A Church Where the Poor Feel At Home

On the first anniversary of Pope Francis' visit to Korea, articles were written on what the church has to learn. One article in the Catholic Times refers to the Bishops' Meeting after the visit, in which the bishops published their message: "embarrassed not to have a church in which the poor feel comfortable. We have become a middle class church in which the poor are not at home."

Pope's visit was a great gift and brought much joy but his message made us bow our heads and reflect.  We as bishops, clerics, religious and  laypeople are called to evangelize and renew ourselves.

Our response has been lukewarm, hesitant and indecisive. The article was strong in its wording in calling pitiable the lay person's passiveness and stubbornness, and the dogmatism of the clergy. We think secular achievements are spreading the Gospel, we prevent the poor from finding a place within the church, formalistic and legalistic in the way we treat laypeople. We justify ourselves, and do not think it necessary to renew and change. We are not responding to the pope's message.

However, the seeds of his message have been spread and they will for sure begin to sprout. The ground work is being laid, and we are seeing signs of change. Priests are beginning to leave their individualism, and see their role within the community, and materialism and worldliness in a new light.

A group of priests in the Seoul Diocese are getting together periodically to discuss the words of the pope. In another diocese the priests have determined to listen to the wishes of the parishioners and in their general meeting to begin renewal of themselves. In another diocese the priests have decided to live a simpler life style, and help the poor.We are seeing this movement in many dioceses. This is a good sign for the church. The whole church needs to change but the efforts of the  priests will have a great influence on the rest of the church. 

Change is always difficult. The past year has not seen many results but we are beginning to see signs of change, and the hope is for the continuing renewal of all facets of life within the church.

Church Help for North Korea

The Korean Catholic Church has been helping North Korea for the last twenty years. An article in  the Peace weekly gives a summary of the help.

Father Gerald Hammond, a Maryknoll priest, secretary of the Bishops Ad Hoc Committee for National Reconciliation, has been going to North Korea with the Eugene Bell Foundation to help those with drug resistant TB. He is the local superior of the Maryknollers, 83 years old, and makes this three week trip twice a year in the spring and fall. He has made over 50 trips to the North, four priests went on this recent trip.

The article mentions 50 of the ones who were receiving help, five were cured and returned to their families, two died, and one patient had adverse effects from the medicine and had to stop. The treatment lasts for 18 months and the cost is 5,000 dollars for each patient.

Help to the North has decreased because of the sinking of the Cheonan on the 26th of March in 2010. A South Korean investigation concluded that the ship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. Consequently, shortly after, the Korean government enacted the measure that halted all trade to the North as a penalty.

The Church has been one of big supporters of the North, sending up food and other financial aid. In 1995  because of floods and hunger, 'One Heart and One Body Movement' of the Seoul Archdiocese began  sending up financial aid, followed the year after with noodles, winter clothing, medical equipment, medicines, seeds etc..

The situation in North Korea is getting worse after each disaster. Because of drought they have had a 26 percent drop in the wheat and barley harvest, and a 24 percent drop in the  potato harvest. The United Nations (FAO) has determined North Korea is one of the 34 countries without a sufficient supply of food, and is considering support for the North.

The article concludes with mention that the measure  that stopped all government aid to the North has put a damper even in aid from non-governmental sources. It has affected the support given by the Church; after 20 years the writer admits there is fatigue that can't be overlooked. This will be a concern of the Church in the months ahead.

A Proposal for Unification of the South and North

August 2015 is the 70th year of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, as well as the 70th year of division. Many are the events remembering the joy and sorrow of independence and division of the country.
 
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Korea Railroad Corporation launched the Eurasia Friendship Express railway project, which traveled close to 9,000 miles to Germany. Writing in the Peace Weekly a columnist, professor in social sciences, mentions how empty he felt when what was central was missing: because of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) the Express started from China, and the Korea travelers had to go by plane to Beijing to start the trip, and not from Seoul, Korea.
 
His sadness comes from this reality. Before we talk of prosperity from unification,  we have to remember we still remain with the cease fire negotiations of July 27, 1953. 'The land of the morning calm' is not calm with the North and South facing each other with armaments: after the Near East an area where we have the danger of war.Over a hundred years ago with the Sino-Japanese - the Russian-Japanese wars the Korean peninsula was far from peace, and  patriot  An Jung-keun (Thomas) was willing to give his life for peace in East Asia. His idea for peace was not a balance of powers and dependence on the powerful, but rather wanted it based on the spiritual, for even if history changes you have the vital forces of life present. He was not a nationalist but a peacemaker, working for reconciliation and collaboration between the three countries of the far East.

