May 2, 2013 - St. Athanasius, Evangelization, the Unicity of the Church, and truth and goodness

Today is the feast day of St. Athanasius, whose chops as an opponent of heresy are second to none; and for that reason, and because of some of the reading I've been doing for the conclusion of our Christology class, as well as some recent news stories in which the Church is unnecessarily type-cast as the antagonist, I have been pondering a bit this phenomenon of increasing open, vocal, assertive, brazen anti-Christian rhetoric and posturing.  It certainly verges on discrimination, although it's not yet formally entrenched anywhere in the US, merely materially ascendant in certain places.


Dominus Iesus (2000) hit the nail squarely on the head in listing, in a very general sort of way, the nature of the erroneous thinking involved here:

4. The Church's constant missionary proclamation is endangered today by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de iure (or in principle). As a consequence, it is held that certain truths have been superseded; for example, the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the nature of Christian faith as compared with that of belief in other religions, the inspired nature of the books of Sacred Scripture, the personal unity between the Eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, the unity of the economy of the Incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit, the unicity and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the universal salvific mediation of the Church, the inseparability "while recognizing the distinction" of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Church, and the subsistence of the one Church of Christ in the Catholic Church.

The roots of these problems are to be found in certain presuppositions of both a philosophical and theological nature, which hinder the understanding and acceptance of the revealed truth. Some of these can be mentioned: the conviction of the elusiveness and inexpressibility of divine truth, even by Christian revelation; relativistic attitudes toward truth itself, according to which what is true for some would not be true for others; the radical opposition posited between the logical mentality of the West and the symbolic mentality of the East; the subjectivism which, by regarding reason as the only source of knowledge, becomes incapable of raising its "gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being"; the difficulty in understanding and accepting the presence of definitive and eschatological events in history; the metaphysical emptying of the historical incarnation of the Eternal Logos, reduced to a mere appearing of God in history; the eclecticism of those who, in theological research, uncritically absorb ideas from a variety of philosophical and theological contexts without regard for consistency, systematic connection, or compatibility with Christian truth; finally, the tendency to read and to interpret Sacred Scripture outside the Tradition and Magisterium of the Church.

The question that I think this applies equally to, alongside the theological argument of the document itself, is why does this sort of thinking lead to specifically anti-Christian views, rather than merely to abandonment of Christianity in the cultural mainstream?  

One part of the answer is, as always, merely power.  The Church is pretty much the only coherent, readily articulated, and systematic point of view that stands against all of the "-isms" of the modern world, which are a threat to man or to the dignity of man.  And those various "-isms" would love to be able to defeat the Church in some way, both to be seen as more powerful, and to remove a strong opponent to their untrammelled domination.

But I think we shouldn't underestimate the consequences of muddled thought in and of itself.  Moral relativism is taught daily in our public schools, sometimes overtly, often by default; subjectivism is everywhere, with its stupid but powerful idea that truth is best recognized by an observable emotional response; the problem of "metaphysical emptying" is everywhere, quite apart from its Christological and ecclesiological implications, teaching people to accept lower order goods and to accept division in place of unity; eclecticism makes rational argumentation much harder than it needs to be; and so forth.  The net effect of all of these incomplete or inadequate ways of thinking is that most people are more or less convinced that what's good for them (often in a reductive and/or immediate sense) is the same as the common good; and therefore if others disagree with them, these others must be opposed to them, in the manner of trying to deny them some good.

St. Athanasius, for all his trials and struggles for the apostolic faith of the Church, didn't have this problem to deal with.  His opponents were, by and large, at least rational.  Arius thought he was solving the difficult problem of divine impassibility in the Incarnation.  Constantius thought he was doing what was good and necessary for the unity of the Empire.  That they were mistaken about these things didn't mean they couldn't be reasoned with, and indeed, eventually, the process of rational argument did secure the apostolic teaching and the rejection of Arianism fairly definitively.

