When I was young, I received terrible catechesis from my Catholic grade school. I mocked most of the process and grew up to lose the faith just like the rest of us, but I did learn one thing: the reason that we went to the Sacrament of Penance was so that we could be free of any mortal sins on our souls.
They would take us to Confession once a month. If we missed Mass on Sunday we needed to confess it, and we couldn’t go to Communion again until we had. Later we learned to disregard this instruction, but I did hear it. So today I must ask every single priest I know and almost every single Catholic I’ve met, “Is this still true?”
The reason why I have to ask is that everyone seems to think that Heaven is for almost everyone now. You don’t need to worry about Confession or Communion. You don’t have to be Catholic, or even Protestant. You just have to be nice, generally. God has a plan and he’s merciful, and Hell would be ridiculously unfair.
So, if that’s the case, then what was all that about mortal sin? If Protestants and ‘nones’ don’t go to the sacraments, yet they are Heaven-bound, then why am I wasting my time being Catholic? If Mother Teresa and my parish priests all think you can enter Heaven being faithful to your denomination or philosophy, why can’t I just be an Evangelical? The Methodist minister who lives next door to me is very pro-abortion. If he’s going to Heaven, why do I have to go to Mass on Sundays? Our Sunday Mass is really an ugly nightmare. Can I switch?
No, um, that would be inappropriate, but for them it’s OK? Is the Catholic Church some kind of kiddie-pen?
Nobody ever has an answer to these questions. They just live with the inconsistency of it, but they don’t live with easily. It’s a fallacy and it’s collapsing the Church like the World Trade Center. Unity with Christ and his Church absolutely must mean what it always has: living a sacramental life, in a state of grace, without heresy. Heaven is an orderly place. It tolerates no hidden heretical time bombs to unravel its realities down the road.
So what then is a martyr? To Francis, a martyr is any ‘christian’ killed by a Muslim, perhaps anyone at all killed by a Muslim. But a martyr must be someone who is in Heaven. So if you are a baptized person and lead a terrible life, then get caught in a Church massacre, you’re now in Heaven? If you’re a Copt and ISIS combs through your village, rounds you up with twenty other men, puts you in an orange suit and shoots you, then are you in Heaven? If they gave you a chance to deny Christ and you refused, then I’d say that was quite different. But if you are a priest saying Mass in France and they ambush you, does that make you a martyr?
Many, many of the priests we see and read about are not faithful Catholics. They teach heresy from the altar. Divorce, gay sex, contraception, suicide, are condoned. If a priest like that is murdered on a train, does he go to Heaven? Not unless he is in a state of grace. Father Hamel may have been a very liberal priest. Did his killers ask him to deny Christ and he refused? Was he openly breaking the anti-Christian laws of the state as in ancient times? Was he like Stephen, stoned for proclaiming Christ in spite of the danger? Did he stand like St. Francis, before the Saracen and tell him he’s going to Hell when he knew it was a death sentence?
No. Father Hamel had little reason to think he was risking his life doing what he’d done every day for decades. He probably was not given the option to deny the Faith. He was just killed, not because he stood up for Christ in the face of death, but because he wasn’t Muslim. He could have been accustomed to making sacrilegious Communions and giving deadly counsel for a lifetime. We don’t know. If he had been given the choice between the Faith in Christ and his life, that would have been horrible too, but that’s what martyrs do.
If ISIS is able to nuke the entire United States, who will go to Heaven? Will it be:
- everybody
- those who are generally nice
- those who are baptized
- baptized Catholics
- faithful Catholics
- people at Mass
- priests who are saying Mass
Answer: Some of them, but it would be a mistake to say they went to Heaven like martyrs.
If being murdered by Muslim terrorists during Mass got you automatically into Heaven, they might have made it a sacrament by now. Keep an eye out for the next Motu Proprio.
I’m quite disappointed in what can only be described as your rather appalling lack of charity. I yield to no one in my disdain for the current pontificate, but I refuse to deny the sacrifice of Frere Hamel just because Francis the Humble has spoken highly of him. Frere Hamel was killed, not as part of a random attack by drugged-up hippies looking to score some quick cash, but by Muslims who targeted him precisely because he was a Catholic priest. You seem to believe they didn’t offer him the opportunity to renounce Christ (and thus the opportunity to be a true martyr). Oh, but they DID: Frere Hamel knew immediately the stakes; he could have easily cowered, could have easily begged for his life, could have easily denied Christ in the hope of winning a reprieve from the slaughter to come. But he didn’t. His final words, shouted at his attackers, were not the words of a coward, but of a clear-eyed Christian staring down the reality of evil: “Go away, Satan!” Blessed Hamel’s life ended beside a church altar, upon which he had only moments before offered the Sacrifice of the Mass. If his soul is not in heaven, then there is simply no hope for you, or for me, or for the rest of our fallen race.
