Each year at this time we have Catholic statistics published which
are utilized in pastoral work. Both Catholic papers gave a review of the statistics.
In the year 2017 for the first time the
percentage of believers to the total population has risen to 11%.
However, the growth rate from 2008 has been steadily decreasing and last
year it was only 1.3%. The ratio of believers to the local population
was highest in Seoul.
The number of older believers continues to increase. Male believers number 42.5 % and female number
57.5 %. The percentage of female is higher in almost all ages except
for the 20 to 24 age group in which men outnumber the women and this is
the highest percentage of all age groups in comparison to the women
because of the evangelization in the military. Those between 10 and 19
(children and adolescents) accounts for only 6.6 % of the total.
55.8%
of the believers live in the metropolitan area. The numbers of those
baptized in 2017 totaled 96,649 people a decrease of 12.4 % from the
previous year. In the age groups except for the ages of 75 to 79 all
the numbers have decreased from the previous year. All the other
sacraments have also shown a decrease. The number of marriages continues
to decrease; in 2013 for the first times it was under 20,000. 2017 was
the lowest with 15,842. Marriages in society from 2008 have decreased
by 19.3 % but the church marriages decreased 39.5%.
The
reception of the Sacraments all show a decrease. Mass attendance
increased by 0.9% from the previous year. The Mass attendance has
continued to decrease since 2010. Elementary Sunday school attendance
decreased 1.2% from last year; middle school 5.9% and high school decreased 9.2%.The number of parish priests in oversea mission has increased 113.5 %.
There
are a total of 5360 clergy, two Cardinals, 42 bishops, 5160 Korean
priests and 158 foreign priests an increase of 159. Although in certain
dioceses an increase is seen, overall there was a decrease.
Korea
has 17,176 religious in 176 congregations. The number of male religious is the largest number in the last 10 years but the women are
the lowest since 2011.
The number of countries in which
the Korean church sent missionaries overseas increased to 82 countries.
Over the past decade the number of missionaries continues to increase with the largest number 109 in the Philippines. There are now 1734 parishes in Korea.
More people are living alone for various reasons: divorce, death, freedom, family problems and many others. One out of four households is a person living alone. Can we consider this situation abnormal? Do we not need pastoral concern for this new reality? An article in the Catholic Times visits this issue and gives the readers an idea of where we are now in society where the numbers living alone continue to grow.
Miss Kim is a computer programmer with 15 years of experience. She is able with difficulty to live alone with her income. More than half of her ten college classmates are still not married. She left home 7 years ago because her mother wanted her to marry and she had no desire to raise a family in the hell like situation of education in Korea. She borrowed some money and bought a small apartment.
Mr. Lee is 26 without a full time job; with odd jobs is trying to make money to go to graduate school. He finds it difficult to pay rent and live on the odd jobs he finds. He still needs help from his parents. Thinking of marriage is not possible.
Mr. Park divorced five years ago. He is 55 and failed in his business, in debt, fortunately his children are married and not a concern. He eats at a convenience store so no fear of malnutrition and works in a nearby sauna. He says he is comfortable living along.
Voluntary or involuntary many are in a situation where they live alone in office buildings, one-room and two room apartments. Korean society has gone from the extended family to the nuclear and now the beginnings of the living alone households. Eating alone, drinking alone, "you only live once", and TV programs which portray the lives of those living alone reflect the favorable view of this life style with many.
The increase in single person household is a world wide trend due to the change in the status of women in society, the welfare system, the new information technology and our aging society. Many older people who have lost their mate prefer to live alone than with their children who in most cases take care of the parent.
The traditional family of father, mother and children remains the main concern of the church. However, considering the single person household as abnormal is not the response of the church. The need remains to show the value of marriage and need for the sanctification of the family, and at the same time to be concerned with those who for one or other reason choose to live alone. This is a new pastoral challenge.
