History Repeats Itself

                                                   by Timothy O. McAleer

Recent news reports indicate that Martin Scorsese (he of the infamous Last Temptation of Christ controversy) has gone to Japan to film a movie about the martyrs of Japan based on the book Silence (1966) by Catholic Japanese novelist, Endo Shusaku.  Now Silence is a controversial book, for its title comes from the implication that God is "silent" amidst a Christian's trials and tribulations, in this case the trials and tribulations of the martyrs of Japan, which is patently false; and it ends with the idea that Jesus in his Infinite Mercy wanted the Christians of that time to step on the fumie (stepping picture), which is also patently false. 

The fumie is a bronze plate depicting Jesus and Mary, which was used in the annual census at the main Buddhist temple of every town for more than two centuries to weed out the "hidden Christians."   If anyone refused to step on the dreaded fumie, they were sent to Nagasaki where they were subjected to various forms of torture, such as having scalding hot water ladled over their naked bodies from the boiling springs of Unzen volcano--popularly known as unzen jigoku (Unzen Hell)--until they recanted.  Despite such horrors, Christ does not want us to apostasize at any time, in any way, for any reason whatsoever.  We are to remain Christians despite any torture or death that awaits us.

In the book Silence, and in the upcoming movie version by Scorsese, the main character is a  Jesuit priest, Christovao Ferreira, superior for the Kami District of the Jesuit Order in Japan (Fujita 193), and who apostasizes under the horrible torture of "The Pit"--a hole in the ground over which a Christian was suspended upside down by his feet, with straw mats wrapped tightly around his body.  These mats would expel blood from small pricks in the victim's earlobes and fill the pit with his blood until it would gradually drown him.  (Many of these tortures were taught to the Japanese by the Calvinist Dutch Protestants trading at the small island of Dejima, off the coast of Nagasaki; the same Dutch Protestants who originally told the Japanese they needed to start eliminating the Catholic presence in Japan, which was largely Spanish and Portuguese, lest their own despised ruler in the Netherlands, the heroic Spanish monarch, Charles V, would also become ruler of Japan.) 

After Ferreira's apostasy, he then helps Masashige Inoue, "the inquisitor general during the height of the Christian persecution by the Tokugawa bakufu" (191) to find, torture, and eliminate his former Christian confreres.  After his apostasy, Ferreira's name is changed to Chuan Suwano, he is given a "Japanese widow of an executed Chinese merchant" to be his wife, has three children, and lives comfortably until his death in 1650 (194).  A story has it that Ferreira "confessed his original faith on his deathbed, but there is nothing to substantiate this" (195).  During his life, Ferreira, along with Inuoe--both stationed in Nagasaki, where Christians, once discovered, were sent from all throughout Japan--becomes the main persecutor of the underground Church in Japan. "The incredible news of the apostasy of Padre Ferreira shook Catholic Europe" (197). So notorious does Ferreira become, in fact, that heroic missionaries from all over Europe secretly attempt to enter Japan and, at grave risk to their own lives, seek to convert the Jesuit apostate, save his soul, and hopefully diminish greatly the persecution of these hidden Christians (197).

Now the name "Christovao Ferreira" may sound familiar to those who represent the underground Catholic Church--popularly known as "sedevacantists"--of our time, for it is they who have come under attack by a man bearing the name "Christopher Ferrara."  Like his infamous namesake, Christopher Ferrara has become the chief prosecutor of this underground Church--this time on the American continent--particularly in his article which mockingly refers to "The Sedevacantist Enterprise" and a follow-up article which snarls that "the sedevacantist mill Ggrinds on."

There are more parallels between Christovao Ferreira and Christopher Ferrara besides their first and last names and their persecution of the underground Catholic Church of their respective eras: 1) both men wrote books that critiqued the Church; 2) both of these books had titles indicating an attempt to "tear the mask off" the Church of their day, in Ferreira's case A Disclosure of Falsehood, and in Ferrara's case The Great Facade; 3) both works contained faulty theology, in Ferreira's case on the nature of the Eucharist (Ferreira believing that it was only symbolic) and in Ferrara's case on the nature of the Papacy (Ferrara believing that someone he believes is a true pope can err in matters of faith and morals, in the ordinary Magesterium, in promulgation of a new "mass," and/or in changing the Church's universal disciplinary laws); and 4) both wrote their works in collaboration with others. 

What does this mean to us?  For those who want to see amazing coincidences as just that and nothing more, perhaps it means nothing.  But for those of us who seek to discern God's Providence in all things, especially when they are laid out plainly before our very eyes, it perhaps means that the true underground Catholic Church is the one that is persecuted by someone bearing the name "Christovao Ferreira"--or "Christopher Ferrara," if you will.


                                                               Works Cited


Fujita, Neil S. Japan's Encounter With Christianity: The Catholic Mission In Pre-Modern Japan. New York: Paulist, 1991.


posted July 10, 2009
revised July 12, 2009 

second revison July 21, 2009