Our Civic Martyrs Deserve to Be Remembered

Fr. Jacques Hamel was murdered by two Muslim men ten years ago this week, but countless other victims of anti-civilizational violence have been forgotten with the passing news cycle.

The argument: Fr. Hamel is remembered by an institution that deliberately remembers its martyrs, but the West finds it easier to forget and brush their memories under the rug.

WHY IT MATTERS

Ten years after the July 2016 murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel, Europe continues to experience acts of Islamist violence that are increasingly treated as isolated crimes rather than attacks on the moral confidence of Western civilization. The victims are briefly mourned before fading before public memory. That collective amnesia weakens our ability to recognize the ideological nature of the threat and respond with the seriousness it demands.

The West has become adept at managing the aftermath of terrorism while avoiding the deeper questions these attacks raise. Politicians issue carefully crafted statements, memorials are held, and the news cycles move on. The victims disappear from public memory almost as quickly as they entered it. A civilization that cannot remember those murdered because they embodied its values, or simply lived within its cultural inheritance, gradually loses the confidence to defend either.

Fr. Hamel’s murder stands apart because the Catholic Church possesses a mechanism devoted to preserving the memory of its martyrs. Within months, Pope Francis recognized his martyrdom and accelerated the process toward beatification. By contrast, countless others murdered in similarly ideological attacks vanish from public consciousness. In recent months alone, a man was nearly beheaded in Belfast and another stabbed in broad daylight in London, yet their names have already faded from public memory. St. Joan of Arc demonstrates that martyrdom can transcend religious remembrance and become part of a nation’s civic identity. Today’s Western societies seem increasingly incapable of cultivating that shared memory.

"A civilization that forgets its martyrs eventually forgets what is worth defending."

Some will argue that elevating these victims risks inflaming social tensions or unfairly implicating entire communities. That concern is understandable, but refusing to acknowledge the ideological character of these attacks carries a greater cost. The terrorists who murdered Fr. Hamel did not merely target Christianity; they attacked the religious and cultural foundations of the civilization it helped build. Many of their victims were neither clergy nor public figures but ordinary citizens waiting for buses, commuting home, or walking through their neighborhoods. They deserve to be remembered not simply for who they were as individuals, but because the civilizational inheritance that was attacked through them belongs to all of us.

Recovering a shared civic memory is part of restoring Western civilization. Healthy societies commemorate those who suffered defending their institutions, communities, and way of life. We should not reserve lasting remembrance for military heroes or religious saints alone. The ordinary victims of anti-civilizational violence deserve a permanent place in our public memory because remembering them strengthens the civic confidence needed to ensure such attacks become rarer rather than routine.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Fr. Jacques Hamel will rightly be remembered because the Church ensures that his witness endures. The West must likewise recover institutions and habits that preserve the memory of its civic martyrs. A civilization that refuses to honor its martyrs will eventually lose the will to defend itself.