The fact is that those voluntarily living alone for the most part still pursue community values. They do not want to live in isolation. Many are involved in regular meetings with friends, club activities and on line networks and those with problems want to get out of that situation. Even if more people are living alone, community is still an important element of life. The need is present to implement the possibilities of community life which acknowledges the single living style.
A Korean proverb well known in society has a lot to say to us. "If a cousin buys land our tummies hurt" (Envy). It's normal to celebrate when a person close to us does something good or is blessed but as we know that is not always the case. Why is this true? Our dispositions are often fickle due to original sin and not easily overcome. Is it because we are afraid that the cousin will eventually take away our land?
In the Peace Column of the Catholic Peace Weekly, the columnist describes the situation in Korea with the North-South relationship. After the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the situation changed rapidly. The historic inter-Korean summit is now in sight (The leaders of South and North Korea sat down at the table for the first inter-Korean summit in 11 years yesterday at 10:16 am on April 27, 2018. South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sat across from each other and chatted preparing for the summit).
The flowers of hope are beginning to bloom. A week before the inter-Korean summit, North Korea unanimously adopted a ban on nuclear and missile tests. In response, our army stopped broadcasting with their speakers to the North. Discussions on Northeast Asian cooperation and the Korean Peninsula New Economy Initiatives are also emerging.
If the inter-Korean summit is to achieve the desired results it will lead to a successful North Korean and US summit and we hope that the Korean peninsula will come to an historical turning point where we will see reconciliation, exchange, and cooperation.
Of course, we don't want to rush into optimistic thinking. We are apprehensive about the North's attitude and we need to be on our guard and not reduce our vigilance and pay close attention to the texts. However, as a lawyer said 20 years ago avoiding and opposing the North-South unification is harming both the North and South. When no harm is done to the South and we say it is only helping the North, is that not the situation of a cousin buying land and we having a bellyache?
We need to accept the wind of change on the Korean Peninsula and not give in to the idea that it will hurt us. We need peaceful coexistence not war. It is reconciliation, not confrontation, interchange and cooperation, not disconnection. The North-South summit should be the stepping stone for the North Korea-US summit.
He finishes the column with a hope that we will continue praying for peace and reconciliation on the peninsula until the day when true peace and reconciliation is realized in this land.
Need for media literacy is heard since the media often gives us what
they want us to believe and do. We need the tools to think critically
on what is presented, understand how the messages shape our culture and
society, recognize the bias, spin, lies, omissions and evaluate the
messages according to our beliefs and values and what we know to be
true.
An article in the Catholic Peace Weekly on sex
education and the way the media presents sex requires Christians to
discern and make proper judgements on what they see and hear.
Discernment is a big order and necessary for a life well lived.
Philippians 4:6 gives us a good starting point: "fill your minds with
everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is
good and pure, everything that we love and honor,and everything that can
be thought virtuous or worthy of praise."
The article
introduces us to a young woman, a nurse and health educator. Her
words give the readers her impressions after a training course she took on
media literacy.
I
am a nurse and a health teacher. I am
teaching sex education programs and find it difficult. In nursing
college I learned all about anatomy, genitals and the sexually generated
diseases but little about the understanding of sexuality in society and
culture, making me unprepared to teach a course in sexuality. I did take
a course in
media literacy and sex education which opened my eyes and gave me a lot
of confidence in what I was meant to teach.
I
never
realized how blind I was before taking the course. When I was a
teenager and listening to pop music and musical videos I never realized
what was happening to me. Why was I so ignorant? I was
brainwashed to see sex as a game and once this began to sink in I could
see it clearly in the media. I was brought up and fed this understanding
of sex. I learned in middle school what it meant to be sexy watching
dancing in musical videos mimicking the sexual act, although as a middle
school student it was only vague.
Students that I am now teaching are exposed to what I grew up with. There is a need for me
to examine myself and the society in which these young people have to
live. I need a correct understanding of sex, the words, thoughts and actions to match what I am
trying to convey.
