Catholic Church of Korea's Unfinished Work

The Catholic Church of Korea can be pleased with the growth in numbers and the health of the parish life. It is a vibrant young church.

Cardinal Cheong mentioned recently after returning from Rome that the Church of Korea numbered 8th in the monies that were sent to Rome for the Peter’s Pence Collection. This collection helps the Holy Father with his charitable works around the world. There are only 5 million Catholics but Korea was the only one in Asia that was within the 10 who gave the most for the collection.

The Catholic Church of Korea has the world's first parish management system that ties all the parishes together. It is called the Yangeop System and standardizes the administration of all the parishes in Korea and allows them to exchange pastoral information. There is no other country with anything like what has been done in Korea.

Korea has 7 seminaries and they are all doing very well. There are now 1413 seminarians studying at the last official count in 2008. The number of Catholics has topped 5 million and parishes continue to grow and others are being built. There are 1543 parishes and this number continues to grow.

There are many other areas of growth, programs and activities that give much satisfaction but at the same time the majority of the Catholics do not have a desire or find joy in joining other Catholics for Mass on Sunday. The numbers of Catholics going to Mass on Sunday is less than 25%. This is surprising and I am certain it will be an area in which the Church of Korea will start examining and begin to take steps to remedy. The external growth, as important as it is in giving witness to what we believe, is not as important as the spirituality and maturity of the Catholics. This will remain a work unfinished for many years to come.

Bishop Mutel's Diary

The diary of Bishop Gustave Charles Mutel (1854-1933) who lived in Korea from 1890 to 1933 has finally after 26 years of work, been published. It is composed of 8 volumes and is being sold for $160.00(?) .

The diary covers a long period, is very detailed and gives a picture of the tensions in Korean Society. Bishop Mutel was a Paris Foreign Missioner and administered the Catholic Church in Korea for 43 years. The diary deals with his personal affairs, the response of the Church to the times, the growth and changes, the politics of the Choson times and diplomacy. Many persons appear in the diary, some are very important to church history and Korean national history. We see the relationship Korea had with the Europeans, Americans, Japanese and the Chinese.

The diary will enable us to understand the society of the times in a way we would not without it. This diary was always considered an important historical document for those who were working in the field of history.

Mutel was the 8th ordinary of Seoul. It starts from the time he became the ordinary in 1890 August 4th to just before he died in Jan. 14 1933. When the Paris Foreign missioners moved to Daejeon City the diary went to Yongsan and finally to the headquarters of the Paris Foreign missionaries in Paris. The Church historian Monsignor Andrew S Choi who died recently was the one who began the work of translating knowing the value of the work. The work was not an easy. With the help of a Belgian Priest they finished the translating, giving us a very valuable look into the past.

Click here to see an interesting video on the history of the Catholic Church of Korea. It can be seen at The Western Confucian taken from Totus Tuus. It is the work produced by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea.

Open Letter to Deceased Past President Kim

One of the Journalist writing for the Catholic Paper has an open letter to past President Kim Dae-jung which I will translate freely.

President Thomas More!

You now enjoy happiness in the bosom of our Lord who was your strength each time you came came close to death . You are now with the Lord you loved and trusted and I have no doubt that you are enjoying heavenly joy.

Looking back over your life it was one of shame and glory. 5 times you faced death, 6 years you were in prison, 55 time you were confined, 10 years you were in exile. You experienced all the ups and downs that life has to offer.

"Without me knowing it under the bed covers I was calling God and crying unreservedly."

In 1981 in February confined in the Cheongju prison these are the words that you wrote with tears. Before you became a great political leader you were a believer with a broken heart.

But all this suffering and frustration could not break your noble will and make you give up your dreams. Mr. President, all this adversity you were able to overcome with your conviction and belief in democracy and love of others

I remember 1998 you will possibly not .It was the 25th anniversary of your return from death and we had a Mass of thanksgiving. I was a raw recruit as a journalist and I was covering the story. I was meeting the leader of the nation and my heart was fluttering with anticipation, I can still remember the words you used.

"I have come close to death on 5 different occasions. On this occasion we remember when I was kidnapped in Japan and was on the ocean and was to be killed. I saw the Lord. The Lord will help our people and as President I will do everything to answer the expectations of the people."

President Thomas More , we are now sending you off with tears of pain. We saw our Cardinal Kim leave us who was a great star.We are in prayer and united together praying for your eternal peace. Seeing us now as we are should make known that your life as a politician and as a believer was not for naught.

You have taken the example of our loving and forgiving Lord to do the same after the many times that you faced death and imprisonment. This is what made you a great politician and an example of what a believer should be.

It is not possible to list all that you have done. In the 55 years since the first formal meeting between the South and North you have tried hard to wash away the animosity and resentment. You are the first to have received a Nobel Peace Prize, you gave us reason to be proud. You as President did your best to do away with the death penalty and worked for the pro-life movement.

