Maria Goretti

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shelby2014

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Why is Maria Goretti the patron of purity?
I understand her story is that she was martyred by a man who was trying to rape her. I watched a movie on it (not sure what was dramatization or not) but I’m having trouble with this. Being a rape victim and being sexually impure are two entirely different things. Is the church saying that being raped is a sin, and that we should rather die than be raped? If I were a rape victim, I think it would add insult to injury…they have enough to go through.

Also, in the movie I saw from Ignatius press, the girl was attacked several times before being murdered and never reported it to her parents. She was killed in a house with her family right outside and never even screamed. She did not run away when given a chance. I don’t know how much of that was dramatization or what was based on accurate accounts. (Can someone help with that?) But I would not use that movie as any kind of role model for my kids…
 
shelby2014 said:
Why is Maria Goretti the patron of purity?
I understand her story is that she was martyred by a man who was trying to rape her. I watched a movie on it (not sure what was dramatization or not) but I’m having trouble with this. Being a rape victim and being sexually impure are two entirely different things. Is the church saying that being raped is a sin, and that we should rather die than be raped? If I were a rape victim, I think it would add insult to injury…they have enough to go through.

Also, in the movie I saw from Ignatius press, the girl was attacked several times before being murdered and never reported it to her parents. She was killed in a house with her family right outside and never even screamed. She did not run away when given a chance. I don’t know how much of that was dramatization or what was based on accurate accounts. (Can someone help with that?) But I would not use that movie as any kind of role model for my kids…
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Dear friend

We are all called on to practise heroic virtue and make heroic sacrifices for Christ in our lives at times. Little Maria chose martyrdom rather than allow herself to be violated. It is the right choice for a christian. We cannot choose sin over death as followers of christ. To give ones life requires very heroic virtue though. We saw a ton of this with the first christians. We all must die so one way to see it is what better way to die than as a martyr if called to it.

A def follows. Hope this helps -

MARTYR. A person who chooses to suffer, even to die, rather than renounce his or her faith or Christian principles. After the example of Christ one does not resist one’s persecutors when they use violence out of hatred or malice against Christ, or his Church, or some revealed truth of the Catholic religion. (Etym. Greek martyros, witness, martyr.)

She was a very brave little girl. God bless her.

God bless you too:thumbsup:🙂

John
 
I would much rather die than be raped, personally. Of course, not every rape victim is given such a choice, but if they are not, then it is not their fault. I don’t think the intent was to suggest that victims of rape and child abuse are impure.

St. Maria is also the patron of forgiveness, because she forgave her murderer on her deathbed. He later converted while in prison, after a vision of her, and he testified at her canonization.

I would not rely on movies for accuracy.
 
I thought it was that she didn’t want him to commit a mortal sin.
 
shelby2014 said:
Why is Maria Goretti the patron of purity?
I understand her story is that she was martyred by a man who was trying to rape her. I watched a movie on it (not sure what was dramatization or not) but I’m having trouble with this. Being a rape victim and being sexually impure are two entirely different things. Is the church saying that being raped is a sin, and that we should rather die than be raped? If I were a rape victim, I think it would add insult to injury…they have enough to go through.

Also, in the movie I saw from Ignatius press, the girl was attacked several times before being murdered and never reported it to her parents. She was killed in a house with her family right outside and never even screamed. She did not run away when given a chance. I don’t know how much of that was dramatization or what was based on accurate accounts. (Can someone help with that?) But I would not use that movie as any kind of role model for my kids…
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St. Maria Goretti did say “No, no, it is a sin” to her attacker. She also prayed for him while he was stabbing her.

It was my understanding that her folks were in the fields tending to farming.

It is true that some movies take liberties with what actually happened.

Her attacker was converted while in prison when he had a dream in which he saw (fourteen?) lilies, and that was the number of times he had stabbed Maria.
 
Maria defended her purity. She told her attacker “No! Don’t do it, this is a sin!” And she forgave him as well.

