Speaking with Symbols

A Catholic Times journalist responsible for reporting news from abroad recalls the media coverage of the three most recent popes, especially coverage of their trips outside of Rome. They are treated like entertainers who, when they first alight in a foreign land, are making fashion statements, he says, with their clothes and accessories.
 
Pope John, after leaving the airplane, would  bend over to kiss the ground. Twice in his trips to Korea this was his first greeting to Koreans, followed by saying "This is a land of the martyrs." With Pope Benedict, the Prada red shoes were the big interest. What seemed to be of interest when Francis went to Brazil was his carrying his little black bag onto the plane. Even when he was talking unreservedly to the Italian Premier Enrico Letta, he had this same bag with him.

Shouldn't there have been someone to carry it for him, the journalist asks, to quiet those who might think it rude that the pope has to carry his own bag? But the same thing occurred on his return to Rome. As we all know, this behavior is nothing new. He paid his own bill at the place where he stayed during the conclave and carried his own bags. He refused a private car and traveled by bus with the other Cardinals. The informality shown by the pope is very attractive to the ordinary Catholic, some of whom have said they now find going to church a joyful experience.

The Journalist recalls a recent trip to the United States, where he visited a Korean parish in Virginia. The occasion was the blessing  of the Church after remodeling was finished, and the bishop was there for the blessing. The Korean parishioners were outside waiting for the bishop to arrive in a small faded silver-colored car. His massive frame appeared, with some difficulty, from behind the drivers seat, and proceeded to the trunk of the car, taking out a big bag on wheels, which he dragged to the place of greeting. The Sunday school students greeted him with bouquets of flowers. He greeted them with a hearty laugh. He dragged the bag up the steps and disappeared inside the church. There was nobody, the journalist said, who drove the car for him nor anybody who carried his bags. Can this, by any stretch of the imagination, the journalist asks, be called rude behavior?

The journalist wonders what would it be like if the pope's personal manner of behaving, which is very attractive to many, became the normal way of doing things by the bishops of the Church--riding in buses and carrying their own bags, for example.

Symbols, especially in Catholicism, are very important. The whole sacramental system is built on symbols, which can speak loudly to Catholics. Pope Francis is using the language of symbols, whenever he chooses to respond non-verbally to the duties of his pontificate--taking buses and carrying his own bag, for instance--and whenever he chooses to relate non-verbally to the Catholic faithful, but nonetheless with a clear message, as he did by taking the name 'Francis.' Few observers will miss the shock value of such unexpected behavior. How much of these symbols will be understood to be the message of Jesus, may be another matter.

Living Each Moment Completely

What do we gain from our efforts to reach the heavens? Is there a  limit to our desire to be satisfied? asks a religious sister with a back ground in media studies and spirituality. She ponders these questions and others, as she reflects, in a recent issue of the Kyeongyang magazine, on the tower-of-Babel-world of digital science.

In scripture (Genesis 11:3) we are told about the tower's construction: "Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire. They used bricks for stone and bitumen for mortar." She compare our use of the computer and smart phones to the centuries-old use of bricks, and our mobile data communications to the use of mortar, while the SNS networks are busy spreading the word to the rest of the world. Results are not always positive, she points out; they may aggravate some of the more prevalent maladies of our times, such as depression, attention deficit disorders, overwork and burn out.

A sign of the times may be our lack of patience, as we attempt to accomplish more than we comfortably can. She mentioned going on a ride with an acquaintance who had two navigation systems working in the car. Not only was he following both systems but was talking to the sister at the same time. She tells us of those who find the speed of the movies, dramas and programs that some watch on TV too slow, so they download from the TV, edit them to taste, and then watch the movie or drama or whatever at their own speed, cutting out the parts they find boring.

And children appear to be no different; they have no difficulty speaking while doing their homework, to cite just one example. And there are people who see nothing wrong or unusual about using the smart phone while they continue conversing with the person beside them. We have become, she says, multitasking people. However, she tells us this may be an addiction disorder. It may not be simply an unwillingness or inability to do one task at a time, but may result from the release of adrenaline-like hormones damaging our thinking  processes. Which makes it imperative, she says, to give ourselves entirely to what we are doing.