In our evangelization today, at the individual level, I think we still need to do this.  How we talk about the faith, about our worldly and spiritual experiences, our consistency of word and action, and so on, constitute a kind of argument about most basic principles which is readily apparent to those around us.  And since people are not usually attracted by philosophy (a systematic presentation of the truth as ideas) but by holiness (a very different but no less systematic presentation of the truth in action), this is the right way to proceed. 

For those who think we are opposed to them personally merely because we disagree with them about ideas, it is the witness of consistent and joyful imitation of Christ by those who are known to them which has a chance to convince of our goodwill, even if conversion never follows. 

But at the wider level, this kind of personal approach doesn't work.  Here the clash of ideas and perceptions happens in a separate way from our personal witness.  Consistency and joy still matter here, but somehow it needs to be translated to that more impersonal level.  Here, martyrial witness is a powerful kind of argument.  Those who are willing to suffer for Christ (in whatever sense; in other words, to carry the Cross in daily life, without complaint, even when it is unjust) are appealing in this sense.  But the appeal rests on the coherence of the tradition or identity - in this case, the apostolic Tradition and the identity of bearing Christ's name as Christians.  If that tradition and identity is not generally perceived as internally coherent - in other words, if Christians are generally perceived to be disloyal to their own tradition, for whatever reason - at one level, it doesn't even matter if it's true or not - then the quality of the witness is badly undermined.

So as St. Athanasius knew so well, a well-formed Church is really necessary for the project of evangelization.  The weakness of our evangelization in the West in the past three-four generations is a symptom of insufficient internal coherence, consistency, joy, and zeal in bearing the Name and the Cross of our Redeemer.  John Paul II wrote the same:

Difficulties both internal and external have weakened the Church's missionary thrust toward non-Christians, a fact which must arouse concern among all who believe in Christ. For in the Church's history, missionary drive has always been a sign of vitality, just as its lessening is a sign of a crisis of faith. (Redemptoris Missio, 2)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a major step in the right direction.  So is a coherent anthropology at the root of our formation programs (four pillars of human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral formation).  So is the plethora of solid and orthodox Bible studies which use well all the tools available to us, without abusing the historical critical method in the manner which leads to supplanting Christian identity with some mere political ideology.  So is the new Missal's use of a consciously sacral language for worship.  So is Friday abstinence and the daily Rosary, as universally shared elements of a clear, Catholic identity.  And so on...  these are the things, when used well and often, that build up our conviction, our faith, our zeal, and therefore our ability to evangelize the increasingly unfamiliar world around us.

He is Risen, Alleluia!

Happy Easter to all readers of this blog!  May the joy of the glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ fill your heart and your life, and bring you every grace and blessing!

Pope Francis speaks of poverty

From the address to the diplomatic corps on Friday, 3/22:

As you know, there are various reasons why I chose the name of Francis of Assisi, a familiar figure far beyond the borders of Italy and Europe, even among those who do not profess the Catholic faith. One of the first reasons was Francis’ love for the poor. How many poor people there still are in the world! And what great suffering they have to endure! After the example of Francis of Assisi, the Church in every corner of the globe has always tried to care for and look after those who suffer from want, and I think that in many of your countries you can attest to the generous activity of Christians who dedicate themselves to helping the sick, orphans, the homeless and all the marginalized, thus striving to make society more humane and more just.
 
But there is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the “tyranny of relativism”, which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. And that brings me to a second reason for my name. Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.

In other words, moral relativism is itself an assault on human dignity (see, e.g. CCC 1716 ff), because it always in practice leads to the conclusion that one's own wants ought to be served in preference to others' needs; and therefore that the dignity of others is always less than one's own.  This is of course the opposite of charity ("the good of the other in preference to one's own good").  It is this diminution of the dignity of others that in turn justifies every vicious form of greed, envy, contempt, infidelity, disobedience, and violence.

