Otto Who?

This was written by Fr. Roman Theisen in 1989 . Fr. Roman died in 2002, at Maryknoll Center. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's many years before and continued to work as pastor, Regional Superior and as chaplain at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul. His desire was to die in Korea but it was not to be. His condition deteriorated and had to return to the Center to get the necessary medical help. He died shortly after but not experiencing the "Roman who?" of this blog.

Some where in the Maryknoll world a priest or brother had died. The Rector went to the altar and read a brief telegram: "Word has just arrived at Maryknoll that father Otto Rauschenback was killed yesterday by Chinese bandits. details will be made known as they are received." There was a sudden silence, and then whispers were heard: "Otto who?" Even the Rector seemed embarrassed at not knowing who this priest was, whose tragic death had just been announced. It impressed me then, and still does, that here was a Maryknoll Missioner who'd been ordained at Maryknoll for the foreign missions, sent to China, stayed there, and was largely forgotten. He became to me an instant hero.

Details later informed us that Otto "Rauschenbach had gone to China twenty-one years before. He returned to the U.S. for a home visit after ten years in China. He went back and ten years later was planning another visit home when Japanese armies invaded China. Fearing he might not be allowed to return if he left, he moved into a mountainous area behind the Japanese lines and continued to minister to his Chinese people. In the unsettled area between the warring armies he fell into the hands of bandits, who killed him and left his body lying in a ditch.

Maryknoll has a Departure Ceremony for young priests, brothers, and lay missioners. Friends and relatives surround them, wishing them god-speed and success in their first mission. It is, indeed, a heart warming occasion... however I have been impressed, by the quiet men who arrive alone after years on their mission. They arrive by taxi, often having had no one meet them at the airport.Their eyes light up if they recognize a classmate or someone they know. Otherwise, they follow the official guest master to their assigned room. They stay awhile for medical care at the end of which they call a taxi, murmur farewell to a classmate or someone they know, and then they are gone. quietly returning to people they love.

The greatest honor I can imagine is for the Lord to allow me also to remain quietly with my own people in Korea, until the day a telegram is sent from Maryknoll announcing: "Father Roman Theisen has died in Korea," and in distant places young Maryknollers look at each other in puzzlement: "Roman who?"

LISA

Another incident from the People I Love by Father Roman Theisen.


Was I hearing correctly? Or was I overly tired and imagining what I thought I heard? It was late at night, about 10:30. We'd conducted regular Thursday evening catechumen classes and had several interviews . I'd locked the church and returned to the priest's house to find this beautiful high school girl waiting for me. Lisa was growing up in a tragically unhappy family. Her father was a notorious womanizer, bringing his girl friends home to flaunt before his wife and family. Lisa's mother, faced with a hopeless situation, was given to hysterics, hovering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As always, the children, of whom Lisa was eldest, suffered.


But what was Lisa telling me now? "No one loves me," she was saying. "If you love me you'll take me to bed with you tonight and make love to me. Nobody will know." That wouldn't be true love," I tried to explain. " That would be selfish love. I'd be taking advantage of you when you're feeling rejected. It's because I do love you, and love you truly, that I am going to send you right home. You may not understand now, but sometime you'll realize I really love you for yourself, and not for my own selfish pleasure." Lisa slammed the door as she left. "No one in the whole world loves me, " she shouted back angrily.


Three days later her mother told me Lisa had disappeared from home. Then a month later she came to see me. "I just want to find out how my mother's doing," she said. "Don't tell her I came to see you." Lisa had taken a "hostess" job in a bar next to one of the U.S. Army camps. From time to time she came to see me. She allowed me to tell her mother only that she was alive and well.


Then one day Lisa came with a Polish boy from Hamtramck, Michigan. He'd met her in the bar and they wanted to get married. Before they left I persuaded them to call Lisa's mother, and there was a tearful reconciliation between mother and daughter. I eventually witnessed their marriage, and Lisa followed her soldier husband to the US. Back in the US Lisa's husband reenlisted in the Army and as a reenlistment bonus was allowed to pick his new duty post. He chose to return to Korea. They came to see me when they arrived back.


