Importance of Prenatal Care and Natural Birth

We are so inundated by information in today's world, delivered in many different and attractive ways, that it's hard to keep up with even a fraction of it. And whether the information is true and helpful requires discernment on our part. So when the Catholic Times reviewed the book, First Hour Of Life Determines All of Life, by Doctor Lee Gyo-won, the title of the book must have raised a few eyebrows in doubt, even though it was noted that the doctor has studied the issue for many years.

Catholicamericaneyesinkorea mentioned the work of the doctor and the new book in August 20th of this year before it was published.

The doctor is highly respected and in the past three  years has assisted at the birth of over 400 babies by using his principles: prenatal care in harmony with nature and with love, and natural birth. For a Christian being in harmony with nature fits in well with the way we see  life.

The article mentions that most of the babies born in hospitals or other medical facilities come into the world surrounded by an atmosphere of fear. He sees this as a reason for many of the problems children have in growing up and in their years of schooling. Studies on Cesarean and induced births show a higher incidence with problems later in life.  You are programing the child's personality, says the  doctor, in the  first years of life, beginning in the womb, at birth and within  three years after birth. This has been proven to be the case by many studies.

For this reason society should provide preferential treatment for expectant mothers. Having births without trauma, the doctor feels is one of the most important things that can be done to change society. This is not about having smarter children, he insists, but simply to have normal, well-adjusted children. The problems of society at present can be properly addressed, says the doctor, if we start right at the beginning of life, with prenatal care and natural birth.

For Christians it is another lesson that whatever we do, it should be done with all the care and love that we can muster; the results of doing otherwise, although often unknown to us, can be seriously damaging not only for the individuals involved but for the long range health of society.

The Dream of a United Korea

A divided Korea is a sadness Koreans have to live with and have been doing so from the time of the Second World War. The United States and the Soviet Union were to temporarily occupy the two parts of Korea, the North and the South, divided at the 38th parallel, until a free and independent Korea could be established; unfortunately, we're still waiting for that day. 

The Peace Weekly, reporting on a forum conducted by the bishops' Committee for Reconciliation of the Korean people, noted that the topic under discussion was, "How  can the country be united in a skillful way?" Also noted was the overwhelming desire of the Korean people to again have a united Korea. One participant used the German unification as an example to imitate.

The Germans of the East and the West also desired unification. There was  a long period of exchanges between the two, with the East finally realizing that with unification they would be free and have a better life, which gradually enabled the East to be absorbed by the West.

The speaker was suggesting that if  we act as if we had unity, in fact, by the interchange of money, workers, skills, visits to the North,  this will mean that the political and structural unity will only be a formality when it comes, for the spirit of unity would have preceded. This is the way to erode the structures of the North.

In looking forward to a peaceful unification, however, we don't want to prepare for it by using force. This does not mean, he says, to accept all that the North are doing, but to continue communicating. The change of the structures in the North will ultimately take place. Exchanges and cooperation is the best way to ease into final unification. Another participant agreed that exchanges and cooperation are the best way to lessen the possibility of military confrontation. But to do what Germany accomplished in a peaceful way will be difficult, he said.

Our policy for the last 10 years has been to help the  North with capital and technology, said another,  but it is doubtful how much that has increased the chances for unity.  However, he agrees that it will have to come from the bottom up.

Catechism for the Young--YOUCAT

YOUCAT, the youth catechism distributed as a gift to all those attending World Youth Day last year, was recently translated into Korean. The book has been translated into 30 languages and has sold over two million copies worldwide. After six months of meticulous translation, the catechism can now be found in Korean bookstores.

The content of the catechism is based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and is written in the form of  527 questions and answers, and divided into four  categories: What Catholics believe and why (doctrine); how Catholics celebrate the mysteries of the faith (sacraments); how Catholics are to live (moral  life); how they should pray (prayer and spirituality). Each category is complemented with selections from the Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, and the saints. Also included are well-known maxims from many cultures, quotes from famous authors, and illustrations. 

The book, written for middle and high school students, appropriately uses language easy to understand, but is also suitable for those who are curious about the faith and want to know more. In compiling the text, an effort was made to ensure that the concerns of the young were addressed.
 
Fifty-two young people were brought together on two occasions to determine how the explanations should be expressed to make the most sense to the younger reader.


