14-Year-Old girl Who Was killed for Resisting Rape May Be Canonized. Her Story Like That of Saint Maria Goretti

[Sarcelle]

I mean, all people resist rape. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be rape

Rape is forced and is against the victim’s will.

I’ve heard of a case where someone was raped while in a coma. A woman who had spent months in a coma was found out to be in the early stages of pregnancy meaning someone had sex with her while she was in a coma. Of course she didn’t resist, she was in a coma.

Is this case rape or not?

 

[stpurl]

How do you know? Please link to the entire article. Even assuming you are right, this stigma etc is not Catholic teaching, was not Catholic teaching, and has NOTHING at all to do with the article from the OP.

You claim the parents did so ‘because of the negative stigma’ instead of "because the parents would rather have the girls die a quick death instead of being brutally raped first and THEN killed, which was the pattern of attack by Turks. No prisoners, i.e., rape, then kill.

As another poster mentioned regarding 9/11, people leaped to their deaths because they were facing being burned to death. They were hoping, not to avoid death itself, or trying to commit suicide, but to have a less PAINFUL death.

If you can’t see that (and I still say the parents were wrong, because they forced the girls, and the girls did not choose) the parents were probably trying to ensure their children had as little physical suffering in death as possible, much as in the old westerns the husband, facing Indian attack and the potential rape and/or murder of the wife, would shoot her first and then go down in a blaze of gunfire, I guess you just won’t hear.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Oh I guess you’d have to read the book, “Eleni,” by Nicholas Gage.

He provided the story about the parents throwing their daughters off a cliff rather than have them raped, and he provides their motivation.

 

[stpurl]

Thanks for the book suggestion, but since the villagers in question were Greek Orthodox just coming off WW2 and dealing with communism, and this was ONE village and the young man was looking into the death of his mother 40 years or so later, I think that we can safely put aside the premise that the ‘rape stigma’ is attached particularly to Catholic Christianity and that it led to wholesale slaughter of children by their own parents.

Of course considering that the woman Eleni was apparently brutally abused and then killed, it looks like facing angry Turks and rape wouldn’t lead to survival in the end anyway. . .

 

[stpurl]

May I ask a question here? How do those of you who find the idea of this woman’s deciding to fight to the death rather than being raped, and that this is an act of heroic virtue, feel about St. Maria Goretti?

Just as a comparison.

We know that St. Maria Goretti also pleaded aloud for her attacker to repent (and he later did), but she wasn’t canonized for that, was she?

In his Homily for the Beatification, Pius XII elaborated further on why the Church was declaring Maria Goretti a Blessed servant of God. It was for her heroic virtue in preferring to sacrifice her life rather than commit a sin against the holy virtue of purity:

“Maria Goretti resembled St. Agnes in her characteristic virtue of Fortitude. This virtue of Fortitude is at the same time the safeguard as well as the fruit of virginity. Our new beata was strong and wise and fully aware of her dignity. That is why she professed death before sin. She was not twelve years of age when she shed her blood as a martyr, nevertheless what foresight, what energy she showed when aware of danger! She was on the watch day and night to defend her chastity, making use of all the means at her disposal, persevering in prayer and entrusting the lily of her purity to the special protection of Mary, the Virgin of virgins. Let us admire the fortitude of the pure of heart. It is a mysterious strength far above the limits of human nature and even above ordinary Christian virtue.”

 

[Sarcelle]

So being raped is a sin against the virtue of chastity and purity?

 

[stpurl]

No. Rape is a sin against the virtue of chastity and purity. I do not believe Pope Pius XII was saying that being raped is sinful, do you?

 

[Sarcelle]

It was for her heroic virtue in preferring to sacrifice her life rather than commit a sin against the holy virtue of purity:

This is what I was referring to.

How do you explain this?

If she didn’t sacrifice her life and was raped instead, she would have committed a sin against purity.

If there is anyone committing sin, it would be the rapist not the victim.

 

[stpurl]

As I understand Catholic teaching, and so, if in any of this I do not articulate correctly, please take that as MY error and not the Church’s, but as I understand it, and as I believe it has always been understood, rape is a sin against purity and chastity. Virginity should be highly protected by both the individual and society. Where it is lost through rape, the rapist is the one who commits the sin against God and against the woman whose virginity he has STOLEN. Her physical virginity is something that cannot be restored, and the emotional and mental anguish that is inflicted on her is to be abhored, while she herself is guiltless of personal sin against chastity and purity. While she is no longer a virgin in the physical sense, her innate dignity as a person who has been unjustly attacked makes her a model of the suffering Christ.

