The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century A Comprehensive World History

by Robert Royal

Overview

From the Catholic martyrs at Auschwitz to Oscar Romero; from Ita Ford and her companions to the recent murders of Christians in India, it is estimated that more than one million Christians died for their faith in the “century of progress” we have just experienced. In The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, Robert Royal presents a wide-ranging history of these martyrs. The book traces the specific situation of each incident and studies the political system and the reason for confrontation. Regions and topics include the Calvary of Romania, the death of Edith Stein, Miguel Pro and the Mexican tragedy, Soviet Russia, and China.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780824524142
Publisher:	Herder & Herder
Publication date:	10/01/2006
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Robert Royal, Ph.D., is president of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. he is author of several books and has written for many newspapers and journals including The Washington Post, First Things, Crisis, The Catholic Historical Review, Communio and The American Enterprise Magazine.

Editorial Reviews

This book is Ruether s (theology, Garrett-Evangelical Seminary) self-professed critique of the failure of the Christian Right s family values campaign to embody an ethic of justice and reconciliation. Highlighting historical Christianity s paradoxical stances on marriage, celibacy, and women, Ruether argues strongly that the concept of the family has undergone many manifestations over time and that, when espousing a return to family values, the church stands more on cultural standards than theological truths. Ruether s strength lies in presenting a comprehensive sociopolitical history of women and the family rather than in delineating corresponding Christian/clerical responses to changing social norms. She neither pits church doctrines against social claims nor explains how the church historically altered its vision with respect to the family. While it might sacrifice depth for breadth, this is still a highly readable and important political stab at timely theological and cultural questions for women s studies and religion collections. Sandra Collins, Duquesne Univ. Lib., PA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This world history of the Catholic martyrs of modern times provides chapters which cover each martyr in depth and detail, with indepth biographical sketches outlining their lives and achievements. The process of Catholic martyr status and thoughts about heroism are presented with much depth and discussion in this important survey.

Historian Royal (President/Faith and Reason Institute) surveys the Catholics who, on every continent but Antarctica and Australia, have died for their beliefs in the course of the last century. After an introduction defining the meaning of martyrdom in Catholic faith and devotion, and an explanation of some of the guidelines by which the church determines whether a particular murder constitutes martyrdom, Royal surveys the waves of persecution—from the Mexican government's anticlerical war on the church in the 1920s to the near-genocidal tribal conflicts in Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s—that have produced more martyrs than any other period of Christian history. Although the stories of many of these figures (such as Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein, and Oscar Romero) are well-known, others (the heroic Mexican Jesuit Miguel Pro) are more obscure, and some accounts (the many martyrs of the Spanish Civil War, the victims of postwar Romania's "reeducation," and the surprising story of the Albanian security agent whose denunciation of the Enver Hoxha's persecutions was inadvertently broadcast in 1948) will be new to most readers. Royal treads delicately around some of the more controversial aspects of his martyrology (like the pre-WWII anti-Semitic writings of Kolbe), and he is plainly uncomfortable with the political thrust of the story of Romero and the other martyrs of El Salvador. And some of people profiled here (such as China's Cardinal Ignatius Kung) are not martyrs in the strict sense of the word, as they suffered for their faith without giving their lives. Royal's catalog of the horrors that Catholics, like so many others, suffered at the hands of brutal regimes of bothrightand left in this bloody century will edify believers—and should provide a useful (and often surprising) historical corrective for all scholars of the modern age.

Kirkus Reviews