Holy Mass of Inauguration of the Petrine Ministry of Pope Francis (first of the name)

Courtesy of Vatican Radio, full video of this morning's inaugural Mass for Pope Francis:



And from the same source, full text (in English translation) of his homily:

Dear Brothers and Sisters, I thank the Lord that I can celebrate this Holy Mass for the inauguration of my Petrine ministry on the solemnity of Saint Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary and the patron of the universal Church. It is a significant coincidence, and it is also the name-day of my venerable predecessor: we are close to him with our prayers, full of affection and gratitude.

I offer a warm greeting to my brother cardinals and bishops, the priests, deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful. I thank the representatives of the other Churches and ecclesial Communities, as well as the representatives of the Jewish community and the other religious communities, for their presence. My cordial greetings go to the Heads of State and Government, the members of the official Delegations from many countries throughout the world, and the Diplomatic Corps.

In the Gospel we heard that “Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife” (Mt 1:24). These words already point to the mission which God entrusts to Joseph: he is to be the custos, the protector. The protector of whom? Of Mary and Jesus; but this protection is then extended to the Church, as Blessed John Paul II pointed out: “Just as Saint Joseph took loving care of Mary and gladly dedicated himself to Jesus Christ’s upbringing, he likewise watches over and protects Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, of which the Virgin Mary is the exemplar and model” (Redemptoris Custos, 1).

How does Joseph exercise his role as protector? Discreetly, humbly and silently, but with an unfailing presence and utter fidelity, even when he finds it hard to understand. From the time of his betrothal to Mary until the finding of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem, he is there at every moment with loving care. As the spouse of Mary, he is at her side in good times and bad, on the journey to Bethlehem for the census and in the anxious and joyful hours when she gave birth; amid the drama of the flight into Egypt and during the frantic search for their child in the Temple; and later in the day-to-day life of the home of Nazareth, in the workshop where he taught his trade to Jesus.

How does Joseph respond to his calling to be the protector of Mary, Jesus and the Church? By being constantly attentive to God, open to the signs of God’s presence and receptive to God’s plans, and not simply to his own. This is what God asked of David, as we heard in the first reading. God does not want a house built by men, but faithfulness to his word, to his plan. It is God himself who builds the house, but from living stones sealed by his Spirit. Joseph is a “protector” because he is able to hear God’s voice and be guided by his will; and for this reason he is all the more sensitive to the persons entrusted to his safekeeping. He can look at things realistically, he is in touch with his surroundings, he can make truly wise decisions. In him, dear friends, we learn how to respond to God’s call, readily and willingly, but we also see the core of the Christian vocation, which is Christ! Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation!

The vocation of being a “protector”, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live. It means protecting people, showing loving concern for each and every person, especially children, the elderly, those in need, who are often the last we think about. It means caring for one another in our families: husbands and wives first protect one another, and then, as parents, they care for their children, and children themselves, in time, protect their parents. It means building sincere friendships in which we protect one another in trust, respect, and goodness. In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God’s gifts!

Whenever human beings fail to live up to this responsibility, whenever we fail to care for creation and for our brothers and sisters, the way is opened to destruction and hearts are hardened. Tragically, in every period of history there are “Herods” who plot death, wreak havoc, and mar the countenance of men and women.

Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world! But to be “protectors”, we also have to keep watch over ourselves! Let us not forget that hatred, envy and pride defile our lives! Being protectors, then, also means keeping watch over our emotions, over our hearts, because they are the seat of good and evil intentions: intentions that build up and tear down! We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!

Here I would add one more thing: caring, protecting, demands goodness, it calls for a certain tenderness. In the Gospels, Saint Joseph appears as a strong and courageous man, a working man, yet in his heart we see great tenderness, which is not the virtue of the weak but rather a sign of strength of spirit and a capacity for concern, for compassion, for genuine openness to others, for love. We must not be afraid of goodness, of tenderness!