Digital technology can often make our lives easier, more pleasurable, more satisfying than our present reality, as we get into the habit of looking for the "more" in life, for the satisfaction of the moment.  And so the smartphone tends to be with us nearly all the time. It may in fact be the first thing one looks for in the morning, she says, and the last thing one sees before going to bed.

Let us not, she concludes, seek only to make our name known (Gen. 11-4), as we try to navigate prudently this newest digital tower of Babel. She asks us to be free of this ambition and to spend more time relating with those we come in contact with every day and with our natural environment.  Even though the present reality is not perfect, we can find the key to happiness, she says, by taking leave of the digital world occasionally and living in the present moment completely.

Inculturation and Secularization

Many are the reasons Protestant theologians do not look upon Catholicism kindly.  One of the primary reasons, they maintain, is that when it became the established Church of the Roman Empire, it distorted the teachings of the early Church.

A diocesan seminary professor, in an article in the Kyeongyang magazine, explains the antagonism by noting the difference between secularization and inculturation.

Catholicism has done many things that deserve to be criticized, he acknowledges; there is no reason to deny the facts of history. Obviously, it was not the whole Church but segments within the Church that sought to imitate the prevailing mores of society at any particular historical period, often colluding with the powers of government and ignoring the teachings of Jesus and the early Church.  Secularization, as this tendency has been called, was making inroads within the Church. However, at the same time, there were many saints and ordinary observant Catholics and members of religious orders that continued living Christlike lives. But the criticisms were vociferous and developed into the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
 
With the Edict of Milan, in 313, religious freedom was declared. The way Protestants and Catholics interpret history since then is very different, the professor says. Did the Church abandon the thinking of the early Church and was secularized? So say the Protestant theologians. Or did the Church put on the clothes of the civilization and culture of the times to make the teachings of Jesus more accessible? As Catholic theologians say.

To answer the question, the professor feels it is necessary to first distinguish between the sometimes confused meanings of secularization and inculturation. Inculturation is the term used in Catholicism to denote an encounter between the Christian Gospel and a particular culture. The term is used to explain the manner in which the Church intends to safeguard the teaching  of the Gospel while encouraging a sensitivity to the different cultures it finds itself in.  Secularization, on the other hand, is an encounter with the world that abandons religious truth and values and replaces them with the values of the secular world. In this world, words tend to lose their spiritual significance. When words like joy, peace, patience, modesty, sincerity, justice and the like are understood only in a secularist sense, they lose their ultimate meanings, which can only be fully understood from a religious perspective. 

The Church, in its attempt to spread the Gospel and its values, did not deny the conveniences of the culture or the civilization in which it found itself. Rather, it worked to imbue the culture with the values of the Gospel message. It is this effort that we call inculturation, the professor said. Jesus being incarnated into a Jewish culture is the origin of what we mean by inculturation.

This happened also within Greek culture and in the middle ages in Europe. The early Fathers of the Church fought against the culture and against secularization, which slowly gave rise to the idea of inculturation. And now, after the Second Vatican Council, we use the word aggiornamento: a willingness to dialogue with the society we live in.

The Korean Catholic Church is "trying to breathe" the cultural air and "plant itself" more firmly within the Korean cultural soil, so that the teaching, pastoral ways, liturgy and the various devotions are more understandable to Koreans.  Many are falling  away from the Church, which makes this effort of inculturation all the more important. Evangelization has as its goal not only those who are outside the Church, but all Catholics who must struggle against a secularist culture, inculturation is a useful tool in the evangelization process that can be used to bring the message of the Church to those, both inside and outside the Church, who may have been negatively influenced by the accidentals that have been added over time to the Christian message.