It is one thing for you to legitimately criticize the subversive actions of our apparently Lutheran pope, but it is quite another thing to denigrate (or at least to downplay) the sacrificial witness of an elderly priest cut down on the altar by Islamo-fascist savages. If you deny his Muslim attackers targeted him for his faith, then the onus is on you to explain just why he was targeted: because he was elderly? because he was bald? because he suffered chronic halitosis?
In the early centuries of the Church, a millennium before a formal process of canonization developed, martyrs were recognized by a general acclamation of the faithful. The same dynamic is at work today in the worldwide faithful’s spontaneous recognition of Blessed Hamel’s witness.
The question is not whether Fr. Hamel was targeted by Muslims because of his faith, but rather did Fr. Hamel willingly die as a defender of the faith. Merely being attacked because of ones religion tells us about the attackers not the one being attacked. I have not heard anything about father being asked to recant the Catholic faith — that seems to be something you added. It was reported that he said to his attackers, “Go away Satan.” Fr. Hamel be in heaven, but we can’t be sure, which is why we should pray for his soul.
Shady,liberal, very sketchy parish, by all accounts. The article is spot on, do some research.
It is the almost unanimous opinion of the Fathers that very few are saved. It is a truth that is almost never mentioned. You are right to question the laxity and the heretical notion of universal salvation. I don’t think you lack charity in pointing out the obvious. We do not know the state of soul of Father Hamel. We must pray for him, as we must pray for all of the faithful departed. Extra Ecclesium Nulla Salus.
I stand by my earlier comment (obviously), but having just now re-read it, I realize that, for some odd reason, I kept referring to him as “Frere” Hamel instead of “Pere” Hamel. I have no idea what happened, unless I was subconsciously thinking of that old “Frere Jacques” song. Apologies.
You’re quite right to nix the heretical notion of universal salvation. It has no place in the patrimony of Church teaching. You’re wrong, however — and I say this very respectfully, aware as I am of my own limits — to use Francis the Humble’s recognition of Hamel’s martyrdom as an example of this heresy. Had Fr Hamel’s sacrifice been made in the 9th century, the Church would have had no hesitation in numbering him among the blessed. I think — and again, I say this with no animosity — that those who are now making this argument are simply allowing their (entirely justified) distrust of Francis cloud their judgment on what earlier generations of Catholics would have considered a no-brainer.
You are correct to pose the question of whether Fr. Hamel is a martyr or not. We do not know. A Denver priest, Fr. Leo Heinrichs, was murdered while giving out Communion in 1908. He wore a hair shirt, apparently a holy man. Was he a martyr? I do not see how that can be said.
And when I read your wise comment, “Heaven is an orderly place,” I thought of the end of a poem by Belloc, “To Dives,” which goes
Then tell me, Dives, which will look the ass —
You, or myself? Or Charon? Who can tell?
They order things so damnably in Hell.
Frank, you are dead-on, right, and display more true Charity in your pinky finger than most of your detractors show in their entire beings. The disingenuous denials like, “I really don’t mean to call you fat but, you’re fat…no, I really mean it respectfully and mean no animosity but, you’re fat” are simply laughable.
You spoke pure Catholic doctrine; nothing less, nothing more. Even St. Bernadette begged her sisters to pray for her soul, fearing she would be left roasting in Purgatory while everyone presumed she was a Saint. What an appalling lack of Charity on your detractor’s part, and what an appalling case of presumption, to ‘canonize’ a man who might be, 1) in grave need of our prayers, 2) in no need of our prayers, or 3) beyond the reach and efficacy of our prayers…..point being (and you made it VERY well in great Charity), WE. DON’T. KNOW.
“…and I say this very respectfully”, grow up Joshua. Stop being a sentimental wreck, purposely drawing attention to your public case of the vapors, and be a real Catholic man. Show real love for this priest and pray for him….you (and I) know NOTHING about the state of his soul, and not much about his life other than he was surprised right before he was murdered. That he recognized satan before him and told him to leave simply does not ipso-facto make him a martyr. I hope he was, but my hope is not God’s Judgment, unless I make myself god…and that is a fool’s work.
Grow. up.
I wasn’t one of the many that jumped on the band wagon thinking he’s automatically in heaven. Given this day and age, we have no idea what kind of priest he was except getting testimony from some parishioners, who for all we know, could have loved a priest who taught heresy (which is probable considering it was in France).
The thing is, we don’t know what Fr. Hamel was thinking moments before his death. However, he wasn’t sniveling and crying to the scum that he was willing to convert to Islam if they spared his life. But, we really have NO idea if he’s in heaven or purgatory (I don’t think he’s in hell).
REMEMBER: Some saints had to go to purgatory for a small amount of time to purge them of some minor imperfections.
With the church an heretical wreck, rotting from the inside, due to decades of Modernist rule (did not St Pius X refer to Modernism as the ‘syntheses of all heresies?’), how can anyone know who will be saved, let alone who is a martyr?
He said Begone Satan but he didn’t say Credo or I would rather die than leave my Faith. We also know that he was very friendly with the Muslims next door. We know nothing about his life or his every day pressching. He may be in Heaven but we can’t get behind a canonization cause without more proof.