The Tablet, ‘The International Catholic Weekly’, has published a book review that dismisses and ridicules the early Christian martyrs. Teresa Morgan, a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, where she teaches ancient history, reviewed Candida Moss’ ‘The Myth of Persecution: how early Christians invented a story of persecution.’
Teresa Morgan writes:
‘On the contrary, the claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction. [...]
She does not gloss over the negative aspects of martyrdom, showing that some Christian martyrs look, in our terms, very like terrorists, attacking and killing other Christians who disagreed with their views; others look frankly suicidal, while a few went to their deaths prophesying eschatological torments for their persecutors with disturbing relish.
The myth of persecution, Moss argues, really established itself in the fourth century, mainly because it was good business. To be associated with a martyr gave status to a city, church or bishopric. Tombs and shrines attracted pilgrims, who needed places to stay, food, drink and souvenirs, all of which helped to boost local economies. In addition, as Moss suggests, stories of martyrdom were, and remain, popular because they are exciting, providing the faithful with strong, colourful narratives of good and evil in which good always wins in the end.
Protect the Pope comment: A quote from the Divine Office: ‘In the first persecution against the Church, that of the Emperor Nero, after the City of Rome had been burnt in the year 64, many of the faithful suffered death after terrible tortures. Testimony to their deaths is found in the writings of the pagan Tacitus (Annales, 15, 44) as well as in the letter to the Corinthians of Pope Saint Clement (cap.5-6).’
At secular universities where scepticism, doubt and suspicion are fundamental preconceptions it is unsurprising that academics would seek to de-construct the Church’s testimony to the sufferings of the early Christian martyrs. However, scepticism, doubt and suspicion naturally create a stunted, distorted view of history and human behaviour, which we clearly see in this book review. With God and the working of grace excluded a priori, both author and book reviewer are only capable of offering mundane or self-serving motives for the cult of martyrs.
Sadly, it is also unsurprising that The Tablet would publish a review of a book that both equally seek to dismiss and ridicule the memory of our early Christian martyrs. This after all is the Tablet’s stock-in-trade now, rubbishing the sacred Traditions of the Catholic Church all in the name of ‘the spirit of Vatican II’.
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/