Costa Rica the Land of Happiness

Costa Rica, one of the poorest countries, continues to lead the world with the highest happiness index. A diocesan priest, reflecting on this curious fact after reading an article last year that perked his curiosity, and  wanting to learn more, read a book about Costa Rica that prompted him to collect his reflections on this small Central American country in a monthly bulletin for priests. The Japanese author of the book felt the same as he did about this unusual country that had dismantled its army in 1983, despite numerous wars and civil insurrections.

That it has no army comes as a surprise to many, but by working closely with the United Nations and its diplomatic corp, with peace, human rights and democratic organizations, the country hopes to avoid getting entangled in international disputes.

The Central American countries are probably nervously watching the US, one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of weapons worldwide, and thinking, says the priest, that the US cannot be pleased with Costa Rica's decision not to have an army. Though the US considers itself a peacemaker, promoting freedom and democracy in the world, the priest reminds us that it continues to get involved in wars. 

Like the  United States, Costa Rica promotes itself as a country advocating for peace and freedom, a fact which probably enabled them to overcome the opposition of the States to their disbanding the army. To Costa Ricans, not to have war does not mean having peace.  What is peace to Costa Ricans?  When you have a person in a village who is not able to go to the hospital when sick because of the expense,  there is no peace in that village,  When a child in a home is not able to go to school because of the expense, there is no peace in that home. Peace is not a one-time thing but a never-ending condition.

The country recently had an election and during the election year, the whole country celebrated.  Everyone can speak up for their candidate regardless of the many party programs available. Before the election, children are allowed to fill out straw ballots to prepare them for future voting. The straw ballots do not of course influence the election, but the results are made public a few days ahead of the national election.

Democracy in Costa Rica allows everyone, even the most marginalized, the foreigners, to have a voice in any public debate. In comparison, the priest feels that in Korea, the role of the media and the freedom to express oneself is more restrictive. When the United States went to war against Iraq, Korea and some of the countries of Central America sent troops. The president of Costa Rica, though the head of a country without an army, declared support for the Americans, which led one college student to file a petition against the president for not abiding by the country's constitution. The college student won his case at the constitutional court, and the president withdrew the country's support for the war. At the next election, his party, the government in power, lost badly and became a minority party.

Costa Rica is setting an enviable standard for the democracies of the world. A democracy that would allow that much influence in the political sphere to those not generally recognized as having influence, such as a college student, is by any standard living up to its name: a democracy with "government of the people, by the people, for the people." And should be the model  for other democracies who consistently fall short of the Costa Rican example.

Fidei Donum (Gift of Faith)

 In the 1957 encyclical Fidei Donum (Gift of Faith), Pope Pius XII asked local churches with a surplus of priests to send them to countries in need.  Both Catholic papers, commenting on the relatively large number of priests in Korea, mentioned that the Korean Church was now in a position to answer the pope's wishes in Fidei Donum.

The Peace Weekly reported on the plight of a diocese in France where four years ago only one priest was ordained and since then have had no ordinations or seminarians. The French diocese is asking Korea to send them priests, and our bishops, who have worked diligently to foster vocations in recent years, are now able to respond to their need.

Several new approaches to increase vocations have been tried. The high school seminary  approach, discontinued in 1983, was replaced with monthly meetings of those interested in the priesthood while still in their middle and high school years. This proved helpful, but the Seoul diocese decided to test another approach, setting aside a class for future seminarians in one of their high schools. The students would follow the same class schedule as did all the other high school students, with more freedom allowed for after-school hours to associate with students from the other classes. In addition, a dormitory is planned that will accommodate 200 students. This is not a return to the high school seminary days but an effort to start educating students for the priesthood while living with other students their age, experiencing the life of the typical teenager and yet preparing for entrance  to the seminary.

This year, out of a first class of 27 graduates from the seminary preparation class 14 passed the government exam for college entrance. Those that failed will try again next year.

To see this in perspective, let us see what happened last year; out of the 24 applicants who were accepted by the seminary, six were 3rd year high-school students who had passed the government exam. The rest were students who had taken the government exam and had failed and later passed the retake exam, or were transfers from other colleges, or were college graduates. This year 19 students in 3rd year high school passed the government exam; 14 of them were members of the seminary preparation class who had graduated from the Catholic High School.

It is apparent that the experiment by the Seoul diocese has been a success, and in the coming years will be better prepared, along with other dioceses, to respond to the pope's appeal in Fidei Donum.

