This story exemplifies why relatively few people did what this family did. The Nazis were quite willing to annihilate entire families, down to the smallest babe. It is one thing to risk your own life, another if you are risking the lives of your loved ones. This is not meant as a criticism of this family, but rather an observation of the stakes involved.
Champions of Christ
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Without a higher God and a better life ahead, few would do what they ought. Bless those souls that make the hard choices, but risking martyrdom (the answer to evil) today is largely a thing of history books and hardly a thing of homilies.
Is there site that lists the candidates for sainthood? I would like to read more about this family.
Heard the same about North Korea.
Heck in the West people will go after your family. Just 1 example…
https://youtu.be/VFAgKgC0ZsY
So when it comes time to stand up to the Left, you have to ask yourself if your family is ready to suffer too.
And those who did do something worked really, really hard to make sure nobody found out.
2 Maccabees is the easiest source to reference the price some will be forced to pay for their faith. If it can happen in 160BC Judea, in 1597 Japan,1926 Mexico, and 1945 Poland, it will happen again. May God bless with fortitude those who face such torture.
Ulma Family, pray for us!
Several years ago, listening to the Glenn Beck program he made reference to somethin of this nature. He did not mention this particular family, but said something along the lines that the days were coming that it would be very difficult to tell the truth as a married person (man). The wife and children will be ostracized.
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After hearing that, I understood how valuable the unmarried priesthood was and St. Paul made a lot more sense. Alas, we do not have folks in the clergy willing to give everything up to tell the truth about abortion, contraception, or divorce, which is pretty low having fruit. And they buckled very quickly to demands of the gov’t to close the parishes, issue vaccine employer mandates, suspend hospital visits, etc
Modern mass murder by Hitler and Stalin was informed by the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915-17. It has since been refined in various other iterations.
An unborn and unbaptized child being beatified? How is that theologically possible when the the eternal fate of unbaptized babies hasn’t been determined?
Actually, Don, I do think legitimate criticism can be leveled at the parents here. Their actions, however courageous, were an apparent failure in their primary responsibility to put the welfare of the children first.
It would seem to me their cause wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if there was still a devil’s advocate in the process.
Christian kids went with their Christian parents into the arena Greg when Christians were thrown to the lions. Allow fear of harm to our children to govern our actions and we will be ruled by the worst of the worst in perpetuity. I fear I would have done nothing in their place out of fear of what the Nazis would have done to my wife and kids. Thus evil triumphs by using the worst of means.
I agree with Greg here in that they failed in their primary responsibility of protecting their children and unborn baby. They lived their Faith heroically, which is a pre-requisite for Sainthood, but how is this reconciled with their vocation as parents? Where would one begin to find the answer to this…
An unborn and unbaptized child being beatified? How is that theologically possible when the the eternal fate of unbaptized babies hasn’t been determined?
Baptism of blood by the unborn child being killed out of hatred for the Faith. Not any different than the Holy Innocents, none of whom were baptized.
“Allow fear of harm to our children to govern our actions and we will be ruled by the worst of the worst in perpetuity.”
But legitimate concern for the safety of children in a family ought to govern the actions of parents to a degree in situations like this. There may have been other factors at play here. Deciding between the welfare of persecuted people and duties to protect one’s family is difficult in a situation like this to be sure.
Whether baptism of blood applies to an infant or unborn child without rational capacity is something different than in the case of someone above the age of reason. Actually, the case of the Holy Innocents is different in that their murders took place PRIOR to the death and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, baptism as a matter of Christian theology really doesn’t apply. Secondly, I know of no authoritative pronouncement on whether or not the Holy Innocents enjoy the Beatific Vision.
The Holy Innocents have been acclaimed as martyrs from the early days of the Church and by some of our greatest saints, including, among many others, Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard of Clairveux. Their feast was instituted sometime in the fifth century. Popes have frequently referred to them. Martyrdom for those below the age of reason requires merely the act not the desire.
The Holy Innocents in reference to aborted children and aborted children has spawned quite a bit of writing on the subject. An example:
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/abortion&martyrdom1.htm
Deciding between the welfare of persecuted people and duties to protect one’s family is difficult in a situation like this to be sure.
Yeah, it is. I was thinking about this situation last night. If someone asked me to hide refugees from the Reich I am afraid I would have declined if I had a family to protect. Now say some desperate Jewish kids showed up at my door. I doubt, and hope, I would have had the heart to turn them away.
Modern mass murder by Hitler and Stalin was informed by the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915-17.
Don’t think so.
They would have done it anyway, but Hitler did reference the Armenians in a speech in August 1939:
Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?[7]
See the work of the historical demographer Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville. By his count, about 600,000 ethnic Armenians died during the period running from 1915-20, or about 20% of the total. He attributes that to an effort by the government to forcibly resettle much of that population to other parts of the Empire. The Soviets did that with certain populations in Russia (Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans). Don’t know if the mortality rates were as high. IIRC, Nazi Germany would abduct able-bodied males in occupied populations and put them to work as slave labor in factories. The Dutch evangelist Andrew van der Bilj has an account of how this worked in the Netherlands and the strategies he, his brothers, and his father employed in an attempt to hide from the kidnapping gangs. I’m not aware of the Nazi government making use of wholesale resettlement as a policy during the war, just wholesale slaughter. There were bloc expulsions by the Soviets and others after the war (Poles out of White Russia, Germans out of East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and the Bohemian and Moravian borderlands). Not sure if the mortality rate was as high as 20%.
See the work of the historical demographer Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville. By his count, about 600,000 ethnic Armenians died during the period running from 1915-20, or about 20% of the total. He attributes that to an effort by the government
We have many eye witness accounts Art of the Turkish attempt to wipe out the Armenians, up to and including crucifixion.
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I agree with the choice of the parents.