"The Report of...[Heterodox American Catholicism's] Death was an Exaggeration" (apologies to Mark Twain)
St Justin, Martyr
Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash
Justin was an early Christian convert who
finds himself in Rome, where he opens a philosophical school and tirelessly proclaims Christ to pagan scholars. He writes and speaks of the God he has finally come to know, using the language and categories of the philosophers. Above all, he uses his intelligence and skill in defense of persecuted Christians, as we see in his Apologies. Justin attacks the professional slanderers, but his public controversy with the philosopher Crescentius – a rabidly anti-Christian thinker backed by the politically powerful – is fatal. Justin is thrown in jail, ironically, as an “atheist,” that is, as a subversive and an enemy of the State. He and six companions are beheaded around the year 165, under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. (Vatican News)
“And, ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced from another husband, commits adultery’” (cf. Matt 5:32), from which he [St Justin Martyr] concludes, “So that all who, by human law, are twice married, are in the eye of our Master sinners, and those who look upon a woman to lust after her. For not only he who in act commits adultery is rejected by him, but also he who desires to commit adultery” (Catholic Answers, 1/30/25).
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