Laity of the Korean Catholic Church

The Catholic Lay Apostolate Council of Korea has recently made known its white paper after 40 years of growth. The sleeping giant within the Church has reflected on its work over the past years and sees where it stands today within the Church. Both Catholic papers had articles and editorials mentioning that the Lay Apostolate Council is not content with the results they have achieved  and will continue to work for a greater  role within the Church.

They will build on the foundations laid down during the past 40 years. They acknowledged that at times  they have acted in a similar way to  clericalism, and  fallen away from a legitimate role of the laity into what could be called 'laity-ism,' which has brought them into an unnecessary conflict with the teaching authority of the Church.

The Apostolate Council has also not been relating well with the different lay groups within the Church.Mentioned was the lack of a systematic pattern of programs, instead of  attention being directed to taking care of emergencies. Evangelization has not been concerned with the direction of society or following the lead of the president of the Lay Council. They have been weak in both welfare programs and evangelization and, because of a lack of capability, have been slow to work in the international arena and in reconciliation with the North.

Listed are a number of areas on which they intend to expend more effort in the years ahead.

First: They will  become familiar with the social teaching of the Church and work for justice--an important point of departure. In  the political field,  finances, society,  life issues, environment, and so forth, they will work for the common good, and sound a warning bell when necessary.

Second: They will endeavor to strengthen the educational programs for lay people in order to generate more expertise and capability.

Third: They will be more selective in assigning work to the laity. In the past, it was difficult to differentiate between the work of priests, religious and laity. They will work to understand subsidiarity and solidarity in the work of the Church. And the laity are not only to serve the clergy and religious but to have their own area of expertise and activity. Stressed throughout the white paper was the importance of evangelization.

Fourth: the place of the laity in work for the weak and poor in society: in coop programs,  helping the unemployed, and  in  welfare programs etc..

Fifth: Work for the reunification of the country,  help in programs of relief  for the North and  prepare for the day when they are  able to help in the evangelization in the North.

Lastly: To make the infrastructure of the Lay Apostolate Council able to take upon itself this work in the future, it  will be necessary to strengthen the bonds with the different diocesan pastoral groups, and setting up a  'think tank' to help guide the work of the Council.









                                                         

The 386 Generation of Korea

Born in the 60s they are called the 386 generation (named after the PC model of that time). In the 1980s they were of college age and active in the democracy movement of the 80s. They are now the elite of our society. They were brought up not experiencing the poverty of their parents, but they did experience the financially difficult times when the country received funds from the International Monetary Fund. They saw that the societal safety net was not in place, which helped move the generation to the right.

Writing in the opinion column of the Catholic Times a priest calls them the smart generation, having grown up in the digital world we live in today.  They were prominent in backing the politically independent mayor of Seoul last year. The priest wonders if they are not again coming to center stage.

The priest in his experience with this generation sees them concerned for the future. They are realistic. They come  quickly to terms with the new and at the same time inwardly feel uncomfortable about the future. There are those that say they will be the last generation to live with their parents and the first to be left behind by their children. They will be the bridge between the young and the older generation.

Our columnist feels that the way this 40-plus generation works at bridge-building between the generations will make a difference in the future. The problems pending are becoming more acute and diversified. He has no way of knowing the future but would like the Church to start communicating with this generation.

To speak to this generation it will be necessary, he says, for the Church to change both the content of its message and its current methods of communicating. This generation has already been instrumental in changing society so any attempt at one way  authoritative communication will meet with rejection, and make the transmitting of the Gospel message difficult. Engaging in a more open dialogue, he feels, will bring a sympathetic response.

What they want, he says, is genuineness, understanding and hope. They want more Christians gathering to discuss the Gospels, to pray and be a part of devotional groups, natural and spontaneous groups that can feed their desire for a better future, for them and for the country.

If the members of this young and influential generation, especially those showing leadership qualities  are able to grow spiritually in the varied  communities of the Church, he has no doubt that they will play a key role as bridge builders, and be a valuable resource for a healthy Church and society.  
  

The Joy of Life

A columnist for the Catholic Times wonders where is  his standard of judgement. How much does his Catholic belief affect his life? He suspects that the values of the world have an inordinate influence on his life: the desire for peace and security.

He reviews the many different ways we wish each other well. We often say: good health to you, become rich, meet a great partner and marry, hope you get a good job soon, study hard and get the school you want, and so on.

Shouldn't we as Christians, he asks, have a different set of greetings? Shouldn't we be saying: Follow God's will, be faithful in your life of faith, I will pray for you, be true to the Scriptures, I will pray that you be filled with grace and  peace, and so on. 

Most of our worries and troubles come, the columnist says, from our judging according to a worldly value system, from not seeing from a Godly viewpoint but seeing from our own self-interest and personal desires. This is true even though we believe that everything moves according to God's providence. Many fail to turn their worries and problems over to God but work as if everything depends on them, becoming lost and facing life with difficulty.  It is when one turns everything over to God that peace and joy can come into our life.

