As I read Clara’s latest comment, it came to me that one problem that exists in any exchange that includes killing is a strongly held presupposition based on a mistranslation of the 5th Commandment. Most, if not all, current translations of the Bible translate it as: thou shalt not kill. And even if they don’t, ask any Chirstian what the 5th commandment is and they will tell you “thou shalt not kill.” It is the basis for Biblical arguments against capital punishment and the just war theory. The only problem is that it is incorrect. It is a mistranslation. The correct translation is: Thou shalt not murder. The Bible does not forbid killing. God does not forbid killing. God forbids murder, the direct voluntary killing of the innocent. That puts many situations in a very differnt light. In any discussion of Catholic morality we must remember that the premise of moral theology is not “thou shalt not kill” but rather “thou shalt not murder.”

Though it might be extremely difficult because of our conditioning–and we have been very strongly conditioned–to leave the wounded soldier or let the Christian prisoners be tortured and killed, one cannot argue that it is morally wrong based on the 5th commandment. Arguments must alwyas be based on premises that are true. If not, the conclusions are absolutely fallacious. The same goes for understanding a conclusion. One must know the premises on which the conclusion is based.

(I feel myself ready to go off on a rant about the apalling state of education in the USA so I’m stopping now.)

To me, that seems like a pretty strong command. He doesn’t give an “out” clause, and the martyrs seem to have assumed that there wasn’t one. I suppose you might say that trampling the cross isn’t the same as denying Christ. I would disagree, but we needn’t argue that point, because you can just tweak the example to one where the Japanese are demanding that the priest verbally deny Christ in order that the prisoners be released.

By the way, I recently read an account of the martyrdom of St. Thomas More that stated that he was unsure of his ability to be faithful until death. This did not appear to affect his ultimate decision.

This is how I mentally prepare for martyrdom: I have acrophobia. When I am in a situation where I must face a height, I am as afraid as if I were facing death. I cope by telling myself that fighting back my fear is practice in case I must ever face death for Christ.

Of course, I’ve never been in the position of Endo’s priest, (nor am I likely to be.) But I find that a similar strategy sometimes works with other temptations… for example, temptations to lust. Throughout my youth I was taught about the dangers of lust, and I was aware that a time might come when I would be tempted to break with my traditional strictures against, for example, fornication. And I always promised myself, “But I won’t submit. I will not. That would be contrary to my character.”
Such a time did eventually come, and as I anticipated, a thousand rationalizations flitted through my mind (and unfortunately, these days, the justification, “almost everyone I know does this” is often true.) But I didn’t have to fall back on intellectual arguments, because there was a much stronger, almost visceral reaction: “this is wrong, and I would never be able to live with myself if I did this. An important part of my character would be destroyed through this sin.”

That was strong enough to work. I’ve known people who said of fornication, “Well, I think this is wrong, but we’ll see how I feel about it when an actual situation arises.” Terrible, terrible idea… I can tell you how you’ll feel about it then, and it’s not the sort of feeling that will help you make good decisions.

I don’t know from experience, but doesn’t it seem that martyrdom might be like that? If you say, “Well, I’ll see how it goes, can’t be sure yet how strong I am,” you will very likely submit to the fear when the occasion arises. If you tell yourself, not pridefully, but fervently, imploringly, hopefully: “I will make the right choice. I will be faithful, even to death, so help me God” you might just succeed in mastering the fear if such an occasion does arise. Your gut, not your head, will tell you what to do at that point.

And, with all that said, I did want to say a few more words to JK, if you’re still reading this thread. I know it’s very unlikely that any of us will ever be in such a dramatic situation as Endo portrays, but I think this is important nonetheless. Whether or not we’re ever actually called to act, virtue means being ready to act rightly whenever it should prove necessary. Now, you said, “I do not have the wisdom or authority to make decisions about who should die. I must act whenever possible to preserve life.”