It is hoped that this  catechism will be an important  instrument in explaining the teaching of Catholicism to the young, especially during this Year of Faith. There are all kinds of efforts made to enter the world of the young to find appropriate ways to reach them. That the young were involved in compiling the catechism is an encouragement to many that the young will indeed respond favorably, making YOUCAT the next religious best seller in Korea.

Small Christian Communities

The small Christian community is an important way of energizing parish life, but to do this obstacles have to be faced and removed. This year is the twentieth anniversary of their formal acceptance as a pastoral method in Korea. Three dioceses met together  to prepare a future vision of  working with small groups. The positive elements are  the empowering of lay people, giving them the tools for fellowship and for sharing  Scripture with each other.

Problems:
- steps used in the group meetings are too difficult to follow
- what is said  does not always stay within the group and causes divisions
-  few attend
- the atmosphere is autocratic
- the young are missing
- interest depends too much on the pastor
- those who can lead are few
- adequate understanding of the small group  movement  is missing
 - failure to educate for attendance

Remedies:
-  find ways to move the hearts of those attending
-  use of better notification methods
-  empowering  the group leaders
-  find ways to deal with abuses
-  training new leaders and giving them a definite time limit as leaders

The small group approach is a good way to evangelize. The group members hear the word, share,  meditate, and are motivated to spread the word. The combined diocesan understanding was that these small group meetings are the seed bed for evangelizing, and the hope for the Church. The group meetings are not limited to the fellowship within the group but are to extend beyond their own borders to the world outside.

However, the problems associated with this are enormous; the world is dark and confused. Materialism and hedonism are rampant and continually influences us. Secular values are overcoming traditional values and the religious meaning of life is diminished. Within this environment,  people are losing the meaning of life and becoming disorientated. Being a light to the world is no easy task.

The  three dioceses  have  given us some tasks and proposals to consider: The words of Scripture and the Eucharist should be our strength in working to change the world.  Organizations and principles, the living of the faith, and examples of success should be shared  with  others. Small groups should look forward to seeing what we are faced with in the world and determine to do something about it.

In conclusion, they see the small communities as the future Church, putting into practice what the Council  expected of us: to be the light to the world. After twenty years, we are just beginning.

Koinonia (Fellowship)

Five  words from Scripture are sometimes heard in their Greek form, all referring to what a community of Christians should be doing: didache (teaching), diakonia (service), liturgia (worship), kerygma (proclamation) and koinonia (fellowship). All are important, but the one that needs to be stressed today is koinonia.

The need to encourage more fellowship is especially important today because our communities are larger and pastors are busier, and the individual tends to get lost as a nameless member of a congregation with few spiritual ties to other members of the community. 

In preparation for the Bishops Synod, starting on October 7th, the Catholic Church of Korea has emphasized the need to focus attention more on the internal life of the church. Many Catholics believe that the main goal of religion is to bring peace into our lives. Many articles have alluded to this belief, which suggests that the catechizing has not been successful. Although peace is something we all desire, for a Christian, it should not be the goal of life; peace is a by-product of doing God's will, which comes about naturally from a dying to ourselves so as to be born anew. If, instead, the motivation of the Christian remains peace of mind all else is of little interest and the essentials of Christianity will be missing. It can become a selfish pursuit and, ironically, the more pursued the less achieved.

The problem with making peace of mind the goal of Christianity is that Christianity then becomes an individualized pursuit, each person searching for his or her own personal fulfillment without feeling the need to connect with other members of the community: a loss of fellowship, of communication, of sharing that will ultimately bring about the loss of community. 
 
Loss of community brings with it a loss of faith-sharing among our Christians, which the Church has worked hard in developing over the years, but is conspicuously absent in the life of many Christians today. In the past all Christians would come before the priest as individuals or as a family two times a year, once before Easter and again before Christmas. The process demanded coming to the church and relating with others and the priest, in order to help the Christians to focus on the community rather than on themselves. They were asked to reflect on their lives as Christians. This pastoral approach, though it has been very successful in the past, is now no longer possible.

There are many suggestions in the Catholic papers and magazines on how to  deal  with the growth of the parishes and the lack of maturity among many of the Christians, which has worked against encouraging more community life. Jesus, when he selected his disciples, did not see them as fully formed but saw what they could become with the graces given and accepted. Koinonia, as experienced in community, can help a great deal in preparing the proper environment to enhance Christian growth, opening them even more to the graces God continues to bestow on us.