Love is not Enough: Don Bosco

St. Don Bosco is often quoted as saying that children need not only to be loved but to feel the love. Writing in the Peace Weekly a Salesian brother explains what this means in practical terms. He  shares a home with more than 20 teens, which is like a "tree with thick branches never having a calm day no matter how little the wind is blowing--a Korean proverb he likes to quote, meaning that with a big family you are always going to have  difficulties, and he has had his share of them, he says. The boys have had different home environments and training, which often leads to quarreling, missed school and occasional runaways. 

Every Saturday afternoon the boys are given spending money and allowed to leave the house. This is always a happy day for them. On one such day he learned that two of the boys had runaway the previous day. At first, it was easy to find those who had left but with each repetition it became more difficult.

One Saturday when he was giving out the money, he also gave it to those who had run away and returned. One of the boys complained to the Brother that the runaways should not be given the money. "Running away is a bad habit they have, and to give them money will make them even worse," the boy said. "It will make running away all that more frequent."  Most of the boys agreed with him.

There were others, though, who agreed with the Brother that they should be given the spending money. One of the boys who agreed, having once runaway himself and a few years older than the recent runaways, said they would not do anything bad if given the money. The runaways, greatly pleased with the Brother's decision, left the house humming, money in hand. The rest of the group looked at the Brother and the runaways with perplexed looks on their faces, the Brother said. 

That night the runaways returned to the house like victorious generals returning from war.  The boys who complained about giving them money, with an embarrassed smile asked for forgiveness. Even though they did runaway, they were treated the same as the others, which made them feel they were loved, the Brother said. They never ran away again, he said, and the numbers of those who did were less.

To the Brother, this was  a good example of the power of forgiveness and concern that enabled the boys to do the right thing. It was precisely the runaways, in this situation, he said, that needed to feel the love that Don Bosco so much stressed.

Knowledge is not Everything

A college professor who has extensively studied foreign methods of education, in a recent issue of the Peace Weekly, applies what he has learned to evaluate the Korean educational system. He is now teaching a number of students from Asian countries who have enrolled in one of his courses. He has noted, he says, the differences in how students from different countries respond to the demands of the school environment. There is something distinct about each country's way of educating its students, and he focuses on how it's done here in Korea. 

He begins by acknowledging that Korean students are second to none when it comes to intellectual ability. From the time they were children, they have been encouraged to study hard and to excel in any intellectual situation. Though this is a source of pride to Koreans, there is another and less positive side to this intellectual ability, he says, and many of our Korean students can be said to fall within the less positive side of this divide. Because they have heard from a very early age the importance of studying hard, they have a tendency to gauge every thing from this perspective, and he blames their parents, and the present culture generally, for this unbalanced tendency. It is only natural, then, he goes on to say, that our students have 'tunnel vision' when it comes to dealing with the larger issues of life.

The professor reminds us that many of the brightest students in the world desire to go to Harvard Law School but, as is well-known, intellectual brilliance alone will not assure admittance to the school. And sometimes parents are the problem. He mentions a high-school student who had done remarkable work on a school project. Although he was selected by the government to go overseas, his parents would not give permission because of upcoming college entrance exams. He says that in another country the fact that he was selected to go overseas for a workshop would have guaranteed him a place in a college of his choice.  

When the emphasis is only on studies, we lock ourselves in a box and can see nothing outside the box. Our school marks are not the same, he reminds us, as the marks that come from life.

Another problem the professor sees is that students often fail to be concerned with other students, content in their solitary struggle for good marks. He tells us about a lecture he gave at a prestigious college in Korea. When he asked the students to come up for the lecture material, everyone rushed to the front to make sure they would not be left out--though there was plenty for everyone--even pushing aside a classmate in a wheel chair, as the students rushed to the front of the room. This riotous scenario, he points out, can serve as a self-portrait of the competitive educational system we have built here in Korea.

Using the words of Pope Francis to the young in Brazil, he says that Korean youth, along with the older generation, have raised to idol status money, success, power and pleasure, and have been mesmerized by them. It comes down to asking ourselves, he says, the following question: Can we place these legitimate goals in their rightful secondary position in life rather than as our primary goals?