Today, together with the feast of Saint Joseph, we are celebrating the beginning of the ministry of the new Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Peter, which also involves a certain power. Certainly, Jesus Christ conferred power upon Peter, but what sort of power was it? Jesus’ three questions to Peter about love are followed by three commands: feed my lambs, feed my sheep. Let us never forget that authentic power is service, and that the Pope too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service which has its radiant culmination on the Cross. He must be inspired by the lowly, concrete and faithful service which marked Saint Joseph and, like him, he must open his arms to protect all of God’s people and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison (cf. Mt 25:31-46). Only those who serve with love are able to protect!

In the second reading, Saint Paul speaks of Abraham, who, “hoping against hope, believed” (Rom 4:18). Hoping against hope! Today too, amid so much darkness, we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others. To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope; it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds; it is to bring the warmth of hope! For believers, for us Christians, like Abraham, like Saint Joseph, the hope that we bring is set against the horizon of God, which has opened up before us in Christ. It is a hope built on the rock which is God.

To protect Jesus with Mary, to protect the whole of creation, to protect each person, especially the poorest, to protect ourselves: this is a service that the Bishop of Rome is called to carry out, yet one to which all of us are called, so that the star of hope will shine brightly. Let us protect with love all that God has given us!

I implore the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, Saints Peter and Paul, and Saint Francis, that the Holy Spirit may accompany my ministry, and I ask all of you to pray for me! Amen.

Papa Francesco - Pope Francis I

Pope Francis I - CNA photo

What's in a name?

In the 12th and 13th centuries, there were a great many new things in the Church: new wealth, new merchantile middle class, new forms of social organization and interaction (communes, Italian city-states, international banking), new technologies (mills, clocks, farming), a wave of urbanization, the whole phenomenon of the Crusades, and also new forms of poverty.  The Church, in the midst of one of its most vital and flourishing periods, certainly developed responses to these new social realities.  One of the most effective and enduring was the university.  Others included the monastic reforms of the 12th century (Cluny, Bec, Citeaux), and (very "Vatican II"-ish) much greater lay participation in the sacraments and the divine office.

Most of these responses, reasonably enough, were an extension of the existing institutional church structures - parishes, monasteries, cathedral schools, systems of patronage, etc.  These things worked, and they were brought to bear on the new challenges facing the Church because they could still work well in new ways.  They were largely successful in this, and the Church continued to flourish.

But one of the radical, unexpected responses of the 13th century was Saint Francis, with his radical devotion to poverty and the poor, his  insistence that the Gospel was itself the fundamental rule of Faith, and his refusal to let social and institutional norms and prerogatives limit the ministry of the Church.  In particular, Saint Francis made the love of poverty apostolic again, in an age when it had largely been taken over by heretical, anti-clerical and anti-sacramental dualists.  "Rebuild my Church" was a command with a much greater spiritual than institutional meaning, as St. Francis learned and then taught.

The parallels to the present day are suggestive, albeit inexact.  As in his day, the Church today faces many new things, especially of economic significance (globalization), which have already caused huge dislocations in traditional social mores all around the world, including the appearance of new forms of poverty. 

I think that, in choosing the name Francis, our new Holy Father is (at least in part) indicating his great desire to put all the resources of the Church to bear on these challenges - especially the spiritual ones, and the unexpected ones that flow directly from the Gospel itself, not just what is canalized in the institutions of the Church (potent and necessary though these can be).  This is a continuation of the clear teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who stressed repeatedly the importance of strong spiritual foundations, and how to build them up in the life of the Church.  The explosion of Catholicism in the southern hemisphere, especially among the young, which we also see here to a lesser degree, is a demonstration of what happens when we get the foundations right.

Here in the Midwest, we have to continue to rebuild the foundations - good liturgy, Adoration, the Rosary, a culture of marriage and pro-life vision, priestly and religious vocations.  For us, radical witness to the Gospel is not poverty and the rejection of wealth, as in the 13th century, but evangelical hospitality and charity, a rejection of the selfish egotism and statist indifference that destroys marriages, parish life, and the lives of the unborn and the elderly. 