An's dream was to have a Pan-Asian union of the three countries of China, Japan and Korea like the European Union, long before its time. One of his unusual proposals was to have the representatives of the three countries meet the pope and to vow peace. The countries would get the trust of the world with such a gesture. It was obviously not accepted by Hirashi the chief justice of the court.

This suggestion has been proven to be effective in recent history. John Lewis Gaddis an authority on  the Cold War gives Pope John Paul some credit for the end of this history. Pope Francis also gets credit for the reconciliation of Cuba and the United States. 

North Korea is not very sympathetic to the United Nations, and it goes back to the time of the Korean War. The professor proposes a plan that is open to ridicule he knows, but the descendants of Patriot An are scattered throughout the world and are both in the South and North Korea; he is respected by both divisions of Korea. He would like them to all meet under the sponsorship of the Church and have the pope serve as the arbitrator. There is no chance of such a proposal being accepted,  but it would be the dream that  An Jung-keun had over 100 years ago.

Dabbling in Communism?

Among the conservative commentators in Korea, like in the States, we have those who feel  Pope Francis is dabbling in Communism with his criticism of capitalism and what it is doing to the poor. In an article in the Now Here Catholic News Website, the issue was visited and explained to the readers by a priest sociologist.
 
What is being said is what the Church teaches, and it goes back to the time of the apostles. The early church was very much on the side of the poor. In the Old Testament, Sabbath day thinking, and the Jubilee were  the windows through which the  Israelites looked upon society. Jesus criticized the formalistic way in which the Sabbath was accepted and the way the poor were oppressed. Sabbath was for the people and not people for the Sabbath.
 
Not only did the Jews have the Sabbath but also every 7th year all the land would be given a chance to rest--not only persons but animals and all of creation. And every 7th Sabbath you had the Jubilee year in which all would return to the default situation  when the land was first distributed among the twelve tribes. Slaves were freed, debts were absolved and they returned to a condition they experienced 50 years previous -- Israelites were given a new start.

Wealthy people  were able to determine the culture of the times but the Jubilee Year was the way injustices of one generation would not be passed on to the next.  Jesus at the beginning of his public life proclaimed this Jubilee Year as the blue print for his teaching. No longer something you had to wait for every 50 years, but the way he wanted to function in society and desired his Church to continue-- one of the reasons established society hated Jesus, and wanted to get rid of him.

Sabbath, Sabbatical year and the Jubilee were the ways God wanted to return to the time of creation, a new recovery from the corruptions of the day to a just society. This was Jesus' mission and  his message. Pope Francis' message is also the same. Poverty and inequality in society are not coming from economics in itself, but from the system and laws made by the elite of society. Law of the Sabbath turns this upside down. Regulations of the Sabbath, and the Jubilee Year shows us how God gives freely of the gifts for our good in making for a just, harmonious and a society of mutual support. 

"The precepts of the sabbatical and jubilee years constitute a kind of social doctrine in miniature. They show how the principles of justice and social solidarity are inspired by the gratuitousness of the salvific event wrought by God, and that they do not have a merely corrective value for practices dominated by selfish interests and objectives, but must rather become, as a prophecy of the future, the normative points of reference to which every generation in Israel must conform if it wishes to be faithful to its God (#25, Compendium of the  Social Doctrine of the Church).

Uncomfortable Reality

On the spiritual page of the Catholic Times, the columnist recounts an incident about a follow priest, whose permission he received, and writes about it in his column. Laughter was the natural response to what he heard, but it was not  a laughing matter to the person involved.

We go back a number of years to the ordination day of the priest in question. On the day of ordination he was practicing for the liturgy in the morning and during lunch time, he was eating box lunches with his classmates, and lost in small talk with the group.

Time was approaching for the ordination ceremonies and since the liturgy would be about two hours long he went in search of the men's room. He found the area with the toilets but only saw grandmothers waiting outside the toilet but looking closely he noticed that they were using the men's toilet.

Since the women were so many, they decided to occupy the men's room also. He raised his voice telling the women that this was a men's toilet, but they paid no attention. One grandmother grabbed him by the arm and told him we were all brothers and sisters, and we shouldn't be ashamed  to use the same toilet.The priest could not accept the idea of going into the men's room, lifting up his cassock to urinate in front of all the women. So he went back to the location for the ordination which was a big auditorium. 

