader’s. It is the very soul of what was the “Samurai spirit”.
Let’s use The Book itself for proof that what they did was wrong:
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body,” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
They sacrificed their “temples”. Simply put, they committed suicide in what we would consider today to be “suicide by cop” – They let authority kill them. They chose to die.
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I am very happy to see people finally seeing through the lies and poison of religion. I’ve waited 70 years for people to start thinking on their own and tossing aside fairy stories and myths, yet also killing and dying in their name to stop. These people are an example of the fanaticism that religion, any religion causes. Without religion my dear young people their would be no suicide bombers or martyrs for god. I lived in Israel for 20 years as a UN aide, I saw all too often what religion spurs. The fanatics in any religion are the rule not the exception. I suggest to all you young people read “God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, or anything by Richard Dawkins, open your minds.
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Actually I suggest reading the Bible. All of it, not just the Sunday School soppy bits about God so loving his only son he sent him to die yadda yadda. As if that was really the case (“hey, I’ll give charity a million yen – only I’m taking it back in three days….” ).
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I am surprised that here on a blog where many regulars would I assume normally admire Japanese courage nobody seems to be prepared to admire the courage of these people who endured torture and death for their faith.
So it seems that you are all happy to acknowledge that non-Christian Japanese historical figures were cool and brave but you can’t bring yourselves to admit that these Christian martyrs were brave ?
And me an atheist. Oh well.
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Amen!
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No, I think they’ll all insane. I admire courage for good and noble reasons, but not when it segues into insanity. I think seppuku is also nuts. Although a lot of that was a case of “either you do it yourself your way, or we’ll do it our way – and you won’t like that much at all.”
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I am sorry to inform all christian, muslims, buddists, hindus, atheists, etc etc alike ….You ALL have it WRONG. Fools! There is only ONE faith that is backed by hard, incontrovertible EVIDENCE. And, moreover, its teachings are the ONLY proven solution to global warming.
- Behold –
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/
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The comments on here are absolutely ridiculous.
Now i say this as a person whose family has been quite atheistic for the past 3-4 generations (kinda helps when you have a maternal grandparent who went on the Long March with Mao) – whether or not their beliefs are valid are obvious up for debate. I of course, do not think they are.
But to rant and rave at them for honoring people who stood up for what they believe in????
Do the atheists of the West have no manners? No sensibility when it comes to folk who stood up against what essentially counts as government repression? (Again – i have a bit of familiarity with that subject matter too – esp. when whole segments of your family get struggled against by the state).
Or is the cause of freedom only specific to your particular sensibilities? IE: Let’s be tolerant when it suits us.
Even with my _severe_ objection to things like official visitations to Yasukini, i can at least UNDERSTAND why people would want to honor their dead.
So let these Christians honor their dead.
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Personally I’m quite happy for the Catholic church to do whatever it likes with them. All I’ve done is point out the dangers of this degree of fanaticism / religious belief.
And yes, I am only tolerant of that which I approve of. Crappy mushy gyoza? Totally unacceptable.
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