We have to reclaim caring for the spiritually lost as apostolic practice by Christians.  May God bless and guide our new Holy Father, Pope Francis I, and make fruitful all his ministry for Christ!  Viva il Papa!

St. Anselm, Beauty, and Evangelization

In our fourth-year Christology class, we're up to Anselm, one of my favorite Scholastic thinkers.  A couple of years ago, I gave this talk on the way Anselm consistently uses the aesthetic argument ("it is fitting") to connect his theological arguments to wider (liturgical, devotional, mystical) aspects of the life of faith.


(If it doesn't play, click the "Tindeck" box at left to open a separate download page.)

Fr. Barron has a recent video on using beauty to evangelize, as a more attractive or less confrontational starting point than goodness or truth.  This overlaps conceptually with Anselm's method, although he's not specifically talking about beauty as a theological method:



I think Fr. Barron is quite correct about the impact of beauty, and its potential for evangelization.  But I think he's overlooking (probably due to the limits of the short video medium) the possible complications.  In brief, while beauty evokes goodness and truth, and calls forth from us a suitable response; and while in general  this response ultimately leads to worship of God; it's not true that beauty speaks for itself or leads directly to God.  That's precisely why the "it is fitting" argument works as Anselm uses it.  Anselm's aesthetic argument always operates in a particular context, and leads to or supports the larger conclusions evoked by concrete connections in that context (as I show in the three examples in the talk).  What we lack today, even within the Church, is a sufficiently shared context to ground the aesthetic argument.  A certain amount of work therefore needs to go into the effort to evangelize (or to catechize) from beauty, to establish a shared context and referents.  Otherwise, there's simply too much disagreement already, about what is beautiful (e.g., in the liturgy), much less about what is beauty (i.e., ultimately revealing God) to imagine that the argument from beauty by itself is going to lead to the same end for any two given people.

The "Myth" of Early Christian Persecution?

The Cardinal Newman Society news feed has this item today, about Notre Dame theology professor, Dr. Candida Moss, promoting her new book, "The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom."  Here is her promotional:



Perhaps it would be an overreaction to this promotional material to express my surprise at what appears to be such a boldly revisionist project coming out of Notre Dame's theology department.  I've not read this book, and have only read about her previous book on the early martyrs; so I make no judgments about Dr. Moss's scholarship.  Certainly, I believe she would agree that there's nothing "mythic" or "invented" about the mere fact of persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries.  Consider, for example, Trajan's law criminalizing Christianity "for the name;" the numerous judicial records of exactly such trials and the death, imprisonment, or exiling of actual Christians that resulted; the mid-third-century imperial laws (Decius, Valerian) against Christian clergy, possession of the Christian scriptures, and so forth; the persecution of Diocletian and his successors in the East; none of these things have ever been in doubt as what actually happened.  (The question of why Roman authorities treated Christian in such ways is a separate one.  I'd agree with her that it wasn't "merely because they refused to deny Christ."  But why does she think these facts happened?)

This historical layer of the "Church of the martyrs" certainly does, as Dr. Moss claims, underlie in a persistent way the attitudes of Christians of other times and places to all sorts of circumstances.  In this sense, one could say there is a "myth" being formed.  But that's hardly unusual; all coherent groups of every kind, not only religious, recount shared experiences to reinforce identity and commitment.  There's no implication here, generally, that "myth" in this sense means "not true," or "distorting the historical record," or "politicized," or the like.  So it's difficult to see, based only on this promotional material and the rather provocative title, why it might follow that those implications are pertinent in this case.