-Jeanne
 
shelby2014 said:
Why is Maria Goretti the patron of purity?
I understand her story is that she was martyred by a man who was trying to rape her. I watched a movie on it (not sure what was dramatization or not) but I’m having trouble with this. Being a rape victim and being sexually impure are two entirely different things.
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That is correct.
shelby2014 said:
Is the church saying that being raped is a sin, and that we should rather die than be raped?
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Maria said that she would rather die than submit to being raped.

catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=78

A woman being raped can try to resist or can submit to her attacker out of fear of greater abuse or death. Submission can either involve actually personally participating in the sexual acts or making it easy for the attacker by failing to fight back. The former is a sin, though it wouldn’t be mortal in this case because by definition there cannot be “full consent” from both parties during a real rape. I don’t know if the latter is a sin or not, though if it is, it too would be venial. Maria did not want the least bit of consent to stain her soul, so she preferred to fight to the death. This is the highest course of action, preferring death to making the least bit of consent to a rape attempt, even if that consent would have been only passivity under threat.
shelby2014 said:
Also, in the movie I saw from Ignatius press, the girl was attacked several times before being murdered and never reported it to her parents. She was killed in a house with her family right outside and never even screamed. She did not run away when given a chance. I don’t know how much of that was dramatization or what was based on accurate accounts. (Can someone help with that?) But I would not use that movie as any kind of role model for my kids…
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According to this article from the American Catholic Organization, when the man tried to rape her at the time she was killed, she struggled to escape and called for help. So if the movie doesn’t present her as crying for help or trying to get away, it’s not representing the attack accurately.

I know the man harassed or attacked her several times before the murder. I don’t know if she reported it to her parents or not at that time. Perhaps she wanted to simply bear it for God, turn the other cheek, and not get the man into trouble. A great many of the saints endured suffering of many, many kinds in silence because they preferred to offer their pain up to God and for the sake of humility and mercy keep all wrongs perpetrated against them unknown to man. I can’t recall any case where Jesus, the apostles or the saints took someone to court or filed charges, though the Lord knows the saints endured more than enough to charge all sorts of people with crimes committed against them.

It is also possible that there was another reason for Maria’s silence after these earlier incidents, if she did remain silent. It is a well known fact that the majority of women who are sexually harassed don’t report it.
 
Maria’s father was dead. As I remember it, her family lived with a man and his son or they were boarding with the family. The teenage son was addicted to pornography. He wanted to experience what he was reading about. He made advances to Maria several times. He tried to talk her into doing what he wanted but she kept refusing. She kept the secret because she knew her mother was unable to move or kick the man out of the house because of financial reasons; she wouldn’t have been able to work the land by herself. I think Maria was only about 12 or 13 years old at the time and she couldn’t see a way out of her dilemma.

Maria had to stay in the house to care for a younger sibling while the adults worked. One day the young man unexpectedly came back to the house when their parents were in the fields. He showed her a knife and threatened her with it if she didn’t give in to him. She refused. She was extremely distressed, not so much for her own safety (although she was afraid of him) but because she didn’t want him to commit a mortal sin. I don’t think she thought it would be a sin to give in to him, but he wanted her to participate in his sin, to agree to it. Her resistance angered him so much that he did fatally stab her.

Maria didn’t die immediately. The young man was arrested and locked up. Because of her severe injuries and blood loss, Maria was extremely thirsty but she wasn’t allowed anything to drink because it was thought that could cause or hasten her death. She bore this additional suffering patiently until her death. She forgave the boy from her heart and prayed that he would repent of his sin.

Although we should counsel our children to report something like this to us, this didn’t happen in Maria’s case. Her mother was too overwhelmed by her circumstances to be aware of what was going on. I do think that Maria is a good role model for our children. She did what was right even though she died for it. And she continued to care about the salvation of the one who attacked her. She would be a good person to pray to for help by someone who is suffering from an addiction or temptation to pornography or other sexual temptations.
 
Claire,

Thank you for your response! What you described sounds “similar” to the movie, but it added one thing the movie could not - an explanation of Maria’s thought process. For her to protect the purity of her attacker is indeed saintly. The movie showed that she forgave him, but it had still left me with doubts.

I never doubted that Maria was saintly - just about the cause she was raised up for. You have all helped me to understand her patronage much better now. Thanks!
 
