(LifeSiteNews) — With aggressive challenges to traditional Christianity ramping up within the United States and the Catholic Church itself, it’s important to remember that conditions have been far more desperate before: like 400 years ago in Japan.
Last February 6, the Church celebrated the feast day of St. Paul Miki and Companions. The courageous example of the 26 Martyrs of Japan, and other Japanese Christians who kept the faith during centuries of extreme persecution, is vital today — as American Catholics confront powerful forces committed to subverting their religion.
U.S. President Joe Biden, in his annual State of the Union address on February 7, called on Congress to codify the right to an abortion in federal law, thereby negating abortion restrictions enacted in many states since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. The self-professed “devout Catholic” also urged passage of the pro-LGBTQ Equality Act, currently stalled in Congress only because the Republican Party eked out a majority in the House of Representatives last fall.
An internal FBI memo leaked on February 8 pushed for investigations of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics due to possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.” These Catholics, the memo explained, embrace the Traditional Latin Mass and practices predating the Second Vatican Council, criticize Pope Francis and oppose LGBTQ ideology.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has mostly ignored hundreds of attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches during the Biden administration, though it eagerly prosecutes and imprisons nonviolent anti-abortion activists.
The Federalist noted last August that “Latin Mass-attending Catholics oppose abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, and racism” in the guise of critical race theory — all core elements of the “pagan morality” now deeply rooted within Washington’s permanent ruling class. The real reason why Biden’s FBI targeted traditional Catholics “is that Catholics who attend Latin Mass tend to take the Catholic Church’s teachings seriously.”
Pope Francis’s relentless restrictions on the availability of the Traditional Latin Mass appear to be similarly motivated. Most alarming to TLM adherents and other orthodox Catholics, after a decade of papal mixed messages about sexual morality, is the real possibility that the Church’s teaching on the intrinsic sinfulness of homosexual relations will soon be abandoned.
While heterodox comments by Pope Francis during inflight press conferences are typically open to various interpretations, recent key appointments confirm that the Catholic Church of Benedict XVI and John Paul II is being radically redirected. The new destination will be largely decided by the Synod on Synodality now under way in Rome.
Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego, elevated to the cardinalate by Francis one year ago, wrote in the Jesuit magazine America last January that the Synod should “address the exclusion of divorced and remarried and L.G.B.T. Catholics, particularly on the issue of participation in the Eucharist.”
Cardinal Blase Cupich, a strong supporter of LGBTQ causes, was appointed last year to the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Multiple parishes in Cupich’s Archdiocese of Chicago have been criticized for liturgical abuse, even as Cupich has moved to suppress the Latin Mass as forcefully as any American cardinal.
Overseeing the Synod as its relator general is Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, who has said the Church’s understanding of homosexuality is wrong; its ban on blessings of same-sex unions is not a settled matter; and he is open to the idea of ordaining women to the priesthood. Pope Francis appointed Hollerich in March to his council of most trusted cardinal advisers, known as the C9 for its nine members.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández of Argentina, the pope’s longtime theological ghostwriter, is attending the Synod as the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Now charged with combating deviations from Church teaching, Fernández has faced past scrutiny over the orthodoxy of his own writings. He signaled last July that same-sex blessings which do not “cause confusion” are on the horizon, echoing Francis’s recently disclosed position.
READ: Cardinal Zen blasts ‘confused’ Synod on Synodality, Chinese communist-linked bishops
German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who formerly held Fernández’s post and is a vocal foe of the Synod, warned last month that “false prophets” intend to fundamentally transform the Church. Doctrinal chaos and fears of heresy thus hang over the Synod on Synodality like a Damoclean samurai sword.
Catholicism was introduced to Japan by St. Francis Xavier after his arrival in Kagoshima on August 15, 1549, the Feast of the Assumption. The Catholic Church flourished for the next several decades, especially in Kyushu, the southernmost of the country’s four main islands. The initial embrace would be followed by horrific persecution that nearly extinguished Christianity from the archipelago.
Twenty-four Christians, known as Kirishitan, were rounded up in 1597 on the order of military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had come to view the religion as a foreign-directed political threat. All were Franciscans, six of them Europeans, except for Jesuit brother and renowned preacher, Paul Miki, and two lay catechists who would be made Jesuit brothers before their deaths. The shogun directed that the Christians’ ears and noses be cut off, but a sympathetic government official had their left ear lobes sliced off instead.
The group was forced to travel from the imperial capital of Kyoto to Nagasaki, then and now Japan’s center of Christianity, in the dead of winter and mostly by foot. Guards made additional prisoners of two Catholic laymen encountered along the 400-mile route, neither of whom protested, bringing the total number of captives to 26.
The road to the crucifixion grounds, located on a steep hill overlooking Nagasaki, was lined by silent Kirishitan as the martyrs made their ascent, resolutely singing the “Te Deum” hymn of praise. Seeing the rows of crosses, 12-year-old Luis Ibaraki asked, “Which one is mine?” The boy then ran to his cross and hugged it.
St. Luis Ibaraki could have avoided his fate. The sheriff in charge of the executions had orders to crucify only 24 Christians. He told the boy he would spare his life and make him his page, if he would renounce his faith. This tradeoff — apostasy in exchange for one’s life — would become the Japanese state’s basic approach to combating Catholicism for the next 250 years.