It wasn’t completely clear to me whether the bit about lacking wisdom and authority was meant to refer only to the burning of heretics, or to Endo’s case as well. If you only mean that you don’t feel authorized to go around burning heretics on your own initiative, then fine. I’d call that wise. But if you’d extend the argument to Endo’s case, I think there may be some things you haven’t fully understood.

You’re right, of course, that we’re called to serve our neighbors, and to preserve life, and normally a commitment to helping others goes nicely hand-in-hand with a Christian life. Nonetheless, we are clearly told that life is not the most important thing, and there are times when Christ must be chosen above human life, whether our own or someone else’s. You may never have to make that choice, but if you can’t, your dispositions are disordered in a serious way. You can’t really love God above all things if you’re not willing to choose Him first.

It occurred to me today that a military analogy might help make this clear. Suppose you’re serving in the army, under a commander who you know to be intelligent, wise, brave and compassionate. You’re fighting for a cause you know to be important and just. Now, as a soldier, you’ll have a number of duties, and you’re basically expected to fulfill all of them, but you’re given to understand that some are more important than others. In cases of emergency, you’re permitted to let the lesser ones slide. So, for example, you’re supposed to keep your bunk neat, and you might on some particular evening have guard duty, or be expected to help with dinner or to do the laundry or some such chore. But if, on your way to your kitchen duties, you find a comrade wounded in a ditch, sorely in need of assistance, it’s okay to neglect the dirty dishes so you can help him to the hospital. You won’t be reprimanded once it becomes clear what you were doing.

But now suppose that your commander calls his men together and tells you all that he has an important mission for you. He warns you that some of you will almost certainly be killed as you try to execute your duties, but the objective is so vitally important that you are ordered to press on and not stop to help wounded comrades. You must complete the mission at all costs.

Do you doubt that there might be circumstances where a military commander needed to give those orders? Helping your fellow soldiers is normally quite compatible with your larger military objectives, but in a few cases, you need to be able to look beyond that, or you will seriously endanger the goals for which all of you are fighting. So suppose that you, as a solder, go to your commanding officer and say, “I’m sorry, but if I see a comrade go down, I won’t just be able to leave him there. I’ll have to abandon the offensive to help him to safety. It would weigh on my conscience if I left him behind. I must act whenever possible to preserve life, and I don’t have the authority to consign someone else to death.”

Your commander would be right to reply, “My authority is what counts here, and I’m telling you to complete the mission at all costs. Do you think you love these soldiers more than I do? And yet, I understand what must be done, and know that there are things worse for them than an honorable death. But as for you: if you insist on letting your feelings distract you from your mission, you are worthless to me as a soldier, and you cannot be trusted with military work of any importance.”

I imagine you’ve seen where this analogy is going. We are all soldiers, if we have been confirmed as Catholics. We are soldiers in the army of Jesus Christ. And we have standing orders, from the lips of our commander Himself, that we may not deny Him before men, no matter what the consequences. Do you think, when he said that, that He didn’t realize what it would cost for some members of His flock? Don’t you think He cares about them more than any of us ever could? He is the wisest and most compassionate of commanders, and He has given this to us as a part of our mission. If you resolve yourself to “preserve life” even in cases where Our Lord has given instructions to the contrary, you make it impossible to commit yourself to Him completely. And then you become as useless as the soldier who replied, “sorry, but those orders don’t feel good to me.” You aren’t willing to trust Him completely, and thus, you yourself are untrustworthy in doing His work.

I’m afraid this sounds harsher than I mean for it to sound, but it’s just difficult to get my point across in another way. But I do think it’s imperative for us all to grasp this point: there are things worse than death, and we must all be prepared to do what’s necessary for Christ’s sake, be that dying, or killing, or witnessing the deaths of others we could have saved. If people can understand why such sacrifices are sometimes necessary for human goals (as in war), we can surely resign ourselves to making equally large sacrifices for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

But I would believe myself to be committing such a sin and I would feel responsible for the harm. No matter what intellectual arguments are made, I could not live with myself having people tortured when I could have prevented it. I could live with trampling on the cross. This may be a sign that my conscience is improperly formed; I would, nevertheless, violate my conscience if I acted as you recommend.