You have spent your life zealously and with sacrifice for democracy and the
reconciliation with the North and it is now our time to continue this work that you started. We have seen your forgiveness and love, the desire for harmony between our people and we will take your example to make this a reality . Please take the hand of Cardinal Kim and pray for us.

Lord, give your servant Thomas More you have called to yourself , eternal peace.



Kim Dae -jung has been compared to Nelson Madella, they were both able to forgive after suffering much. It is a great example to us who have difficulty forgiving even in small things.

Controversies Catholics Faced in Korea

The Catholic Church of Korea had been confronted with many controversies over the years and some of them are similar to the the larger problems the Church has faced in Europe.

The Catholic Church in its introduction to Korea preached against what is referred to as "Ancestor Worship", it was part of Korean culture but the Church saw it mixed with a great deal of superstition: consequently, the Church and its followers were persecuted.

In the introduction of Christianity to China the Jesuits who worked in the larger cities and with the educated had no problem with the rites, it was the missioners in the country who saw another side, the superstitious side of these rites. The Jesuits were more interested in the original intent of the Rites and not how they were sometimes practiced. This ended up as a serious problem among the missioners themselves. This was the Catholicism that was introduced to Korea after the Church ruled the Confucian Rites were not to be followed by Catholics. Basically the approval of the Rites came in 1939 with the decision of Pope Pius XII.

During the Japanese occupation of Korea some Catholic Koreans sympathized with the Japanese for their opposition to Communism. You had the two giants, Russia and China who espoused Communism. Both totalitarian countries opposed to Japan a totalitarian country. It was a dilemma that made it difficult to chose for some. The Church seemed to be on the side of the totalitarian countries opposed to Russian and Communism. This was also the dilemma for the Catholics in Europe: totalitarian Germany, Italy and even Spain against totalitarian Russia and atheism. It was not easy for many to decide between two evils. The division of Korea into North and South, Communism and Democracy brought other problems to the table.

In Korea during the colonial period we had the Shinto Rite controversy.
In the diocese of Pyong Yang which was administered by Maryknoll the rites controversy was so upsetting that a gag order was sent from Maryknoll: the issue was not to be discussed. During the occupation of Korea by the Japanese from 1910 to 1945 the Japanese Government attempted to Japanize the Koreans and a method was to have them worship at the Shinto shrines. Some of the Maryknollers thought that it was merely social and cultural, a civil act of patriotism with no religious overtones while others saw it as superstition, a religious act, acknowledging the Japanese control. The foreign missionaries are often criticized for upholding the separation of Church and State and uninterested in the plight of the Koreans.


Fr. Robert A. Lilly Maryknoller expressed it in the editor's introduction to the Book Father John E. Morris , Prefect Apostolic of Pyong Yang, in these words:

Father Morris was asked, or ordered , to resign, by the Superior General of Maryknoll, Fr. James E. Walsh in consultation with the Maryknoll Council after the Maryknoll Chapter at Hong Kong in 1936. It was not an action initiated by the Vatican, but rather , a Maryknoll action due to the dissension among Maryknollers in Korea and an attempt to bring peace and harmony back to the Pyong Yang Prefecture after the emotion filled and soul wrenching problems and disputes regarding the " Shinto Rites" which were imposed by the Japanese Military Government then in power...Until the Vatican Archives are opened and further study of this period is done in a more formal way, the detail, causes and effects may only be glimpsed.

These controversies the Church has faced are theoretically still open to much discussion. There are many lessons that should have been learned from what Korea had to face during those years. It is sad, but some of the scars of those years have not been healed satisfactorily to enable complete honesty and openness. Hopefully the Church will be wiser for this history.

Bribes in Korean Society

One of the problems that we have in all large societies to some degree, is the giving and receiving of bribes. There have been too many stories of bribes taken and given in recent history. A professor emeritus in an essay which I will translate very loosely describes the evils of the practice in Korea.

Bribes have the evil smell of corruption and bring sickness to society. It is a cancer we foster with our giving and receiving of bribes, bringing ruin to ourselves and society. In Korea we have had the corruption of political power, the irregularities of the past presidents, where a person's interests were involved we have had the giving and taking of dirty money.

In the book of Proverbs: "A man who has a bribe to offer rates it a magic stone; at every turn it brings him success." For a government official the receiving of a bribe is related to his work and once received he can't refuse the bidding of the giver. Before the bribe is received the person giving the bribe is kowtowing but after the bribe is received he speaks out .

He once heard a public official say, some years ago: " everybody is taking bribes and you are a fool not to. In these times it is not only the person that receives the bribe but also the person that gives the bribe that will be punished so it is much safer." This gives one an indication of the situation we are in.