During my college years
I was free in the way I lived my sex life with my boy friends. I enjoyed it—life
and responsibility never entered in. I took contraceptive medicine; I
will not be pregnant. Most of my girl friends had no problem with this
way of life.They weren't frivolous but living a proper social life:
this is what is to be done, there was no big worries on the way we were
living. During the training program at the beginning I took issue with
much that was said, sex is a personal matter, a person's taste, nothing was wrong with
the way I lived was my strong feeling.
However,
half
way thru the course my thinking changed. Each one of the boy friends left
with mutual scars from our encounter. I began to see society as
going in the wrong direction. I began to feel guilty and saw a need to
recover a sense of responsibility. I began to see the need for a
'butterfly effect' in the way I was to teach.
Before
the training I considered the royal road to sex education was
contraception. We don't talk about contraception, the reason why we have
children in their teens pregnant and abortion—contraception is a simple solution.
We
have forgotten the place of love, creation of life,
responsibility in sexuality. When I reflect on the past, I am
embarrassed at my ignorance. As an educator with a new moral sense I am
ready to explain the meaning of sex to the young people who have been
exposed to a wrongheaded cultural understanding of sex and this came
from a course in media literacy.
Embarrassingly, a professor of moral theology mentions how he was
addicted to gaming when in Germany for studies after a period as an
assistant priest in Korea. He writes about it in Bible & Life. He
had finished the busy life in parish work and with the change he found
great pleasure in gaming. After Mass in the morning he would be gaming, excepting meals, until evening.
Addiction is a kind of neurosis on which we depend. Up until the
second part of the 20th century addiction was expressed mostly by a
dependence on alcohol and drugs while now it is gambling, sex, eating,
and the like which are included. Authorities now see it as addiction to
substances and activities. The common element of the two—with desire and obsession one loses freedom and even with the knowledge of
the evil effects one continues in their use and action.
In
Korean society mentioned is often made of addiction to alcohol,
gambling, drugs, and gaming. Proposals were made in efforts to curb the
harm of these addictions but when it came to gaming, many
scholars opposed the consideration of gaming as a disorder. This year the world health organization WHO was planning to include
gaming as a problem but scholars say there is not enough
proof of being a disorder. He mentions in Korea we have seen the
results of gaming on families and individuals to know that it can have
deleterious effects on the citizens. Of course the gaming itself is not a
vice but can be.
Monkeys, in an experiment on addiction, shown two colors one was
rewarded with the same amount of juice and the second color would at
times give little juice and at times a great deal of juice. This was repeated three times with the same results. The color
that gave the great amount of juice with the danger of getting little
juice was chosen overwhelmingly over the one that gave the same amount
each time. The ecstasy that came with great amount of juice would
erase all the losses. The scientist see this as the
reason for addiction to gambling and the other addictions. Even if the
head says one thing the chance for the ecstasy takes away freedom.
With
few exception we desire freedom. We need to examine this issue with
great seriousness. When do we really experience freedom? Is it at the
market where we can select what we want? Or is it rather when we buy
only what we need and use the money saved to help others.
Expressing
it differently it's not when we can do what we want, when we want but
when our wills are able to select the greatest good that we
are really free. This is the way we should live and addiction takes away
this freedom.
The writer reminds us of the incident on Mount Tabor where Peter in ecstasy wanted to build three
tents and Jesus takes him by the hand to descend the mountain and
return to the others who were waiting at the bottom.
He
concludes the article, reminiscing on his experience with addiction. Although embarrassing he learned a great deal; it helped him to enter his studies with enthusiasm, complete them
successfully, and now sees the experience positively.
Bad money drives out good money is called the Gresham's law. Gresham
T. (1519~1569) was not the first to acknowledge this truth: if a
shilling is made of pure silver and other coins are made from silver and
cooper the pure silver will disappear and the cooper-silver will
remain.