Web Page for Pyongyang Diocese

Maryknoll priests and brothers  who worked in North Korea have all died. They would have enjoyed reading the web page recently inaugurated and seeing the pictures of the Pyongyang diocese they knew so well before the Korea War. This was the diocese that was given to Maryknoll by the Paris Foreign Mission Society in 1927 when it was separated from Seoul.

The first prefect apostolic to Korea when it was united  was Fr. Patrick Byrne, who was later made a bishop and died in the forced death march to North Korea in 1950.  He arrived in Seoul in 1949 and was arrested, July 1950, by the Communists after they invaded South Korea.  There are still many Korean priests who remember the history of the diocese and who took the place of the Maryknollers after the repatriation of the Americans at the beginning of the Second World War. 

After the Korean War, many Maryknollers from the North returned to the South to work, as  did the Korean priests who were not kidnapped and killed.
Last year at a meeting of the Seoul diocesan priests, it was decided to create a website like all the other diocesan sites, which finally went online this past month. For those interested :(http://py.catholic.or.kr)

At the inauguration of the website, the archbishop of Seoul said that only a spark remained of what was remembered from the N. Korean experience. The  surviving clergy from the Pyongyang diocese are now working in other dioceses in the South. Because of their advanced age, they felt a need to start a website similar to those of the other dioceses so the memories will not fade.

However, the reason for the website is not only to remember the  good days of the past, said the archbishop, but to keep in mind that in God's good time there will be a rebirth of the diocese, which is the hope of those entertaining this dream. There are now 16 seminarians studying in the Inchon diocesan seminary for that eventuality.
 
This year is the 85th year since the founding of the diocese of Pyongyang. It is also the 80th year of the formation of the Perpetual Help Sisters, the first Korean congregation.

When the diocese was turned over to the Korean clergy, there  were 19 parishes, 106 mission stations and 26,400 Catholics in the diocese; 57,000 Catholics in the North were  31.8 percent of the total number of Catholics in the whole of Korea. In 1948, with the ascendency of communism, difficulties began and many of the clergy and  religious were kidnapped and their whereabouts unknown.
 
The website contains a brief history, pictures of the ordinaries, the churches built, biographies of some who died at the hands of the communists, and a bulletin board. It is hoped that the website will stir interest among the Catholics who were parishioners in the different parishes of the Pyongyang diocese and had to leave when the war began. The website is an ongoing endeavor, which looks forward to the participation of many who will help to fill in the empty spaces.

Door of Faith--New Beginning

Today, Oct. 11, begins the Year of Faith.  Here in Korea they will begin the celebration this coming Sunday and continue on to next year's feast of Christ the King. Some dioceses have given their parishes  program guidelines in preparation for the year.

The Pope has expressed the hope that the  Holy Year be a time for us to meet Christ, see the beauty of faith, and increase our interest in the Church. Put simply, a renewal of our faith life. The reason for the Year of Faith is to help resolve the crisis that Christians are now facing. The religious problems of Europe and South America are serious. The traditional ways of thinking and behaving are being eroded by our encounter with secularism and relativism, and God is forgotten.

Here in Korea, says the Peace Weekly editorial, we are not free from the elements that are changing the religious environment of the West. We also are seeing changes in the behavior of our Christians. The desire for living the prophetic role in life is greatly diminished. Some would like to blame it on the pluralism of society, but the editorial believes that our Gospel values have been weakened.

To overcome this crisis in our lives, we have to experience the meeting of Jesus and the joy from this meeting. Without this experience and joy, our attempts to be a light to the world will be only a noisy gong. The Pope is asking us to become reacquainted with what we believe and to give life to this belief.  It is hoped that we will look deeply at our faith life, which has a direct relationship to the renewal of the Church, and we can't do this with one-time programs and events.

The editorial hopes that we will all become familiar with the apostolic letter, "Door of Faith." and make it part of our concern during this year. We are being asked to change the way we look upon what we  believe by proclaiming the Christian message with a renewed  passion and a new expression.

The aspirations of many is that the Year of Faith will be for the Korean Catholic the beginning of a renewed faith life.