Some months later the phone rang. It was Lisa's husband. Congratulate me, Father Roman, he said, "I have a son! Lisa asked me to see if you can baptize him next Sunday afternoon?" I agreed and asked what name they were giving their baby. "Lisa give me no choice," he laughed. "She says you're the only person in the world she's sure really loves her, and the closest to a father she ever had. She insists we name our baby Roman"

The Couple Who Married... with a Picture

One of the stories by Fr, Roman Theisen taken from the People I love.

"Could we arrange a marriage in the Church? None of us are Catholic." The speaker was a man about 40 years old. His question made me smile. Just a short time before, as member of a commission appointed by the Korean Bishops to draw up a directory for pastoral work in Korea, I had persuaded the the Bishops to allow non-Catholic marriages in the Churches of Korea, provided neither party had a divorce or any impediment of natural law.

"You see, Father," the man explained:"my parents were too poor to have a marriage ceremony with a picture. They just registered their marriage according to civil law. Then they had to support me and my six brothers and sisters. They always felt bad they had no picture of their wedding to show us as we grew up. Now my father's 60th birthday is coming up and we want to chip in and pay for a marriage ceremony for them. If its not too expensive, a real marriage... with a picture."

I assured them it wouldn't be too expensive. There were three wedding dresses at the Church and if one fit his mother they wouldn't even have to rent a wedding gown.

The Lord blessed the Wedding Day with a bright sun, and the bride was radiant with happiness, walking down the aisle to meet her groom of 40 years. Young women of the choir sang and the grandchildren played in the aisle as the couple promised to love and cherish each other. After the ceremony I stood with them before the altar as the local photographer took a picture.

Bride and groom smiled happily as they left the Church, surrounded by their seven children and numerous grandchildren. They were really married now... with a picture!

My Present Theology of Ministry

This is a section of Fr.Theisen's dissertation written in July,1989 for the Master's Degree in Applied Spirituality. It's titled, "My Present Theology of Ministry." It received a grade of "A++ Superb!" which made me think I may not be as dumb as I thought.

...The next period of my life is one which gave me great satisfaction, contentment, and sense of fulfillment. These are the nine years spent in a town called Bu Pyeong. The experience of Bu Pyeong still greatly influences me. I was a zealous pastor, perfecting my method of conducting the catechumenate by using only the Bible as a text book and developing a First Communion Preparation book for children. It was during this time I was asked to found the Church's Tribunal system in Korea.

The presence of a large U.S, Army camp on one side of Bu Pyeong brought me a great deal of work processing G.I-Korean girl marriages. With 2000 young American soldiers and 6,000 prostitutes in the camp area of the mission, "Front Street" kept me busy. I became defender and priest of the prostitutes, most of whom took up this profession out of dire destitution and sacrificial love of their parents or family. I hasten to add, however, that not all the girls who came to marry G.Is were prostitutes. We had every class of society in Bu Pyeong but from the beginning I had a special love for the prostitutes of Bu Pyeong, those young girls who sacrificed their body and soul to survive themselves, and to save their families from starvation.

The procedure was for a young country girl whose family is starving or who's father or brother needed medical care to tell her family, "I am going to look for work in the city" she approaches the Madam of a house for a loan which she sends back for her father to receive medical treatment, or for an elder brother to go to school. Then she works as a prostitute till her loan is paid back. In effect giving her life to save her brother. I can understand why Jesus said the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven before the Pharisees. These Korean girls are humble, with no pretense, generous, charitable to anyone who needs help and just plain good. beautiful people.