In particular, St. Maria Goretti, who had long fought against the ever increasing suggestions of her attacker, in which he ultimately tried to force her, was unsuccessful, and angrily stabbed her, so that she died the next day, showed heroic resistance and a heroic determination to preserve the virgin purity which she received from God and which she wished to preserve as far as she possibly could.

She is the patron of rape VICTIMS as well because it is the unfortunate case that even those women who fight back can be overcome. . .and ‘fighting back’ is not limited to physical means, but can also be done emotionally; if one is physically unable.

This young girl in the OP apparently had lived a similar life; her friends, like Maria’s friends, spoke of her strong faith and her strong desire to remain chaste and pure for her Almighty Father.

 

[stpurl]

No, I think you’re missing that her attacker wanted her to CONSENT to sex. She refused. The sin against purity would have been her consenting to sex. She refused.

Women who are raped do not consent. Therefore they do not sin.

That’s why St. Maria is the patron saint of rape victims. . .they do not consent to sins against purity either.

 

[Sarcelle]

Okay.

I see your point.

 

[ShrodingersCat]

This is kind of a rude reply to a post on a public forum asking for clarification on something that you posted, which very strongly seemed to imply that virgins were of more value than non-virgins. I did not mean to be provocative, but I found your response rather shocking and was seeking clarification.

In my opinion, there is no inherent value in virginity

Which is why I prefaced it with “in my opinion”. And the way you have quoted me puts the quote out of context and does not accurately represent my opinion.

 

[adgloriam]

I’m currently engaged elsewhere, but I’ll get those saint JPII quotes regarding the value of virginity.

So you are saying a woman who has had sex has less value than a woman who has not had sex?

1st The person has inherent value, in the order of his/her dignity - that is not diminished nor taken away.

In my opinion, there is no inherent value in virginity other than how it is intrinsically connected to the virtue of chastity (before marriage).

2nd The person also has “individual value” and no 2 persons have the exact same value, some have values that others don’t. And in that order virginity is valuable, a plus. Saint Tomas Aquinas said humility is not exaggerating nor downplaying our value, pertaining to any of the countless values we might, or not, have. So virginity is a value, and valuable.

Quoting saint JPII: “a sexual value.”

This is kind of a rude reply

It is not rude, it is assertive. I would suggest, in charity and truth, that you ask yourself what the negative effects are on a person guarding his/her virginity (and/or aspiring to value virginity), when someone walks up to them saying, like you did:“imo, there is no inherent value in virginity…” (apart a vague relation to a virtue you establish as exception.)

What about the inherit symbolic violence you do upon someone by blatantly devaluing (their) virginity out flat? Hitting them in their sexuality and intimacy, irresponsably relativizing/devaluing a value they indeed have, and keep.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

What about men who have had sex?

Virginity defintely applies to men too. Well not in the physical sense, but in the Catholic one.

Her physical virginity is something that cannot be restored, and the emotional and mental anguish that is inflicted on her is to be abhored, while she herself is guiltless of personal sin against chastity and purity.

Physical virginity isn’t actually virginity or even a virtue. Only being free from consensual venereal pleasure is what matters in this aspect of the virtue. I get the point but focusing on physical virginity might be the wrong way to talk about it.

 

[JimG]

Virginity

Virginity: Morally, virginity signifies the reverence for bodily integrity which is suggested by a virtuous motive. More from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

www.catholic.com

 

[ShrodingersCat]

Thank you for that link, it is very useful. From the article (which puts it more elegantly than I could):

“It has been sometimes asked whether there is a special virtue of virginity; and in spite of the affirmative answer of some authors, and of the text of St. Thomas, II-II, Q. chi, a. 3, the statement of which cannot be taken literally, the question must be answered in the negative.”

 

[gingko]

I don’t know if this has already been said, but sometimes resisting a rapist can only go so far when you consider the fact that men are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. The average woman isn’t going to have the physical strength to always fight off an attacker.

In the case of Maria Goretti and Vivian Ogu, both girls had the opportunity to speak to their attackers and verbally resist. Unfortunately, most girls and women don’t have that chance.