When you say that it is moral to execute people for various types of offenses, that may be true. But it is not moral for me to perform such executions. I do not have the wisdom or authority to make decisions about who should die. I must act whenever possible to preserve life.

Fr. Scott Baily, thank you for clarifying the distinction you were making.

“Fr. Scott Baily, are you saying that threat of death never constitutes a mitigating factor or only in the case of apostacy? Neither of these positions makes much sense to me. Perhaps I am misunderstanding.”

I am saying exactly that. And there is an error in the last line of my last post. It should read: So THREAT of death is not considered something that takes away the will’s freedom to act.

The threat of death never constitutes a mitigating factor. However the fear brought about by the threat of death does. They are two different things. The threat of death might be the cause of fear, but it is fear which takes away our freedom to act. A robber has a gun to my head. I am threatened with death. Because of the threat I am overtaken by fear. Fear, like all strong emotions, clouds my ability to reason and choose how to respond in a situation. So, rather than acting based on what I know to be true (threat, moral law, divine law, life circumstances, etc.) I react based on fear. It is similar to a young couple who meet and fall madly in love and decide to immediately get married. They are reacting to their feelings. The Church generally requires a period of waiting because given the strength of their emotion and feelings they are unable to contract a valid marriage. Their feelings do not allow them to make the free rational choice of one for the other for life that is the heart of the marriage contract. Love is a choice freely made. Being in love is a feeling, at times a very strong feeling over which, just like fear, we have no control.

It’s emotions and feelings that mitigate freedom

It is simplistic to say that this was the reasoning behind the burning of heretics. The spiritual is superior to the physical, period. It is moral to execute murderers, seditionists, traitors, etc. Heresy murders the soul and constitutes sedition and treason against God. If it is moral to execute those who undermine the state, a temporal entity, it is moral to execute those who undermine the Church, a spiritual entity. That was the reasoning behind the Inquisition and the execution of heretics. It was not a Machiavellian system in which innocent lives were deemed “expendable” for a greater good. Rather, these people were deemed guilty of capital offenses.

“I just don’t trust myself with permission to say that lives are expendable.”

No one here said that lives were expendable. We are claiming that the person who refuses to trample on the cross is not responsible for the deaths of the people in question. They are still murder victims, but of the persecutors. If we said their lives were “expendable,” we would not view their deaths as murder.

“It is in just the same way that love of neighbour and perfect charity for God are not at odds.”

But you would not be committing a sin against love of neighbor by refusing to trample a cross, even if the persecutors killed people on account of your choice. As Father noted, you would not be responsible for any harm done to them, so you would not be failing to love them.

You are aware that you can actually have supernatural charity for a person at the same time you are killing them, right? The cop who shoots a hostile bank robber, or the soldier who kills an opponenent in a just war, or the executioner in a death chamber, or the father of a family who shoots a violent housebreaker may all have deep and true supernatural charity at the same moment they are killing someone. In the hypothetical situation here, the person who refuses to trample on a cross is not even responsible for another’s death. I don’t see how he is failing in charity for his neighbor. So he is bound to honor Christ by not trampliing on the cross.

I am very nervous about this line of reasoning, since, as I understand it, this was the justification for the burning of heretics. I just don’t trust myself with permission to say that lives are expendable.

Tobias Petrus, I concede that legitimate self-interest and perfect charity for God are not at odds. It is in just the same way that love of neighbour and perfect charity for God are not at odds.

Fr. Scott Baily, are you saying that threat of death never constitutes a mitigating factor or only in the case of apostacy? Neither of these positions makes much sense to me. Perhaps I am misunderstanding.

In the case of the Jesuit in England when asked:

Q. “Are you a Catholic priest?”
A. “No” (out loud) . . . I will not answer your question (in his mind)

This is an example of a strict mental reservation. It is clearly immoral.

