Commentary: Martyrdom

By David Magallanes / Guest contributor

We all know members of our family who are “martyrs.” My American Heritage Dictionary defines a martyr, in the most literal sense, as “one who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles.” A martyr is also “one who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause or principle.” Furthermore (bingo!), there is yet another definition to best describe those members of the family that we all know and love: “One who makes a great show of suffering in order to arouse sympathy.”

Stereotypically, it is the moms and grandmas who engage in this behavior, but men are certainly not immune to being great actors in this drama as well. And “drama” is the perfect word to describe the antics of those who succumb to the manipulation of others with their show of martyrdom.

Now let’s add to this universal trait a layer of culture that extols and elevates martyrdom to near-divine status; stir in a roiling religious fervor, and voilà! we have Mexican Catholicism.

Catholicism in Mexico is different from that in parts of the U.S. that are not yet Hispanicized.  A visit to practically any church in Mexico tends to shock those who have not grown up in the Mexican culture. “It looks like there’s so much blood on the statues!” is a common shrill observation. “Gory” is how some describe it more bluntly.

The Spanish conquerors brought this sanguinary version of the Catholic faith to Mexico in the 16th century. Conveniently for the new masters, the Aztecs whom they conquered were no less enthralled by the shedding of blood as sacrifice and already had the custom of performing bloody penances to the gods, such as piercing their tongues and generally making themselves bleed with other customs and rituals. In some ways, the new religion being forced upon the indigenous victims was a “good fit” with what they already had. In this way, some of the precepts of Spanish Catholicism, including the belief in a risen savior, seemed quite familiar to the natives.

For the sons and daughters of the sun god Huitzilopochtli, martyrdom was as elevated a concept as in the Catholic Church. Hence for modern Mexicans as well as for us Americans of Mexican heritage, the glories of martyrdom are mutually reinforced by both our native Mexican and Spanish origins. We can’t escape it — it’s embedded into our psyches right along with maize and mariachis. In the Mexican Catholic community, the faithful are often encouraged to endure and to sacrifice.

As children, we at the Catholic schools were often encouraged, both at home and at school, to “offer up” our physical and emotional suffering for the “poor souls in purgatory” — a form of martyrdom held up as a way to earn points for ourselves or for the “poor souls” toward eventual entry into heaven. I distinctly remember being told somewhere around fifth grade that if we were ever asked to deny our Catholic faith, we were to refuse to do so, even to the point of choosing death instead. This overt form of martyrdom was touted as a no-questions-asked “go directly to heaven” pass, regardless of one’s sordid past, which would instantaneously be entirely forgiven.

Within my extended Catholic family, people’s worthiness was judged to be directly proportional to the amount of suffering in their lives. People who were rich and comfortable ranked the lowest. Members of the family who had sacrificed their lives or endured deprivations and unhappiness were declared to be “saints.”

The grand prize in my father’s family tree is reserved for San Mateo Correa Magallanes, canonized fairly recently in the year 2000. I can see him on the Magallanes family tree, which begins in 1777 with the arrival of Juan Magallanes from Valencia, Spain. Father Correa is removed by several degrees from my grandparents and died a martyr in 1927, several years after all my Mexican grandparents arrived in the U.S. Both this sainted family member and my grandparents were victims of the horrendous persecution of Catholics by the Mexican government in that era.

The series of events that led to the martyrdom of my relative indicate to me that he was noble and principled — a priest of high integrity. He did not lose his life ignominiously.   Whether or not we believe that his death, given the circumstances, warranted that guaranteed entry into heaven, most people would think that he died honorably and that he deserves recognition. According to Wikipedia, in accordance with early family accounts I’d heard years before Wikipedia ever appeared, General Eulogio Ortiz requested that Fr. Correa listen to the confessions of imprisoned “Cristeros.” The Cristeros, of which one of my uncles on my mother’s side was a member, were, as I call them, Catholic militants waging guerilla warfare against the persecuting government forces.

In the Catholic faith, the “seal of confession” is considered sacred, and priests, who listen to a penitents’ sins, are admonished to uphold, even if it means martyrdom, the sacred trust within the confessional. General Ortiz demanded that Fr. Correa, having heard the prisoners’ confessions, divulge all that he had heard. Fr. Correa Magallanes, cognizant of the inviolability of the confidence placed in him, refused. The general pointed a gun to his head, but the priest continued to honor the seal of confession.

The following day, Fr. Correa was taken to the cemetery on the outskirts of Durango and executed — shot through the head.

In a both comforting and chillingly stark analysis of martyrdom, Arnold Bennett states, in his book “How To Live on 24 Hours a Day,” to which I referred a couple of columns ago: “All martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their principles agree.”

This is both comforting and extremely unsettling. Martyrdom is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, we know that martyrs like Fr. Correa, whose principles generally match ours, die knowing that they are not “selling out,” not betraying their very core principles; as a result, as frightening as it may be for them, they die with the conviction of their truth. We honor such martyrs.

On the other hand, martyrs in the Middle East who blow themselves up along with innocent shoppers, diners and schoolchildren also die convinced that they are noble and worthy of eternal reward. We don’t honor those martyrs (quite the contrary), but Islamist extremists do.

It was recently reported that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the infamous “underwear bomber” who tried to take down a crowded airplane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, was joyous upon learning of his lifetime sentence to prison; after all, he felt that he had honorably fulfilled his obligation to “jihad,” and remained convinced of his eventual eternal reward. This reflects exactly Bennett’s thoughts in his book, written in the early twentieth century: “If [burglars] genuinely believed in the moral excellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy years for them…”

The concept of martyrdom, then, is “complicated.” From our cultural and religious perspective, martyrs may indeed be deserving of sainthood and eternal bliss, or at least an honorable mention at Sunday Mass; we might likewise feel, as in the case of suicide bombers, that they are worthy of eternal damnation and the wrath of all the powers of heaven and hell.

Hence, we as inhabitants of this earth will never agree amongst ourselves on what exactly constitutes holy martyrdom.

But now let’s see if we can apply this notion of supreme sacrifice to our lives. What if we were to ask ourselves the questions that demand reflection and honesty with ourselves? For what are we willing to sacrifice our comfort, our fortune, or even our lives? For parents, our children spring to mind as we ask those Big Questions. The answers may not come easily. We may not even want to go there. But by answering, if nothing else, we will learn a lot about ourselves and come face-to-face with what really, truly matters to us.

— David Magallanes is embarking on a speaking and writing career whose purpose is to promote and facilitate the attainment of the American Dream. As an optimistic American of Mexican descent, he brings his perspective on issues of our day. He may be contacted for speaking requests or for commentary at adelantos@msn.com