True Religion 101

Allow me to take a cue from Pope Benedict XVI on lecturing on the difference between true religion and a political ideology with a few religious trappings.

The subject of the class today: what a martyr is, and what a martyr isn’t.

This is a martyr:


Sister Leonella Sgorbati, R.I.P.

This is not a martyr:


Palestinian female suicide bomber

The difference isn’t the full covering on the face. The difference is that the martyr had lived a life of charity (the nun worked in a hospital in Somalia), ended one moment by the wicked, while the suicide bomber’s faux-martyrdom is summed up in one act of killing oneself along with others, almost invariably total innocents.

Class dismissed.