Scientism And Catholicism

Who are we? Why are we here? What is life all about? We all have asked these questions, and from the earliest times religion has given us answers. In modern times, science has sometimes attempted to answer the questions from a strictly scientific, materialistic perspective. Those with a religious perspective would see this as scientism: the view that science should be the ultimate authority for understanding all of life, the sole arbiter for determining what is true and what is false. The article on "Scientism and Catholicism" in the Catholic Times examines this perennial debate. 

Pope Benedict in Porta Fidei sums up the Church's position on the subject. "To a greater extent than in the past, faith is now being subjected to a series of questions arising, especially today, from a changed mentality that limits the field of rational certainties to scientific and technological discoveries. Nevertheless, the Church has never been afraid of demonstrating that there cannot be any conflict between faith and genuine science, because both, albeit via different routes, tend toward the truth."

We have all benefited from the discoveries of science and technology, but they do not give us the answers to the meaning of life. The scientific, materialistic answer of no meaning, which comes from misunderstanding the legitimate role of science, has greatly influenced the spread of atheism in recent years, and is deeply troubling to the Church.

The article mentions the scientist Richard Dawkins, and others, the so-called "new atheists," who see God as a wild fantasy and religion as unwittingly evil. Those opposed to the new atheists--like Alister McGrath--see this new breed of atheists as laying the foundation a new religion based on scientific fundamentalism.

"The human being is made by gift and for gift-giving, which expresses and makes present humanity's transcendent dimension. Sometimes, modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society." These words from Charity in Truth point directly to the problem: Did humanity naturally appear on earth or are we from God?

The article mentions in unfavorable terms the collusion of science and capitalism, resulting in humans being treated as commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace: embryonic cells, blood, body organs, and so forth. It is changing the way we see life and the culture we should be working to achieve.

The article make clear that the Church has not been able to keep up with the development of science that now challenges the Church's worldview and its understanding of creation. The well-meaning but non-scientific responses to the advances of science have given the impression that the Church is opposed to science, a false view which many scientists readily acknowledge. And the Church has itself acknowledged the good that science has done.

That science has changed the way we see the world is now beyond dispute. The thinking of the Church is rather clear about the important role science has played in shaping our present world. But the dangers of using the advances in science and technology intemperately are always present. Instead of using, for instance, the discoveries in  medical science  for the health and welfare of humanity, they can be used for cloning and similar unethical experiments. The same can be said of nuclear energy and chemical weapons. These are the concerns that many have expressed repeatedly over the years. The concerns are best answered not by a science that roams outside its legitimate domain, but by an enlightened, scientific understanding that respects the religious perspective.

Give and Take of Life

The expression "give" is missing from the internal dictionary of many of our contemporaries; only the word 'take' seems to be there, says the columnist writing on spirituality for the Catholic Times. From parents, from nature, from neighbors, from the Creator we are content to take and are not accustomed to the practice of giving. Isn't this, the columnist asks, the reason our marriages, society, culture, politics have problems?

Even when it comes to 'love', a word that should mean to give in the highest sense, our internal dictionary is content to use it most often to describe the taking and receiving of pleasure from a sexual attraction. But it's the give and take of life that is the way of  providence, he says, the way  we have been made and the way we are to grow.

Many of us have forgotten this principle, which, regrettably, can also be seen, he says, in the lives of religious and priests, when receiving takes precedence over giving. A sign, he asserts, that the formation was not properly done.

Giving includes many things besides material things. It can be as simple as a smile on our face, and a bowing of our head in greeting one another. We have forgotten, he says, this simple act of giving, and the ease it brings when we acknowledge the presence of others.

Close our eyes, he tells us, and reflect on the ways we can give. Think of the many things the sun, the trees and all earthly things continue to give us. Are we not to return this giving? he asks. It is when we give that we  become beautiful. An easy way to undergo a facial transformation, he says.
 
He has read many books on philosophy and theology, and other books of eminent thinkers. And he has carried away the same message from all of them: We have been created beautiful; our eyes were made to see the beauty of creation; our minds to have beautiful thoughts; our mouths to say beautiful things; and our hands and feet to do beautiful things. 

All that we encounter during the day enables us to come in contact with God. God has made the night for us to rid ourselves, he says, of the noise of the day. Do we use the quiet of the night to make contact with God? he wonders. The give and take of  everything in the universe should allow us, as we joyfully join this give and take, to find our rightful place in God, making our lives and the lives of others more beautiful.

Need to Dream Together

"No small dreams; they do not move hearts." With these words from Goethe, the columnist on the opinion page of the Catholic Times gives us his thoughts on the implications of this kind of thinking.  The priest-columnist heard similar words in Chicago in connection with plans for a construction project. But Goethe, the columnist reminds us, did not  limit his dreams to material things.