I admit I always found this story creepy. Better to die than give up your purity and if you are forced to give up your life or you are a sinner… Scary scary stuff…

I’ve heard the semantics to justify it, only it doesn’t it. It is just word play.
 
shelby2014 said:
Why is Maria Goretti the patron of purity?
I understand her story is that she was martyred by a man who was trying to rape her. .
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Alejandro was actually trying, as he had before, to get her to consent to having sex with him, and that is what she resisted, as she had before. He killed her in rage for her her resistance, but I don’t think the story relates he actually raped or attempted to rape her. I imagine because her widowed mother was forced to live in an apartment in the same building with the man and his father, Maria was reluctant to complain before this. He had a knife, it would be a rare little girl who screamed with a knife at her throat. The story goes that she used what breath she had to dissuade him from doing mortal sins and imperiling his soul, correctly identifying the most dangerous aspect of the situation. She became a saint however not only because of the manner of her death, but of her manner of living, and it was those who had known her who acclaimed her a saint as soon as she died, even before the Church’s official recognition.
 
cyberwolf001 said:
I admit I always found this story creepy. Better to die than give up your purity and if you are forced to give up your life or you are a sinner… Scary scary stuff…
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No, you don’t understand what happened. The reason that Maria Goretti was canonized is that she acted *heroically. *Alejandro was angered and killed her because of her refusal to *agree *to the act. We are not saying that it is better to die than to be raped but that it is better to die than to *consent. *
 
cyberwolf001 said:
I admit I always found this story creepy. Better to die than give up your purity and if you are forced to give up your life or you are a sinner… Scary scary stuff…

I’ve heard the semantics to justify it, only it doesn’t it. It is just word play.
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Death is better than any sin. The saints practiced this not out of fear but out of love.
 
cyberwolf001 said:
I admit I always found this story creepy. Better to die than give up your purity and if you are forced to give up your life or you are a sinner… Scary scary stuff…

I’ve heard the semantics to justify it, only it doesn’t it. It is just word play.
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And you yourself aren’t doing semantic acrobatics with your typical liberal way of twisting religious things?

Here lemme give a simple summary of what she actually did: She died for what she believed in.

No matter what the religion, that’s generally a good thing. It’s what happened to Ghandhi, MLK, and all other nameless heroes who died for the virtues that they stood for.

This saint just happens to be the same (only on a smaller scale).
 
I know that this is an old thread-- but it addresses something that I am going through right now. I find it shallow and uninformed to say that a rape victim incurs ANY sin at all- even venial, by giving in. Also, the Church’s langauge surrounding her canonization says that she died to protect HER purity-- not Alexander’s. The idea that a child would become impure by being the VICTIM of a sexual assault is absolutely unimaginable. I am really struggling to remain in the Church at all, because I am heartbroken by the ignorance of the language used by the Church in reference to her case. I believe she was a saint because of her heroic forgiveness. I have prayed to her to ask her to enlighten me and to help me through this sadness I feel. Please, everyone who reads this, pray for me and for my continued participation in the life of the Church- I feel it is at risk because I feel so strongly about this.

Thank you
 
Maria showed virtue because even after Alessandro attempted to rape her and had stabbed her, as she lay dying she asked the Lord to forgive him.

Who, lying in angony with multiple stab wounds uses her last few words to forgive her killer? A Saint.
 
Alessandro did not necessarily try to rape Maria, on that occasion he tried, as he had several times before, to induce her into voluntary sexual activity, and became enraged when she refused, and then stabbed her. Is there in echo in here or did I respond to the same question not long ago? She died pleading with him not to sin, her concern was for his immortal soul.

sorry, bit again on an old thread, what I said then still goes, did those who responded after that response read it? Nothing in the Church’s canonization processes lauded Maria for failing to resist rape, or implies that rape victims should not act in self defense.
 
cathmomonline said:
…I find it shallow and uninformed to say that a rape victim incurs ANY sin at all- even venial, by giving in…
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Can you please explain why it is shallow and uninformed? It is extremely easy to commit venial sins because of what we do and we fail to do even when we are not fully aware of it.
 
Cristiano said:
Can you please explain why it is shallow and uninformed? It is extremely easy to commit venial sins because of what we do and we fail to do even when we are not fully aware of it.
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perhaps but as this concept is not part of Maria Goretti’s story perhaps it could be discussed elsewhere. Nothing in her story, or in the Church’s proclamation surrounding her canonization, implies a rape victim incurs any sin whatever.
 
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