He ends with the words of Montaigne, who said the aim of education is not to fill the head but to make a good head. Isn't it time, the professor asks, for us to take a closer and more mature look at our educational system, and do something to improve it?

Character Education

"I know that Daegu is a violent city where students fight and easily give up on life," said the superintendent of education for the city of Daegu. Interviewed by the Peace Weekly, he went on to say that "Daegu students are carrying the cross for Korean students. If I didn't have my religion," he admits, "I would very likely have resigned, but I consider my position as superintendent of education as God-given, along with the pain that comes with it."

When his father died, he said he cried, and when he read the suicide note left by a 14-year-old  student who couldn't stand the bullying of his classmates, he also cried. He called together the 350 persons who work in the department of education and read the note left by the student; everybody was in tears, he said. He went to the funeral hall to console the parents and promised them that this would never happen again. He wanted to wipe out the stigma of bullying in the school system and said he would work to increase the "happiness index" of his students.

Up til now, it has been standard thinking that sweetness comes after pain: Students should study and be unconcerned about attaining happiness now, but look forward to success later in life. The superintendent said that it is time to change this thinking with a positive understanding of education. They have started to do this in second-year middle school by encouraging closer relationships between teachers, students and parents.

From the time he became superintendent, he has been aware of the prevalence of bullying in the school system. He has taken it very seriously, knows it is not limited to the schools, and has brought it to the attention of the government, with the warning that without its eradication the education system will not move forward. Though he assumes "all the responsibility" for the current state of the school system, he wants all of society to become involved, and pleads with the press not to have live broadcasts or reports of suicides.

We are merely "on-lookers," he says, at what is happening in society. He recalls a time when he was a college president with little interest in education on the grammar, middle and high school levels. The way we selected students for college, he points out and now regrets, has had devastating effects on the morale of our students. We should have been teaching them how to live with one another, instead of allowing them to step on others to advance their own goals.

It is time, he says, that schooling should primarily be for character formation. And what the schools can't do, religions should do.  A good school should be a place where students feel safe, a place where they can devote themselves to study, foster a sense of self-worth and confidence, and where they can dream and realize their potential.

South Korean Catholics and North Korea

The  Catholic Times and a public opinion research organization will survey a thousand Koreans, aged 19 and older, to determine what they think on a number of social problems, and make the results available in the pages of the Catholic Times once each month, with comments.   The surveys will use random sampling and digital dialing, which will assure, they say, 95 percent accuracy, with a low margin for error. The number of Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, and  Non Believers were included in the 1000 respondents according to the numbers they have in the population as a whole. Since the Catholics have a little over 10 percent they numbered  106 of the total number of respondents.

The first question asked: Could  religion contribute to solving the problems with the North?  59.2 percent of the Catholics said that the problems could be solved by a  religious approach. 56 percent of the Buddhists, 47 percent of the Protestants, and  41.3 without Religion/and others, believed  religion could contribute.

To the question: Do you think we are living in peace with the North in this our 60th year of the Korean War armistice?  Buddhists 66.8 percent, Protestants 64.7 percent, and without religious belief/and others 60.2 percent. Breaking this down even further we have 23 percent of Catholics who felt we completely lack a peaceful relationship. Buddhist 11.2 percent, no religion/and others 11 percent, and Protestants 6.4 percent.

To the question: Is there a need for the unification of Korea? 80 percent of the Protestants saw a need for unification, those without religion 71.5 percent, Catholics 64.5 percent, and Buddhists 60.7 percent.

To the question: Do you know about the support the South is giving the North? 73.2 percent of Catholics did know, 72.4 percent of those without religion/and others, Buddhists 70.9 percent, and Protestants 59.4 percent.

Commenting on the results of the survey, the Catholic Times said that a lot more education has to be provided to our Catholics in the form of parish educational programs. The very low rate of Catholics who saw a need for unification is not a good sign, it said. Though the Church is aware of this shortcoming among our Catholics and is working to change their thinking on this matter, the reality is that the political and social climate in the country still has more to do with the way our Catholics think than does the influence of a Catholic view of life.