![]() In his speech at the University of Regensburg in 2006, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI raises this question, referring to the medieval thinker Duns Scotus and the Muslim thinker Ibn Hazm, who see God’s freedom as so transcendent that Is it not contrary to God’s nature to command sin? It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.” It seems as if Jesus is commanding apostasy, as if God is commanding Fr. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into the world. Rodrigues believes he hears the image of Christ say to him, “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. One of the most difficult passages in the novel to understand is when, just before trampling, Fr. Although he does not want to profane the image of Jesus, he cannot endure witnessing this torture, and so apostatises in order to save the victims. Rodrigues is eventually forced to witness the brutal torture of some Japanese Catholics who have already apostatised, and is told that the torture will not end until he also apostatises by trampling on an image of Jesus called a fumie. With the help of Kichijiro, a Japanese Catholic who apostatised to save his life, they find these hidden Catholics, but Kichijiro betrays Fr. ![]() Francisco Garrpe travel to Japan in order to minister to the hidden Catholics and to discover the truth about Fr. Christovão Ferreira has apostatised and is now collaborating with the persecutors, Fr. In response to the reports that Jesuit priest Fr. To give a brief plot summary, Silence is set 1643, after the Japanese persecution of the Church led to Catholics going underground. There are no easy answers to these dilemmas, but considering the new film adaptation of this novel by Martin Scorsese, now is a good time to ponder them. Recounting the story of Portuguese Jesuits facing martyrdom and persecution in seventeenth-century Japan, Endo does not hesitate to pose to his characters – and readers – the most difficult moral dilemmas imaginable regarding persecution and apostasy, and even whether God might command the characters to sin and apostatize. Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence is one of the most unsettling novels a Catholic could read.
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