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oneofmany
Guest
Yes, I meant persecution. Peter did deny knowing the Lord 3 times but came back. He was afraid. Christians today who are being slaughtered are afraid. I can’t believe it is happening, it is so sickening.
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Brendan_64
Guest
You are right we do not. We also don’t know the circumstances around the event. Perhaps his family may have been tortured or threatened with horrendous things at the time and that was used to make the man say what he did. Perhaps it wasn’t his own life he was thinking of but that of his family? Such pressure would greatly lower culpability. For a mortal sin to be committed, deliberate consent is required.
CCC 1859 : It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice.
Forcing a man into saying words that he does not mean, but he says them out of extreme fear for himself or others hardly represents a personal choice.
Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith. Being forced to say certain words while under horrendous stress and fear hardly represents a total repudiation of the Christian faith.
This represents a desire on behalf of the man’s murderers to torture and mock another human being and strip him of every bit of his dignity, right up to the moment of his death. This represents psychological torture in the extreme. When subjected to enough torture, human beings will say whatever words the torturer wants them to say.
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Starrsmother
Guest
None of us know how well we’d stand up to torture. Having said that, look at every word you said and put Jesus in place of the person–or St. Peter or other martyrs. It is possible to forfeit your life even to stay true to God–and that IS what God expects of us as Christians…
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Millie123
Guest
I can imagine imagine St Peter in this situation. Yes, St Peter died a martyrs death but a long time before his martyrs death let us not deny the fact that St Peter was also at one time a terrified, frail, human male…who also denied our Lord 3 times…
John 18:15-27
17 Then the servant girl who kept the door said to Peter, “You are not also one of this Man’s disciples, are you?”
He said, “I AM NOT.”…
25 Now Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. Therefore they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?”
He denied it and said, “I AM NOT!”
26 One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” 27 PETER THEN DENIED AGAIN; and immediately a rooster crowed.
Peter denied his faith and God…when a servant girl asked him about his faith, when a group of people asked him about his faith, and when a priest asked him about his faith…Now lets imagine that a soldier had put a sword to St Peter’s neck at this exact moment in time in scripture? What do you think St Peter would have done? If St Peter was such a weak man to deny his faith to someone as simple as a mere servant girl…then I would bet money that St Peter would have still denied his faith at that point in time to a soldier holding a sword to his neck.
St Peter was at one time a Christian who denied his faith
As heroic as St Peter and his martyrdom is later in his life…let us not deny the fact he had at one time in his life been a frail, weak, human being who had denied his faith.
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clem456
Guest
I have to agree. God’s judgment is none of our business, and nothing good can come from debating his judgment.
God’s judgment is just that…God’s. It belongs to him alone. Our task is to spread the Gospel.
The best good we can do is pray in solidarity with those persecuted. And besides, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, we have plenty of opportunities to sacrifice right in front of our faces.
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Brendan_64
Guest
ISIS are systematically beheading children, raping and killing children and wives, as well as killing the fathers (apparently there is a park in Mosul where the heads of severed Christian children are put on sticks). What state of mind do you think a man might be in after witnessing such things? Its very easy to sit in the comfort and safety of our unthreatened lives and say what people faced with such horror ought to have done. What would you do or say if, for example, your children were threatened with rape, torture and beheading?
As Millie rightly pointed out, Peter denied Our Lord 3 times and not to someone who was brutally threatening his life and the lives of his family. And let’s not forget that the apostles all ran away and abandoned Our Lord in Gethsemane. We are frail, we are human, Our Lord knows this.
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Starrsmother
Guest
I agree–we are all weak, frail humans and that includes all the thousands of martyrs through the centuries, not just the apostles. What we all must pray is that if God chooses us to be martyred for our faith that we would have the courage to forfeit our lives for God.
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Brendan_64
Guest
What matters far more than how we die is how we live.
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plainatheart71
Guest
Jesus said that if we deny him in front of man He will deny us in front of the Father. I believe God will give us the strength we need if that time comes that we must stand for Christ and lose our lives.
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Starrsmother
Guest
DITTO!!!
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Brendan_64
Guest
Well let us hope so, because at this time they are physically crucifying Christians in Mosul en masse, as well as systematically beheading children and displaying their little heads publicly.
Imagine the pain experienced by a father made to watch while his children are beheaded, then his wife raped then killed, then they crucify him, leaving him to die in excruciating physical agony with the memory of what was done to his wife and children (an even greater agony) while his tormentors mock him. What state of mind would such a man be in? Our minds can only take so much before they break.
Imagine the pain experienced by a father made to watch while his children are beheaded, then his wife raped then killed, then they crucify him, leaving him to die in excruciating physical agony with the memory of what was done to his wife and children (an even greater agony) while his tormentors mock him. What state of mind would such a man be in? Our minds can only take so much before they break.
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plainatheart71
Guest
I agree with you. I cannot imagine the horror our brothers and sisters are going through. May God have mercy. May God protect them and give them strength to endure. May He take their souls quickly so these terrorists are not allowed to joy in their suffering. My heart breaks for these people and I wonder how long until this happens here.
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sw85
Guest
Err, but they are disavowing their religion. That’s what it means to disavow – to repudiate (dis-) a vow. Granted, they may not be truly culpable for their disavowal, since terror for one’s own life and/or the life of one’s family could potentially make any of us do such things, but we needn’t pretend that it is anything other than what it is, which is at least material apostasy.
If anyone asked if I were Christian, I’d like to think I’d either say yes or keep my mouth shut, if I truly thought my life were in danger. It is certainly possible that in a moment of cowardice I would deny Christ, and it is even possible that I might be saved despite that cowardice; but it is not possible that it would ever be good for me to be a coward in that way. To say that I am not a Christian would be a lie, and the father of lies is Satan; Jesus said as much, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of lying. It is worth remembering, too, that Christ did not repudiate us when faced with the threat of torturous death, and if we are called to “put on Christ” than it is only reasonable to ask that we, too, go gladly to our deaths for his sake.
In terms of what happened to that man, I don’t know, because I don’t know the state of his soul. No one does but God and the saints. I think it is at least plausible that his judgment was compromised by terror and that his apostasy was therefore insincere. I think we may reasonably pray for his salvation. He may well have interiorly repented in the moments before death. What we can say with absolute certainty is that if he was saved, it was despite his repudiation of the faith, which is in no way permissible, ever, for any reason.
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