As a baby grows daily we also in our faith life should grow in maturity in a healthy way. In the same way as we expend our efforts and passions  on our dreams and hopes, shouldn't we, as believers, be expending the same kind of effort in having a mature faith life?

Our earthly life is short, the columnist reminds us, and it will soon disappear. As a believer we have values that go beyond this life; shouldn't they also deserve our efforts and passion? This transitory life, he points out, can be faced in many ways. The hedonist says "since I will die, I will eat drink and be merry." The nihilist says "life is empty," and the existentialist says "life has no substance and our plans are useless." The columnist asks what is the proper disposition of a person of faith facing an unknown future?  Human confidence on our continual health and possessions can lead to pride: We don't need God; we can do it alone. For the Christian, this is not one of our options. We want to live doing the will of  God.

When we look at our faith life, we can see many reasons for thanks. This gives us joy; we have maturity and a grace-filled life. This joy results not from giving thanks for the joy of life, but rather it is the thanks that gives joy to life. When I can truly give thanks for what I have received, then joy will enter my life and the desire to respond joyfully will be there.

Many Faces of Poverty

'Rich with assets and yet poor.' In the past this assertion would be difficult to comprehend, but it's no longer the case. The concepts of rich and poor have become more abstract and confused.  Our complicated financial arrangements  and present realities have led to a confused understanding of the words.

We have those in society who have a house but are called 'house poor.'  Their house is often an obstacle in receiving financial help; despite the house, which is often a financial burden, they may need more help to live well but are  prevented from receiving this help because of the house they have. And then there are the 'retired poor' who have to take care of the education of their children and are not able to prepare for their own retirement, thus becoming the 'living poor.'

We also have the 'job poor' who in order to find a job spend a great deal of money getting  accreditation, preparing for exams for different licenses, and acquiring the qualifications for landing a skilled job; it's a serious problem in our society.

The 'baby poor' are those who have difficulty in raising their children. This poverty will also affect the next generation. This is the poverty that young couples face in our society. And there are the 'working poor' that the Free Trade Act helps to exacerbate. They are working but faced with a diminished income. The young, especially, have to work for lower wages.

The many faces of poverty today are seen everywhere, and the word 'poverty' itself is losing the meaning it once had.  

Compared to this secular meaning of the word, the Church tells us of a spiritual poverty, which can be understood in two ways:  God is the owner of all we possess. We are only stewards, managers, of the abundance we enjoy. The second meaning is to use what we have wisely, sharing with others. To use what we have only for ourselves, not seeing what is happening around us, is to misuse, the bishop says, what has been given.

Writing in the Catholic Times, he presents us with these many faces of poverty, and asks, which one are we wearing? What kind of poverty am I living?

In Search of our Dream

In Korea like many other countries the daily papers have horoscopes that are a must-see for many. The four pillars: year, month, day, and hour of birth are the foundations for the zodiacal house that determines, it is said, our future.
 
In the mission station bulletin, the writer tells his readers that the pillars do not make a house. There are many other parts that are necessary to have a house to live in. The future is not determined by one of the parts, he stresses, but by the efforts we make in life to prepare for the future.

Whether the four pillars say something good or bad, it is of little importance. It is all in the eyes of the beholder, he says, and the attitude one has in seeing life.

We can't retrieve what has passed. We can't practice for the future but we can prepare for it. We should not live like the mayfly that has no understanding of the morrow or the cicada that doesn't understand what will occur next year.

Jesus gave us an example of what it means to live by following his way. The writer, using the words of an ancient Chinese philosopher to corroborate the teachings of Jesus, outlines ten ways to live without regret.
 
1) If we don't respect our parents after they are dead, we will have regret. 

2) If we are not kind to our relations when near them, when separated we will have regret. 

3) If we don't learn when we are young, when old we will have regret.

4) If we don't think of failure when all is going well, we will have regret.

5) If we don't save when we can, when poor we will have regret. 

6) If we don't plant in the spring, in the fall, we will have regret.    

7) If we don't fix the lock on the front gate, when the thief comes we will have regret.  

8) If we don't take care of the body when healthy, when sick we will have regret.   

  
9) When we drink to excess and say something stupid, when sober we will have regret.

10) If we  are not hospitable to guests, when they leave we will have regret

Water that doesn't flow putrefies, air that doesn't circulate suffocates; there is no aroma from an old tree and dry earth doesn't produce flowers. We are more concerned for today than yesterday, and for tomorrow than today. The thoughts of most  are not in the here and now but on dreaming a new and better tomorrow. What is my situation  today? My fate is not determined by the stars nor determined, as some would have us believe, by our genes. Where should we turn, the writer asks, to realize our dream? We should turn to God  and  go in search of the  dream.                                                                           

Is it the Head or the Heart?