A moral truth is the outward expression of that which is known. The words of the priest express what he knows is not true. Adding “I will not answer your question” in his mind does not change the fact that he is expressing what he knows is not true. He is lying to save his life. This is never permissable as a lie is intrinsically evil and an evil may never be done even if the outcome is for a good. The only time one may lie is when there is a conflict between justice and veracity (e.g. the obligation to keep the seal of the confessional) in which case justice prevails.

Someone comes to the door and asks:

Q. “Is Jane home?”
A. “No, she isn’t home (to you).”
The words “to you” are not spoken.

But in fact she is home and doesn’t want to see the visitor. The response is called an equivocation or an amphibology (from which we get our word ‘fib’). When used for a good (not to hurt another person, to save a life, to prevent discord, etc.) it is morally acceptable. The meaning of the speaker is “She isn’t home to you.” The speaker is not lying. He is expressing what he knows to be true, namely that Jane isn’t home to the person at the door. He is reserving mentally part of his response. This is an example of wide mental reservation.

The question of intent doesn’t enter into the morality of either wide or strict mental reservation. One is sinful, the other is not. It is important not to confuse intent with with mental reservation. Intent is an act of the will whereby a desired end is reached. This is known as actual intention. It does not change truth. Just because I don’t intend to do something doesn’t mean that I haven’t,in fact, done it. Sacramental intention is something different. It is the intention to do what Christ instituted the sacraments to effect.

Lets apply this to the case of the martyrs Clara presented. He cannot take advantage of wide mental reservation. That he believes in Christ is a personal truth that cannot be equivocated on. It demands a yes or no response. Therefore he cannot justify trampling the cross and thinking “for you Japanese I do not believe” because it is still a denial of Christ even if only to one person. The same applies to offering incense to a pagan god or bowing before a pagan image.

Canon 1324 is dealing with canonical penalties not moral acts. It’s interest is those who have committed a crime (broken a law) and, due to mitigating circumstances, should be sentenced to a lesser penalty. In the legal forum denial of Christ is not a crime so the canon bears no relevence. Denial of Christ is an immoral act or sin.

The moral forum and the legal forum are related but they are not the same thing. Legal principles and moral principles are not interchangeable though they may be similar. Keep in mind law is the body of laws and regulations made by or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. When one breaks a law one commits a crime which is also a sin. Morality is about the relationship of man and his free actions to God and his supernatural end, It proposes the means instituted by God for the attainment of that end. When one acts immorally one commits sin and may or may not also commit a crime.

If one is compelled by grave fear or indeed any circumstance which mitigates the freedom of the will, then the sin is venial. As you know, one of the three conditions for committing a mortal sin is full consent of the will. If there is a lack of freedom, then there cannot be full consent since the will is not free to act. Threat of death might seem like a mitigating factor but it is not. For a Christian death is a joyful transition from this life to the next. It is also the natural physical end of man in the sense that none will escape it and only our Lady has. So fear of death is not considered something that takes away the will’s freedom to act.

Furthermore, apostasy on the part of an adult Christian, even under duress, would still be a mortal sin. We are called to be soldiers of Christ, and soldiers are not supposed to desert or defect, no matter how bad the conflict gets. Their sin would be less culpable the greater the torture or threat is, but is a mortal sin nonetheless. The martyrs went to their deaths because they *knew* that to cave in would be a damnable sin. When apostates were reconciled with the Church, they were treated as particularly egregious public sinners, not as perpetrators of merely venial faults.

Consider the principle shown in Can. 1324 point 5: “The perpretrator of a violation is not exempted from penalty, but the penalty prescribed in the law or precept must be diminished, or a penance substituted in its place, if the offence was committed by:

one who was compelled by grave fear, even if only relative, or by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience, if the act is intrinsically evil or tends to be harmful to souls;”

Based on this, I conclude that, while it is not “okay” to deny Christ under threat of death, it is not a mortal sin, but venial only. Wouldn’t this make the actions of martyrs more meritorious? If they refuse to deny Christ when the alternative is Hell, there is an element of self-interest in their action. If the denial is a venial sin, the refusal to deny becomes more purely a gift to God.