“I do not want to live on that condition,” Ibaraki replied in rejecting the offer, “for it is not reasonable to exchange a life that has no end for one that soon finishes.” His final words from the cross, as executioners on both sides drove spears up through his rib cage and out his shoulders: “Paradise, Paradise!”
By 1614 the Tokugawa shogunate had ordered the expulsion of missionaries and the destruction of churches, leading to a merciless prohibition on Christianity itself. Torture was the primary means of enforcing the edicts.
READ: Cardinal Fernández equates objecting to mortal sins with clerical sex abuse
Besides waterboarding and crucifixion, there were more creative methods. Kirishitan might be placed on a wooden “horse” shaped like a sharp-peaked roof, while weights attached to the legs ensured that the wood cut into the victim’s groin. They might be repeatedly sliced with bamboo saws, have bamboo needles inserted under their fingernails or be slowly roasted at the stake. Or they might be fitted with an oil-soaked straw coat and set alight or put into a cage placed in a freezing river or tossed into a snake-filled pit.
Still an active volcano today, Mt. Unzen near Nagasaki became a prominent torture site. Christians were scalded with ladles of boiling water from the sulfurous hot springs or dunked into the bubbling pools by ropes, all the while being urged to renounce their faith.
Ana-tsurushi, or “hole hanging,” involved a wooden frame erected over a pit, often lined with excrement at the bottom. The tightly bound victim was hung upside down by the feet and lowered into the pit. Boards with semi-circular holes were then attached around the waist, producing a dark and nearly airless underground chamber. Blood trickled from the head from cuts made near the victim’s temples, intended to prolong the torture and extend the time window before death for the Kirishitan to recant.
Discrediting Christianity by compelling apostasy, not merely killing Christians, was the goal. This strategy for eradicating the outlawed faith was formalized in 1629 with the introduction of fumie, as portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film, Silence. Pronounced foo-mee-ey and meaning a “stepping-on picture,” fumie were typically flat bronze plaques set in wooden frames, depicting the crucified Christ or the Virgin Mary.
Suspected Catholics, and later all Japanese, were required to step on fumie to prove they were not believers. Solemnly performed in front of Tokugawa officials, the act of fumie restored the individual to the good graces of the state. Refusal to trample on Jesus or his mother meant torture and probable death. The few fumie that exist today have been worn smooth by the feet of countless Japanese, many of them Kirishitan.
Many other Christians persevered in the faith to the ghastly end, earning a reputation for withstanding extreme torture without breaking. Fifty-two Japanese men, women and children were burned to death on crosses in Kyoto in 1619, mothers holding babies and young children in their arms. Fifty-five Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits and laypersons were killed in Nagasaki in 1622: 25 burned at the stake and 30 beheaded by katana, Japanese sword.
In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI beatified a group of 188 martyrs killed in Japan between 1606 and 1639, bringing the total number of beatified and canonized Japanese martyrs to more than 400.
The five-month-long Shimabara Rebellion, finally crushed by Tokugawa forces in April 1638, marked the end of Japan’s so-called Christian century. The leader of the Kirishitan rebels was Amakusa Shiro, a charismatic teenager whose head would be displayed for weeks on a pike near Nagasaki’s much-diminished foreign settlement.
Amakusa’s battle flag featured a pair of angels adoring the Blessed Eucharist suspended over a chalice. “Praised be the Most Holy Sacrament,” the flag read in Portuguese. Proclaimed other rebel banners: “We were timely born to die for the faith.”
Fumie 2.0 for American Catholics today does not require a definitive act of apostasy to save one’s skin. There is subtler coercion to accept incremental heresy, by disregarding Catholic teaching on sexual morality that is now unwelcome in the public square and many church pews.
President Biden will continue to serve from the White House as fumie performer-in-chief. He has called state laws prohibiting “gender-affirming” medical procedures for minors “close to sinful,” while making abortion pills available via mail order and pickup at retail pharmacies. Catholic parents will face growing pressure to conceal their religious beliefs at school board meetings and child custody hearings.
Pope Francis’s successor will be selected by the three-quarters of the College of Cardinals he has appointed, not a reassuring prospect for fans of tradition. As doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Fernández will ensure smooth implementation of the New Church Order envisioned by the Synodal enterprise.
Secularization and a desire to accommodate modernity is “especially tempting for leaders like bishops and priests in the Church,” Archbishop Emeritus of Philadelphia Charles Chaput told an interviewer earlier this year. “In the synodal process, the temptation will show up — and in some ways, has already shown up — in our trying to make peace with worldly behaviors and beliefs that directly contradict the teachings of Jesus and his Church.”
On September 27, 1637, Japanese authorities subjected the Philippines-born Lorenzo Ruiz and his fellow missionaries to the “hole hanging” torture in Nagasaki. One of Lorenzo’s hands was left unbound as was customary, enabling him to alert his torturers of any decision to end the brutal ordeal by renouncing his Catholic faith. The hand did not move. He died after two days of agony.
St. Lorenzo Ruiz’s feast day of September 29 was celebrated shortly before the start of the historic Synod, for which the Japanese Martyrs would be most fitting intercessors and patron saints.
William Underwood, Ph.D., is a California-based writer who lived in Kyushu, Japan for 11 years.