This is generally applied to the economic
sector but a columnist in the Catholic Peace Weekly reminds us that this
is true also in everyday life. Examples: bad rumors spread much faster
than the good ones, wrong words, bad deeds, gossip, slander are more prevalent. A
good story impresses but the influence and impact of a bad story is
greater.
A common example is
fake news and malicious comments that are plentiful on the Internet. The
influence of fake news spreading in real time goes way beyond what we
can imagine. Recently the '#Me Too' movement spread widely in
society— victims who confessed suffered harm from their words.
According to a survey 72 percent who spoke out about abuse had to quit
their jobs due to bullying.
Fake news is not something
that happened yesterday but is a fact of life. Jesus, though the times
and situations are different also suffered fake news that caused his
death. Jesus testified to the truth, proclaimed justice, taught mercy
and love and showed this in his life but the fake news caused his death.
Evil comments
and replies will not disappear but we know the evil that has resulted
from the bullying and lack of wisdom in the use of comments in SNS. A
movement to bring positive comments to cyberspace has been in
existence for 12 years, they have an aim of 10 million positive
comments and a million students involved.
When we have
some extraordinary event in society the number of evil comments far
exceed the good comments and are faster to appear.
In the 'Church and Internet' a document that came out in 2002 the Church presents some virtues to practice: Prudence is necessary in order clearly to see the implications—the potential
for good and evil—in this new medium and to respond to its
challenges and opportunities. Justice is needed, especially justice in working to close the digital
divide—the gap between the information-rich and the information-poor in
today's world. This requires a commitment to the international
common good. Fortitude is necessary standing up for truth in the face of religious
and moral relativism, for altruism and generosity in the face of
individualist consumerism and decency in the face of sensuality. Temperance is needed and self discipline to use this remarkable technology and use it only for good.
To
overcome the evil effects of fake news and disparaging comments we need
the above virtues in our lives. We need to participate in movements
to renew the media that has become infested with so much negativity—not
necessary, and hurtful to many.
Betrayal is part of life. Difficult to accept when experienced. Portrayed in literature in all the many cultures of the world and
frequently in the Christian Scriptures. Jesus is the telling example in
the New Testament and it wasn't only Judas. This was despite his words
of warning and after each one, in turn, asked: "Surely it's not I?"
The
Korean 'Me Too' movement has to do with a betrayal of friendship in
most cases. The president of the bishops' conference apologized for this
betrayal even among priests. A priest in a diocesan bulletin deals with
the issue. He doesn't know how this movement will change society.
Of
course many are not happy about the 'Me Too' movement and many support
the movement with their: 'With you' response. What was buried in society
has finally come out in the open? Gender inequality no longer is a
hidden agenda. The movement was waiting to explode within society.
Feelings against the power of money in society have always been there:
resentment of the weak towards power was bound to explode. The uncomfortableness between man the powerful one and woman the weak one comes to a
head. We are in the midst of change.
The Church is in society
and the priest is a part of society. When the clergy and religious are
guilty of such behavior the outrage is great. Society is shocked. We
should be thankful, says the writer that this is still the case. The
public still has greater expectations from the clergy and religious.
The
apostles we know lived very close to Jesus for three years. They ate
with him, laughed, cried, and underwent many hardships with him but they
couldn't give up their desire for power. How much more difficult in the
society in which we live to feel the presence of Jesus in our lives.
Judas was not able to overcome the feeling of guilt he experienced from
the betrayal and killed himself.
Peter who denied Jesus three
times a betrayal for which he repented with great sorrow and gave his
life for his Lord, became a great disciple. This is an example for all
of us. We are prone to make mistakes (which we hope will not
happen) but when they do we don't give up.
We don't deny or
make excuses for what was done but after great reflection, ask
forgiveness from God and the person hurt. Make the necessary
compensation to the victim and satisfaction for what was done and go
along with our lives.
We can lose the cow from the barn.This
can happen to anyone and for a religious person, it should be a step to a
more mature life but also the need to fix the barn.
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