Your example of the secret Jesuit seems to be one of “strict mental reservation”. Which was “acted upon by some of the Catholic confessors of the Faith in England in the difficult circumstances in which they were frequently placed. It was, however, condemned as formulated by Sanchez by Innocent XI on March 2, 1679 (propositions 26, 27). After this condemnation by the Holy See no Catholic theologian has defended the lawfulness of strict mental reservations.”

“In the strict mental reservation the speaker mentally adds some qualification to the words which he utters, and the words together with the mental qualification make a true assertion in accordance with fact. On the other hand, in a wide mental reservation, the qualification comes from the ambiguity of the words themselves, or from the circumstances of time, place, or person in which they are uttered.”

There’s more there, but it’s confusing…

Q. “Are you a Catholic priest?”
A. “No” (out loud) . . . I will not answer your question (in his mind)

I’m not sure what the Church ever said about such things.

I’m not sure the analogy works… If a robber has your daughter tied up in the next room and says sign this contract to pay me a million dollars or I kill her you can in fact sign the contract and it won’t be valid because it’s signed under duress.

As for the idea of mental reservation, the Catholic Encylopedia article is useful:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10195b.htm

Thanks, Fr. Bailey — this is a critical point. And as a philosopher I should have thought to point that out! Of course, the case is potentially confusing just because we normally would think it obligatory to take steps to stop others from being tortured and killed. So, for example, put yourself in the same situation, except this time the Japanese don’t want you to trample the cross… they just want your wallet. And you don’t want to give it to them because it’s payday, your week’s wages are in the wallet, and you’d been looking forward to spending them on a weekend trip. So you say, “Hey, what the Japanese do is their business; it’s got nothing to do with me.”

Well, that does look like the bad kind of casuistry. You’ve got to be pretty callous to let several people suffer and die rather than sacrifice your wallet. The difference, of course, is that giving up your wallet isn’t sinful. Trampling the cross is gravely sinful, so we have to apply the Catholic principle: do no evil that good may come of it. Desecrating the cross isn’t something we’re ever allowed to do, under any circumstances. So we aren’t responsible for the consequences if others decide to do evil on account of our choosing good.

Given your premises I think your logic is correct. One may never reject Christ for any reason. But I’m not sure this answers the delemma.

So, lets complicate the issue.

What if the missionarys intent in trampling the cross is to save lives, not to deny Christ: may he trample the cross?

When is a cross a cross and when is it two pieces of wood? What makes it a cross? Could he not have been trampling two pieces of wood?

Is trampling a cross always a denial of Christ? Is it always a denial of Christ in feudal Japan? Is it always a sacrilege?

Christians aren’t the only ones for whom the cross is a religious symbol. What if the cross is meant for pagan use?

By not trampling the cross was the missionary seeking the glory of martyrdom at the cost of the lives of others? Is this moral?

What other complications can we come up with?

This is what Redemptorists once called the Moral Forum or Moral Case which communities discussed every week. Now it’s called theological reflection, a name I don’t particularly care for. A situation was presented and looked at from as many angles as the confreres could come up with. The importance is the process, not the results, because it gets people thinking and studying among other things.

The key to this case is that it seems to be complicated by the other prisoners. The missionary’s choices seem to be: trample the cross and everyone lives or don’t trample the cross and the other prisoners are tortured and die. These are not his choices. His choices are to trample the cross or not trample the cross. That the Japanese may torture and kill the other prisoners is not his responsibility and it cannot be put on him. It is on the Japanese and only the Japanese. Take the other prisoners out of the equation and the answer is very clear. The missionary may not trample the cross for to do so would be a denial of Christ. Saving the others just doesn’t enter into it at all.

*********

Angela’s Ashes…. well, how can I speak favorably about a book/movie that portrays my confreres in such a negative way? Ahem. Actually, I found both book and movie to be depressing but if I recall correctly I did enjoy the book. I was told by those who were there and lived it that it was a pretty accurate portrayal of life in Ireland at the time even regarding the Church and the clergy.