For about nine years, in cooperation with the US Army Chaplains I ran a weekly instruction class for the girls who were marrying Catholic American soldiers. I ran classes teaching these girls how to use American cosmetics, to avoid G.I. barroom English and how to adjust to American living. In all I counselled some 700 such couples. These girls came feeling rejected, guilty, and anxious because everyone despises them for what they are. The U.S. officials particularly placed every possible obstacle in the way of their marriage. I started by assuming they would marry their soldier boy and gave them what help I could to make their marriage a success. Once a girl realized I was on her side, we became close friends. That Army camp is closed now and my girls have grown up but I love them still. Those I am still in contact with are now middle aged matrons with children in high school or college, who have successfully adjusted to life in the U.S. with their husbands. How proud I feel when one or other searches me out to show off their children!

The question sometimes comes to my mind. Why do I feel so close to these prostitutes? All I know is that I still feel proud of that period in my life when I could walk from one end to the other of Front Street in Bu Pyeong without being accosted by any of the 6,000 girls who walked the streets there. If a new girl in town did try to spear me she would be pulled back by the other girls with the indignant explanation, You don't call out to him. That's Father Tai . He's Our Priest.O




ur Priest. I am still proud to be Their Priest!

The Korean Potters

A blog taken from the booklet People I Love, written by Fr. Roman Theisen some years ago,
while working in the diocese of Inchon.

Sister David was on the verge of tears with frustration, "And now the old man won't let the children go to school" she wailed.She had just returned from visiting a small village of pot makers. She herself had grown up in a potters' village and understood them.

The potters of Korea are unique. Catholicity was brought to Korea in the late 1700s by scholars who accompanied diplomatic missions to Peking, China, where they met Jesuit missionaries. The 1800s saw virulent persecution of the Catholics in Korea. Many Catholic scholars fled to the isolation of the mountains where they made a living by manufacturing large clay pots, used to store the Korean national dish kimchi, a sort of sauerkraut. Isolated from Korean society, the potters lost their scholarly status and became an uneducated clannish group, a people disdained as low class by other Koreans. Today( this has changed a great deal in the present with the introduction of plastics and other materials) one sees their kilns built into the side of hills throughout Korea. Almost 100% Catholic, they cling tenaciously to their faith, but are slow to spread it to others... after all their ancestors had their heads chopped off for this! They make their pots in the spring and summer, borrowing money to live from the Patriarch of the village who usually owns the kilns. They pay him back when they sell their pots in the fall. Tragically, many spend the winter hibernating, overindulging in drink until work resumes in the spring.

The village of potters from which Sister David had just returned was close to the Church. Sister David had gone to the village every day to teach the children catechism, and to teach reading and writing . We arranged to have them enter school at the level appropriate for their age. The children received the news with joy, clapping their hands with glee. The Patriarch's little son, Peter proudly told me, " I'am going to school just like the city children . I'll be in the Fourth Grade."

But... the Patriarch of the village refused permission for the children to go to school, "it's bad enough for the boys to learn to read," he told me with great sincerity, "But for a girl to learn to read...," he shook his head dubiously. " Have you seen those pagan magazines about romance on the news stands? If our girls learn to read they'll be corrupted by those magazines." I couldn't budge him and left, asking him to reconsider.

A week later I sent Sister David again, "Tell the Patriarch this time that the Pastor feels he has a moral obligation to send the children to school, and I don't see how I can give him the sacraments if he refuses permission. Don't actually threaten that I will refuse him communion, only the Bishop can do that, but make it sound as if I might."

Sister David returned ecstatic. "it worked!" she said. "He's allowing the children to go to school and is sending two of the mothers tomorrow to make arrangements with the school." Twenty children began school that term, walking three miles to and from school.

Some years later I received a letter from two of those boys , one of them Peter, the Patriarch's son. It was an invitation for me to act as honorary Assistant Priest at their First Mass, which they were concelebrating together. Three of the girls from Sister David's reading class who had entered the convent would also be home for the occasion. After the Mass I stood with the two new priests, the three young Sisters, and their families for a family picture. The Patriarch, who was now old and feeble, supported by his daughters as he walked, took my hand. "You were right, Father Tai," he said, " It did no harm to send these children to school." As he spoke I couldn't help but recall the day years before when little Peter, now Father Peter told me so proudly, " I'am going to school just like the city children."