During one of the lectures the professor asked his students. I like bribes but if you give me a bribe you will have to promise that you will not speak about it before the lid of the casket is closed, and I'll only take it from a person I trust. If my receiving of the bribe never became known and I was always considered a clean person ,would God accept that?

The students obviously answered it would not be received well. I continued telling them I will tell God that everybody thinks that I am an upright individual. I have been praised by many, are you God the only one that is going to blame me. If I appeal to God in this way what do you think he will say? The students continued seeing it all very negatively.

We can deceive others but we can't deceive ourselves. We all have intellects and consciences we can judge what is correct and what isn't. Whether a person knows what I have done or not is immaterial. With lies and hypocrisy we can deceive others; I can't deceive my conscience. More over, I can't stand honorably before God . And my conscience will bother me greatly.

Money in our capitalistic system is only an important tool it is not the measure of our happiness. The Scriptures tell us: "You can not give yourself to God and money."(Mt.6:24) If we do not take interest in a life of virtue than the giving and receiving of bribes will ruin our society and ourselves.

James 1:15: "Once passion has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin reaches maturity it begets death." Our desires beget sin. In Lao Tzu chapter 46 of Tao Te Ching we read:

No greater curse than discontent,
No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself.
Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

"Ill -gotten treasure profit nothing, but virtue saves from death." (Proverbs 10:2)
Our mission is to make sure that evil contracts and the giving of bribes do not have a part in the bright society that we are called to build.

Korean Funerals and A Catholic Missioner

Many years ago during the first years of getting inculturated

( Inculturation is a term used in Christianity , especially in the Roman Catholic Church, referring to the adaptation of the way Church teachings are presented to non-Christian cultures, and to the influence of those cultures to the evolution of these teachings. Wiki)

in the ways of Korea there were times I had difficulties in accepting what I saw. Especially at funerals, I can recall having the Mass at Church and walking to the grave with the casket and the funeral party and being so annoyed with the shenanigans of the pallbearers that I returned home: the pallbearers refusing to move until someone gave some money or some cigarettes. This happened on other occasions, even after I said I would leave if they did it again, they persisted. This "no shenanigans" became a condition the family agreed to before I went to the grave.

Another difficulty was seeing the table with food that was prepared for the deceased. This was part of the old traditional way of Korea. I can sympathize with those on both sides of the polarized issue among the missioners, first in China and then Korea with the so called "worship of the ancestors". To simplify the whole thing in a few words does not do justice to what was involved but the missioners did see what they saw. The ones dealing with the educated in the cities would accept what was being done as cultural and civil respect for the deceased, considering the original intent of the rites; those in the country would see it as superstitious. It wasn't until 1939 that the rites were allowed with certain conditions.

In our own veneration of the saints and statues in certain areas of the world there are many who are very superstitions in what they believe and do but we do not do away with the veneration that Catholics have for the Saints. Abuse does not take away use. This made the whole issue very difficult for the Church to decide.

In my own period of growth in Korea there came a time when I could see the "fooling around" on the way to the grave as a beautiful tribute to the deceased. It would only be someone who was advanced in years and who lived a good life. It was cathartic and bringing a little humour into the very sad situation of death. There are many things that start out not being what we would like but over the years we begin to see what is being done with different eyes.

There are still many areas of Korean life that are unknown to me and many things that I have difficulty understanding but that is also true of my own culture. Having the ability to speak another language exposes one to another way of doing things, enabling one to see other possibilities: humbling one, for what he sees may not be all that there is to see.

Archbishop Working as a Hospice Worker

The hospice movement in Korea is going strong. It is the care of the sick and the dying by people who have been trained to do this service of love. The archbishop of Taegu in an interview with the Chosun Ilbo mentioned he entered a program to be a hospice worker. The Archbishop had his own encounter with death when he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus; for 40 days he could not even drink water.

The archbishop was studying political science when he decided that he could do more good by becoming a priest. His father was a devout layman and a well known politician. He did his studies in France and returned to Korea where he became a bishop in 1972 and the Ordinary of Taegu in 1986. Shortly after retiring as archbishop he was diagnosed with cancer. This experience of death made him see life differently. After leaving the hospital he contemplated starting some big project but changed his mind to work as a hospice worker. He decided to work among priests and religious facing death that would welcome his services at that time in their lives.

He had the opportunity to be with a close friend who was a few years older and was dying . He visited him almost daily in the hospital but was not able to be with him at death, although the graph that was by his bedside did register with a surge as he stroked his body. "Was he waiting for me ...? " he thought. My desire is to help those who will be returning to God and to help them do it with peace.

For the Archbishop "death is a natural part of life. We must know death to live well." The archbishop mentioned his time is also limited and to live well is to love. To love a definite person with definite love.