TOKYO (UCAN) -- November 24 will mark the beatification ceremony of 188 Japanese martyrs of the seventeenth century.

The nation's bishops have spent years preparing for the Roman decision on the beatification and now are focused on the ceremony. Travel agencies are putting together tour packages for pilgrims going to Nagasaki for the celebration. Millions of yen are being collected to cover expenses.

Everything seems to be falling into place -- everything, that is, except a broad-based enthusiasm for the whole business.

The beatification rite will take place in Nagasaki because there is not enough local support for doing it elsewhere, even in Tokyo and other places where the martyrdoms took place. Nagasaki, with its rich history of Catholicism and persecution, is the fall-back venue for Church events when other places cannot or will not host them.

Of course, I may simply be projecting my own lack of interest by thinking there is little interest on the part of others.

I have been skeptical about the whole saint-making system ever since I imagined a crowd of the blessed in heaven fighting over whose turn it is to be responsible for a miracle, while an angelic bureaucrat announces lottery winners and earthbound advocates gather money to glorify the dead whose lives were dedicated to serving the living poor.

A colleague once observed that the Church already has plenty of dead saints; we should put more effort into making living saints.

In 1984, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan set guidelines for the Church in Japan. The first is, "The good news of salvation is to be brought to each and every person."

Each year, I am amazed and angered that phone calls to chancery offices on Easter Monday to find out how many catechumens were received into the Church on Holy Saturday get a variation of "we'll have the answer when we publish our annual diocesan statistics."

Are we not curious to know how effective the Church's evangelization efforts have been? Have we no interest to provide a timely personal welcome to our new brothers and sisters? Is a half-hour telephone survey of parishes too onerous a task for diocesan bishops and bureaucrats?

In fact, since the bishops declared that proclaiming the Good News to all is a priority, the number of baptisms each year has dropped precipitously to less than half of what it was when the bishops established the guidelines.

We seem to have lost the conviction that our relationship with Christ in faith is precious enough to share with all people. Instead, we make a fuss over those who had that conviction four centuries ago.

At this year's Easter Vigil in Rome, Pope Benedict welcomed Magdi Allam, a prominent Muslim journalist in Italy, into the Catholic Church. Allam's life has been threatened in the past because of his comments about Muslims when he was still one himself. In an inspiring essay about his conversion, he faced the possibility that his choice to follow Christ might result in martyrdom.

Allam said he was aware that "conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy ... I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith."

He went on to speak of the Church being "too prudent in the conversion of Muslims" because of "fear." Such "prudence" and "fear" can also be found in Japan in our dealings with Buddhists, atheists and agnostics, even though the worst we face is indifference rather than death.

The seventeenth-century martyrs showed that faithfulness mattered then, and Magdi Allam and others like him show us that it still matters. Can they inspire us to imitate them today, proclaiming Christ to the world?

The Japanese martyrs, as all martyrs, obviously were killed because people knew they were Christians. They did not hide their faith nor did they deny it.

Can we say the same about ourselves? Do our words and actions show that we are followers of Jesus? Do we have enough confidence in the life-giving love of God to live and proclaim our faith no matter what the challenges?

Perhaps the best way to honor the 188 martyrs is not a ceremony, but a renewed dedication on the part of each Catholic in Japan to actually proclaim the Good News. The example of those dead saints and of living ones can be the means for us to make more living saints.

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Maryknoll Father William Grimm is editor-in-chief of Katorikku Shimbun, Japan's Catholic weekly.

(Accompanying photos available at here

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