Naomi24 - “... With all due respect to Father Hamel, martyrdom is a choice... All met with appallingly gruesome deaths at the hands of maniacs driven by the same evil religious philosophy so why one and not the others? Is the church remiss here?”
Absolutely.
The church is rife with inconsistency and hypocrisy. As you rightly say, martyrdom is a choice. Being the unwitting victim of murder is not.
Of course we're speaking about the Catholic Church here where rules are strictly adhered to when convenient and bent or broken when necessary. Take the recent sainthood of so-called Mother Teresa – the two alleged “miracles” that made her eligible for sainthood are laughable. To anyone not afflicted with an unquestioning adherence to the catholic faith, these two miracles are nothing more than pathetic fabrications. The authenticity of them is questioned even by the very people most directly involved. The propagandist and devout catholic, Malcolm Muggeridge, was a liar and a fraud. He helped create the Mother Teresa myth in his documentary, Something Beautiful for God. All complete baloney as revealed in Christopher Hitchens in books and numerous talks.
Oops. Sorry – I sidetracked myself there!
But yes, the Church is entirely remiss in its rush to canonise Father Jacques Hamel. By doing so, they insult the memory of those others similarly murdered by members of "the religion of peace”.