By Anthony Sheridan
According to militant Catholic David Quinn, Fr. Jacques Hamel, the Catholic priest who was murdered recently in France, is a martyr.
This is a questionable claim when we look at the definition of the word martyr.
One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles.
The key word here is ‘chooses’.
I don’t know what went on in that church in the lead up to Fr. Hamel’s murder but I suspect that he was not given the choice of living or dying for his faith.
If that is the case then he is not a martyr but simply another victim of religious fanaticism that is responsible for the deaths of countless millions down through the centuries.
The two religious fanatics who murdered Fr. Hamel are, however, most certainly martyrs. While planning the attack on the church they must have known that they too were almost certainly going to die. In other words, they chose to die fighting Christian infidels in defence of their particular god.
It is a measure of the irrationality of religion that martyrdom can be seen as a positive/holy act.
Any person, who chooses to die for his particular god, whether as a result of murdering or being murdered, is doing so from a mind that has been damaged by the disease of religion.
If a person has become so religiously fanatical as to allow his own body to be murdered in the name of his particular god then in all likelihood he is also capable of murdering others for the same reason.
We only have to look at history to confirm this truth.
Copy to:
David Quinn