But the promotion of the book as such, distinct from its scholarly content, does indeed seem to me obviously ideological ("... and they're not similarly persecuted today.")  Here is an advertisement for an upcoming lecture on the same, to be given in Washington DC in March.  Note the way in which word choice is used here to create an effect, and to qualify the meaningfulness of historical facts, in the direction of the very modern agenda already revealed in the video [my comments]:

According to cherished [w/c] church tradition, early Christians were uniquely [neither historians nor the Church have held the general position that only Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity; one has only to look at e.g. Domitian] and systematically [the imperial laws against Christians in 251, 257, and 303-10 were as systematic as things got for the time] persecuted by a brutal [w/c] Roman Empire. Vast [w/c] numbers of believers were thrown to the lions or routinely [w/c] tortured or burned alive. In spite of these horrors, so the story goes [are we now to believe that no Christians were martyred by the Roman state?], these heroes of the early church chose to die rather than renounce their faith in God [indeed so; some Christians, then as now, possessed such courage and fidelity]. Such stories form part of the teaching of the church to the present day, inspiring some to acts of like courage in the face of modern hardships [this was and is an explicit goal in remembering the acts of the martyrs, just as the imitation of holiness is an explicit goal of remembering the lives of the saints]. Yet there is also the troubling [w/c] use of this heritage to silence the voices of those who act outside the perceived orthodoxies of the day [note the implication that all orthodox teachings are merely "perceived" and "of the day"].

In this lecture, Professor Candida Moss will address the true history [never before told! hidden for hundreds of year!] of persecution in the early church, and show how this history includes exaggerations and forgeries [this too is well known; yet we are able to evaluate the historical evidence and reliably hold that some subset of the evidence* is not exaggerated, forged, or added in later centuries] that eventually became part of the rhetoric [w/c] of the church. Moss will also address the question of the legacy [what she refers to in the trailer above as "dangerous," "especially in the language of the religious and political right"] of this history; a legacy that has animated the acts of some within the religious world to exclude [w/c; the great sin of post-modernity] those who would challenge [w/c] their hegemony [w/c].

What I find most arresting in this is how blatantly partisan such an avenue of promotion is, while still holding out the promised scholarship as properly scientific history.  Because we know, of course, that rational, right-thinking progressives never make use of a religious heritage to suggest false or unhistorical connections between the past and the present:

(Any allusion to other historical persons, living, dead, or resurrected from the dead, is purely a figment of the viewer's bigoted imagination.)

Just in the promotional material, then, one seems meant to conclude that, since the Roman Empire is not really a persecutor of Christians, but made to seem so by (some) Christians intent on preserving their "hegemony," so too the modern states of the West can and should similarly exclude Christian persons and Christian ideas (the "dangerous" "religious and political right") from the public square.  One cannot suggest that such exclusion might seem to violate otherwise compelling norms of law and fundamental rights, in a manner reminiscent of the history of persecution of Christians at other times and places, because of the implication that this is not really "persecution," for the same reasons it wasn't in late antique Rome.  And it's left dangling as a further implication that such exclusion is necessary, lest Christians rebuild that same hegemony that (the now well-worn ideology continues) has been dismantled, at such heroic cost, by the forces of egalitarian Reason in the last three or four centuries.

This maneuver (again, just in the promotional material, since I haven't read the book itself), strikes me as highly damaging to the faith of believers.  It calls into serious doubt the accepted meaning of an important period of the Church's history, and therefore also the authority of the tradition (or even Tradition) which has accepted and "mythologized" (if you like) that meaning.  It challenges the use of that authority by the current leaders of the Church (in the Catholic Church, at least, the apostolic authority of the bishops) who have been increasingly outspoken against precisely that impetus of exclusion, common in the West for two generations.  And it undermines the solidarity of Christians with the victims of much worse injustices (many of them, of course, Christians themselves) by falsely dividing different forms of abuse of power according to ideological preferences. 

I hope the book itself will offer much better than this; this is certainly not exemplary of the love of truth and pietas to one's students which Notre Dame and Yale taught me.

* Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), is an excellent example of exactly such an effort to sift true historical accounts of early Christian martyrs from later pious fictions, and is generally accepted by historians as basically accurate.