er into joining the martyrs instead of fleeing to a more protected region to practice his faith in secret. Reading these stories as a twenty-first century American, it is difficult not to think of kamikaze pilots and samurai warriors falling on their swords, and to wonder whether these martyrs might not be reflecting a characteristically Japanese fatalism and a morbid fascination with death.
I encourage my students to discuss these concerns when we read St. Alphonsus as part of our study of the virtue of courage. We use the Japanese martyrs as a lens through which to consider the claim (advanced by many great thinkers, from Aristotle to G.K. Chesterton) that courage entails a willingness to fall in battle. Clearly, the Japanese Christians are willing, but does their enthusiasm overflow into rashness? Is it fitting to run eagerly into the arms of martyrdom, potentially forsaking dependent children (or even encouraging them to participate)? The students worry, reasonably enough, that this kind of attitude might exhibit a vicious light-mindedness, and a failure to appreciate the significance of earthly goods and obligations. After all, a desire for martyrdom does not remit earthly debts, and sacrifice is not meaningful unless we understand the gravity of what is lost.
Even while acknowledging the seriousness of these worries, I ultimately suggest to the students that perhaps the Japanese attitude was suited to the grimness of the circumstances. For a seventeenth century Japanese Christian, practicing the faith meant living under a constant shadow of fear. An early and painful death was always a strong possibility, and apostasy and death were the only available escape routes. Emigration was impractical for these desperately impoverished peasants, and a less-hostile political climate was still centuries away. There was nothing a committed Christian could do to ease his companions’ burden, except to show them that death was not to be feared. This, then, was the witness that the Japanese martyrs offered, and the survival of Japanese Christianity is itself a powerful testament to the effectiveness of their strategy.
Among my students, this discussion typically ends with expressions of gratitude that modern-day Americans are unlikely to find themselves in such a desperate position. For an undergraduate ethics course, I am content to leave it at that, but in my private reflections, I am sometimes unsure. I have no taste for torture, and no desire for an early death; nevertheless, there is something enviable in the stark simplicity of the Japanese choice between apostasy and death. We moderns are more likely to find ourselves caught among fifty shades of grey.
Modern-day Americans are rarely presented with a single, dramatic test of faith. We are left to ponder subtle questions about focus and emphasis. When, and how loudly, are we obliged to articulate Catholic teaching? Under what circumstances does silence constitute assent? At what point does honest dealing turn into overzealous contrarianism? There are no easy answers to these questions, which only become harder as we proceed through life, taking on heavier responsibilities and building more bridges that we are loathe to burn.
Catholics today are seldom offered a quick and dramatic exit from the dispiriting realities of modern life. This means, among other things, that we must live with the temporal consequences of our choices (and watch our loved ones do the same), possibly for a good long while. We differ from the Japanese martyrs, too, in that attacks on our faith rarely come in the form of a full, frontal assault. No one will offer us the honor of being publicly executed in witness to our faith in the Resurrection. Far more likely, we will languish for decades in a windowless cubicle, eking out the only living left available to us after our refusal to celebrate committed homosexual love. Or, we may find ourselves the least-anticipated arrival at countless family gatherings because we refuse to agree that cousin Sam is truly cousin Sandra, and that hormone therapy has liber