We are familiar, he says, with the great plans of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan to expand their empires, and the great construction feats of the pyramids and the great wall of China. These were not dreams of the ordinary person. And today, there are many who want to solve our problems with big dreams that will continue on after death.

These dreams all require determination, a great deal of support and financial backing, and a plan to silence the opposition. Once begun, the end has to be reached. However, big dreams usually encounter great problems, and in opposing the critics, dialogue is squashed and many are alienated, losing their own dreams.

In the story of Babel, people came together to build a tower to the heavens. Vying with God, wanting to be free of the will of God, they were ultimately unsuccessful. But dreaming big is a great motivator. Coming together is a good and dreaming is a good but forgetting the will of God is not a good. But what kind of dreams, the columnist asks, should we be dreaming?

He wants us dreaming together. When we dream together, great things happen. The vision of Jesus for God's reign was of this type. Like the small mustard seed that becomes a tree or the yeast that becomes bread, the reign of God comes not with competition but with cooperation and with faith.  With  love and patience, our dreaming together will turn into doing great things together.

We are faced with great problems and  those that want to solve them with big dreams, there is a need to be hesitant. We need to trust one another, rely on each other, think deeply on what is to be done, and dream together.

"Scratch the Gourd" Nagging

Some priests were going over their plans for the new year when one of them said he hoped to meet in the new year someone who will 'scratch the gourd', a Korean expression meaning to nag.
 
The columnist writing on spirituality for the Catholic Times said that the unexpected words were met with laughter and incomprehension. "Haven't you heard," one of them replied, "the complaints of husbands at the nagging of their wives? At those times, we rejoice in our celibacy, but you have never been nagged and don't know the harm it can do, otherwise you would not be saying that."

Hearing these words the priest shook his head in disagreement, "You do not know how spiritually motivated those nagging words really are. When we go behind those nagging words, we see they are often meant to stop the husband's bluster and self-importance, forcing him to face reality.

The wife is concerned, he continued, about managing the household. educating  the children, putting aside money for  retirement; she is concerned for the total welfare of the family. On the other hand, the husband wants to be seen as more than the family breadwinner and appreciated as a worthwhile person apart from his role in the family.

It isn't that the wife doesn't know this, the priest said. She is not talking this way to destroy the husband's sense of  self. No wife would be doing that, It is an attempt to make him a better husband and father.

"Look at ourselves," he explained. "As priests we appear to our parishioners as able to know and do everything, which often causes us to bluster and act big. It is because we have not been faced with the  'scratching of the gourd'. We all want to do certain things, to display ourselves,  make ourselves known. Don't we need someone to tell us what should and should not be done? Someone to 'scratch the gourd'?. To have persons helping us face reality and to see ourselves more objectively is a great blessing. It may be uncomfortable, hurt, but it's good for us."

The 'scratching of the gourd'  is not an attempt to inflict pain, but the scratching, if done out of love, will help us grow and keep us from being carried away by our feelings. It will help us find a middle ground where we can confidently stand, seeing ourselves as others see us.

Suicides and Gate Keepers

The issue of suicides is once again big news with the recent suicide of a celebrity. "A caring culture that respects life will go a long way to reducing suicides," said a professor in an interview with the Catholic Times

Working in the preventive medicine department of the Catholic University Medical School, the professor laments the lack of a support system within society to prevent suicides, and praises the Gate Keeper Movement who have taken on the task. All of us have the mission of gate keepers, she said, in helping to put an end to the suicides. Last year in the Seoul Diocese there were efforts to educate the parishioners about the Gate Keepers, and to making us more sensitive to picking up the signs of those who were contemplating suicide among all segments of society.

The most likely danger signals are feelings of isolation, recent divorce, unemployment, bodily disabilities, death of a loved one, mental traumas, past mental problems, dependence on alcohol, and depression. Also at risk are people of fragile temperament who are placed in a situation where they see only the dark side, and those who have experienced a loss, even in small matters. Once suicide has been attempted the chances are high that they will try again.

If our intervention is not successful, persuading persons at-risk to seek professional help would be the next step. Also important: the media has to stop sensationalizing their accounts of these deaths. The Seoul diocese has also helped by providing information on suicide prevention from their One-Body One-Spirit Center in suicide prevention.

Why so many suicides? The professor said that a random sample taken on eight different occasions found discord in the family harder to accept than problems with school studies and violence.  Children who need help from family and are not receiving it are especially in need of help--help that often can only be given by religion; the schools cannot fill that gap. She hopes that the Sunday School teachers, the Legion of Mary, and other organizations will take a more active interest in the problem, and use the Gate Keeper's educational programs to help stem a growing threat to a stable, sane society.