Pope Francis’s recognition of the 21 killed by Daesh as martyrs is a welcome theological and ecumenical development says Hugh Somerville Knapman OSB.
Occasionally in one’s life an idea comes to mind that perhaps is a little sounder than the usual humdrummeries that crave cranial residence. Less frequently one finds the courage, and encouragement, not only to bid it stay, but to expand and develop. Such an idea came to my mind in the wake of the sad, indeed harrowing, occasion of the brutal murder of 20 Copts and a Ghanaian Muslim on a Libyan beach by the fanatics of Daesh in 2015. Many reports say that the Ghanaian, Mathew Ayairga, was offered the chance to go free by his coreligionists but, struck by the Christian faith and fortitude of his fellow captives, he declared “Their God is my God.” Having declared himself a Christian he was murdered with the others.
What first captured my wandering, wondering mind was a disconcerting fact: Catholics could celebrate Mathew as a martyr at least informally but immediately and without qualm, since he quite clearly fell under the established doctrine of baptism of blood. Having died for faith in Christ, his blood baptised him, his martyrdom being the act of perfect discipleship. But the Coptic Christians killed with Mathew were, canonically speaking, schismatics. As late as the Council of Florence the doctrinal consensus appears quite clear: should a schismatic or heretic even shed his blood for Christ, it would avail him naught for salvation, let alone recognition or celebration.
Quite simply, this incongruity did not make sense. Indeed it was, dare one say it, scandalously nonsensical. It provided a troubling example of theological premises pursued to an illogical conclusion. From conversations with others I realised this was not an eccentric point of view. Spontaneous acts of Catholic veneration of these martyrs were being reported, even in churches in Rome. So I began to explore the issues raised by the Coptic Martyrs of Libya, under the wise and heroically patient tutelage of Prof Gavin D’Costa. The resulting compact MPhil dissertation was refashioned for publication as Ecumenism of Blood: Heavenly Hope for Earthly Communion (Paulist Press, 2018). Intended to prompt discussion and hopefully magisterial adjudication, the book ended up poorly promoted, and barely read. (The publishers are still decades away from recouping their modest author’s advance.) That seemed to provide a definitive enough judgment on my speculative doctrinal proposal. Then, as the proverbial bolt from the blue, came Pope Francis’s act on May 11, 2023.
In a nutshell, the book proposed, and developed an argument for, enrolling the Coptic Martyrs of Libya in the martyrology and liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, an act which would derive from, but not exactly resemble, the process of equivalent canonisation. Benedict XVI employed equivalent canonisation when he raised Saint Hildegard of Bingen to the altars of the Church by this profoundly simple mechanism. That blessed Benedictine was, of course, Catholic. All but one of the Libyan Martyrs were members of the Coptic Church, and have been canonised already by their church. So while the mechanism could be the same – insertion into the liturgical calendar and martyrology – the meaning would be substantively different. Having now done exactly what the book proposed, Pope Francis has implicitly but concretely recognised the Coptic canonisation of the Libyan Martyrs in 2015. This conclusion is inescapable. It is a bold and breath-taking ecumenical advance that moves beyond the realm of words – joint declarations and hope-filled homilies – and the sharp rational edge of Latin theologising, into the realm where Eastern Christians most comfortably do their theologising: the liturgy.
In the book I address (in less detail than in the original dissertation) the apparent arguments from Tradition against recognising and venerating the Coptic Martyrs of Libya, lest doing so seem at best jejune and sentimental, or at worst ultra vires, if not heretical. Certainly these arguments cannot be avoided if this latest act of the papal magisterium is to win the consensus of the faithful. Here, however, it seems better to justify what Pope Francis has done from a more positive angle. Francis has named and brought to birth the embryonic ecumenism of blood, its gestation discernible in earlier papal teaching as far back as Benedict XIV (†1758), one of the best scholars to have occupied the chair of Peter, through to the no less scholarly Benedict XVI. In this light we can see that Pope Francis here is not acting as a doctrinal innovator but as the midwife of an insight into the truth of the gospel for our day.
Benedict XIV, writing first when merely Prospero Lambertini but republishing his magisterial work on the making of saints when pope, distinguished between those who choose schism or heresy and those who are heretics or schismatics “in good faith,” such as those born into schismatic churches, inheriting a sort of “original schism”. The martyrdom of such inculpable schismatics would reconcile them perfectly to the Catholic Church. They could be seen as saints in the sight of God (coram Deo) but not in the sight of the Church (coram Ecclesia), since the Church could not read their souls and determine their “good faith.”
One might reasonably ask if there really would be any need to determine the full extent of their faith, and it is quite possible that the scholarly pope saw this but knew that his day was not the time to pursue such issues. Later popes, in times when the heat of Christian disunity had lost much of its heat, did begin to approach these issues discreetly and indirectly. In October 1964, when canonising the martyrs of Uganda, Paul VI explicitly acknowledged the Anglicans who died with their Catholic countrymen as having died for the “name of Christ”. John Paul II affirmed his predecessor’s subtle but public gesture in Tertio millennio adveniente, adding that shedding blood in witness to Christ is the “common inheritance” of all Christians. In Ut unum sint, he developed the teaching of Benedict XIV by declaring that “in a theocentric vision [ie coram Deo] we Christians already have a common Martyrology” and that the fact that one can die for faith in Christ “shows the other demands of faith can be met”. He brought this thread of teaching to a climax when he taught that “communion is already perfect in what we all consider the highest point in the life of grace, martyrdom unto death, the truest communion possible with Christ who shed his Blood, and by that sacrifice brings near those who were once far off”. To be in perfect heavenly communion with Christ necessarily entails communion with his Body, the Church. Benedict XVI added his imprimatur to this emerging thread of papal teaching in Sacramentum caritatis, teaching that “the Christian who offers his life in martyrdom enters into full communion with the Pasch of Jesus Christ and thus becomes Eucharist with him.”
The trajectory of this papal teaching which Pope Francis has christened “ecumenism of blood” is to grant primacy in martyrdom to dying for Christ rather than for specific elements of faith in Christ. Martyrdom for Christ, as the act of perfect love and discipleship, covers the multitude of sins and imperfections that afflict the lives of individual Christians and Christian institutions and communities, and establishes perfect communion with Christ the Head. Pope Francis has now made a concrete step towards recognising and fostering this heavenly communion in the life and worship of the earthly Church. Pace Neil Armstrong, this small ecumenical step is also a giant leap towards restoring the unity of all Christians. Let us consecrate this hope for unity to the Coptic Martyrs of Libya.
Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman is a monk of Douai Abbey.
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