After the ordination and returning to the rectory,  he almost crept to the toilet, the need to urinate and not able to, was excruciatingly painful. For some time after the toilet call, he was lost in thought. 
True, we are all  brothers and sisters but there is a limit to the meaning of this phrase. Interestingly,  a serious case of a  person unable to urinate in the presence of others is called Paruresis. Using this psychological disorder in this case would not be appropriate for most would have difficulty in this situation. Bladder shy syndrome is not an uncommon problem and embarrassment, especially for a religious may be compounded. "No stress, no strain, no unusual moods, staying loose and not fall apart" is an ideal we all want to attain.

Blessings for Transparency

An article in Bible & Life begins with a sentence the writer, a novelist, saw on TV: "I don't want to do anything. I have not been doing anything, and don't want to do anything, but more in earnest." These words bring a smirk to our face, and at the same time fragmentarily show us how we are overcome by lethargy, and a coercive feeling in search of leisure. All is annoying; one has little drive and energy. This kind of doing nothing is, not what is meant by leisure.

Rest is when tiredness of the body and spirit is relieved, and we are at peace. Many are looking for leisure, but it is not the kind that gives rest to the spirit. We have a fear of rest, and this fear is spreading in society. When alone we are not recollected. When our surroundings are quiet our internal condition is noisy. The situation throughout the world finds its place in us. We are impatient, and instead of contemplation and examination, worry and anguish seethe within us. When my thoughts and spirit are not mine, life is also not mine.

"Knowing ourselves  we know everything." These words of Gandhi,  the more we think of them the more frightening they become. Expressing them differently: if we don't know ourselves, we know nothing. It doesn't matter how many wise words of the sages we know if we don't know ourselves we are building castles in the sky, and all becomes empty.

Even if we don't know ourselves at least we need to make the effort to get to know ourselves, and to talk with ourselves. However, many fear this time alone.  When being alone more than the loneliness, fear  should be our concern. Need for others can be an addiction, when we need others to verify ourselves.

He doesn't enjoy the writing as much as he did at the beginning but when we lose something, we also gain something. He has more time to think of what is important, and to get to know himself. More than criticizing others he spends more time with himself. He doesn't criticize, and sees us all as weak, and foolish creatures.
 
When I get to know myself,  I can forgive myself. I am a person with scars, hating myself, hesitant in loving myself, comparing myself with others, and falling short. However, one day surprisingly, he hugs himself, and becomes friends with himself. He considers the lofty idealism and virtues of the saints, and although weak and limited, he forgives himself, and is this not the reason he becomes happy?

No word appeals to him like the word peace. No word is so beautiful and unflappable. More than wide it is deep, more than high it is low, He wants to lower the anchor into this deep and low place. Even if all are deceived, he will not be deceived, he shows his unpainted face his transparency, and gets rid of his fears.

Rest Is the Completion of Labor

We hear a great deal of how busy life is, no time to relax, but we find many more things to do. A Korean professor of philosophy, teaching in Germany, calls our society one of 'tiredness' and the Peace Weekly has a cover story on the issue.

Many in society are bringing the problem to the attention of the citizens  for the results of the situation are gloom, health problems and a lack of vitality. The article tells us we are addicted to production and to speed and with the poverty of time we have frustration and fatigue.

Rest is not just playing but slowing our pace, looking back  from where we have come, and refresh ourselves. We take time out from our lives to have quiet time, seek a place of rest, admire the daisies, and gaze up at the sky....

Thanks to the digital world in just a few minutes  we can accomplish what took a whole day but without increase of  leisure. In Korea we express this situation as being "so busy I am on the verge of dying." Quite an extreme position to be in, and yet with the poverty of time we continue to add to it-- our self portrait.

Traveling on the subway for just a few stops and we can see what the writer is saying. Each one has his smart phone, busy with their fingers and eyes glued to the screen. Even waiting for the elevator we see this scene repeated.

He quotes many who see the problem and are speaking and writing about it. One priest mentions we have come to the limits of how much we can do, and we are beginning to realize that the body and  mind can be pushed just so much before serious problems arise; we begin living not as humans but as robots.

We have an intimate connection between work and leisure. We are made to work and provide for our families but the reason we can continue this is the rest that should be part of our lives. We work to have rest and rest to return to work. A religious is quoted as saying: "Rest is not the cessation of work but its fulfillment (completion)." Rest gives us the time to participate in the rest of God-- holy time. This attitude is not only a cultural but also a spiritual need. Without this mental and spiritual rest our rest can end up as more labor.

Our culture of rest many times is disguised labor. We take to the highways, go at the speed of light to the beaches and mountains, and eat and drink to late in the evening and become more  stressed out than when  working. More than the body the spirit needs rest if we are to prepare ourselves for a joyous existence. The article ends with the words of a spiritual writer who wrote that without the experience of  silence, peace and a quiet place, we destroy life.