On the opinion page of the Catholic Times, the columnist recounts a meeting with his son, a diocesan priest, and his  wife's brother who is a religious brother. They met at his house and were discussing the spiritual life. The columnist decided to be the 'dignified on-looker," but that was not to be the case.

Since he had made the 30-day Ignatian Retreat, he joined the conversation by saying that during the exercises he had a new appreciation of the power of the imagination in reflecting on the activities of our Lord. The religious brother did not accept the columnist's idea that the imagination could serve as an approach to God. He didn't pay attention to what the brother was saying and maintained his contrary opinion.

The columnist acknowledged the difficulty they both had in accepting each other's opinion.  Since the columnist was a poet, refuting the power of the imagination seemed an impossibility, while yet understanding the brother's difficulty.  He explained briefly what he meant by using Catholic philosophy and Jacques Maritain as support for his opinion.

The brother said that the only way we can approach God is by intuition. Because the columnist got involved in an exchange of  pros and cons, it made for an awkward situation. The meeting with his son the priest, and his wife's brother, ended on this note, and they left.  Without  any decision, the curtain came down on this particular event. This is life.  Most of  life goes on without many of us agreeing to most things, except, perhaps, agreeing to disagree.

The priest later gave his father an understanding of what happened that evening. The mainstream of Catholic thinking goes along with Thomas Aquinas and St. Ignatius of Loyola. They both acknowledge the intellect and the imagination but the Franciscan school: St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, St. John of the Cross, and others, see the way to God by the intuition and distrust the other ways. This  made the relationship with the Church a delicate one.

 
When the columnist later went to a restaurant and ordered a blow fish, he saw the discussion in a different light. The blow fish, he says, as we all know, has a poison that can kill, but once controlled the fish is a delicacy.  There are  those who stay  away from the fish because of the dire possibilities; they want to play safe.

The way of the imagination is a place of splendor but can be the devil's playground when indulged in to the point of aestheticism. Writers such as Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, and Oscar Wilde would be of this school.  Just hearing the names of these geniuses we know what is meant. Like the blow fish, poison is lurking in their writings.

...Yes, not to eat the blow fish is the safest way but, the columnist tells us, he is accustomed to its taste.

Church Always Reforming

"To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." These words of Blessed Cardinal Newman are heard often;  a priest historian writing  in the Kyeongyang magazine introduces us to  St. Bridget of Sweden who pointed out a similar message to the Christians of her time: change and reform.

The priest wants Korean Catholics to become more familiar with St. Bridget. He tells us that the pope who canonized her only 18 years after her death asked, when first hearing about the Saint, can anything good come from the North (referring to Sweden).  She is not only the patron of Sweden but also one of Europe's patron saints.

Bridget was born in 1302 and married at 14. She had eight children, one of them also becoming a canonized Saint. A Saint begetting a Saint: Catharine of Sweden. After 28 years of marriage and the death of her husband, she devoted the rest of her life to the spiritual life, founding a community. She traveled within the world of that time to all the pilgrimage sites and saw the world of Catholicism first hand, using what she saw and the revelations of the Lord to speak about the conditions of the Church.

Europe of the 14th century had been devastated by many tragedies: earthquakes, contagious  diseases, hunger  and war. The Black Death killed 80 percent of those with the disease. It was a great tragedy for Europe and the Church. Part of the Church of that time became very worldly. There were those who overcame this temptation but many were the object of criticism. Many intellectuals of that time were clerics in search of pleasure and comfort; the problem was that the Church accepted the situation, which had a great deal to do with money, excommunications for non-religious reasons, and selling of religious offices--all these abuses were the object of criticism. Abuses among the clerics and the lay people were wide spread.

It was during the life of Bridget that the Church went through a period of 70 years, known as the Avignon Captivity, in which the papacy was in France. This was not only a period where the papacy moved but a period where the leadership in the Church was more concerned with their own comfort and well-being than with spirituality and the poor. It was not able to function as Church. St. Bridget began the work of  changing the secular concerns of the popes to taking more care of the needs of the Church, a work that was continued by St. Catherine of Siena.

She scolded the priests and bishops for their way of life. A prime example was the bishop of Milan, Giovanni Visconti, but it was all the popes, bishops and priests who were not  leading the life as a  follower of Jesus that met with her words of disapproval.

Our writer returns to the days in which he studied Church History and remembers vividly the constant refrain: "Church always reforming". It is not the comfortable life.  This is not becoming conformed to the world but the way of Jesus. When we are not conformed to the ways of Jesus, it is a problem of great consequence.  Every day has to be a renewal  of our life. He quotes the words of a famous Chinese saying: "if you want  renewal, then everyday must be renewed, day after day renewed and again renewed."