Change requires we discontinue acting like we did in the past. This does not mean, however, we scuttle everything we did in the past, which, in fact, is impossible. Consequently, there is a need for some stability other wise we have chaos.
A seminary professor writing in the diocesan bulletin considers the problems in society began with the disparaging, aversion, and without reason, jettisoning many of the values that came from the culture of the past. Among these are the Confucian family values we have let disappear, and have lost more than we have gained from the exchange. Under Japanese colonial rule, we learned to discount much of our past and forgot the merits and demerits of what to discard or retain.
Many blame Confucianism for many of the scars of our history. Our freedom was limited by etiquette, and moral duties: cause of our problems. During the last years of the Joseon Dynasty, the factionalism among the different parties, fighting for their own interests, showed clearly the abuses in society.
In the history of the Church, we also had periods of corruption, but we didn't throw out the Church because of the evils. Confucianism, likewise, did have infighting among those who were wearing Confucian's vestments, but it is no reason to remove all the values that have come from Confucianism. It enabled the Dynasty to last 500 years, and gave us our Korean sensibilities. Three bonds and five moral rules in relationships are a description of its main teaching. When we got rid of these values did it give us a better way of living?
Ideas of an age influence all the structures and thinking of a society. During the Joseon period of our history, Love, Justice and Etiquette were all important. They were intrinsic to relationships, more important than status and material goods, and all under the heading of family. However, all is now centered on money. We turn our back on the past and go suicidally, after material goods: like changing a brass bowl for a stainless one, selling a silk blouse for nylon socks.
He finishes the article with the five relationships: parents and children should be one of love; ruler and citizens should be one of justice; male and female are different, each other's area of action needs to be respected; proper order between old and young; between friends, words and actions need to express faithfulness.
When we ignore these relationships and work towards different values are we building a better society? We need to look for answers to this question.
In the Peace Weekly column of its name, the columnist has an uneasy conversation with Death. She begins with a quote from an American humorist who wanted to write his own obituary: "I died a little earlier." He was humorous even about death.
"Knowing about death is knowing about life." We are still afraid of death she laments. We do speak a lot about 'dying well' and have programs to help. but we still do all to avoid talking about its reality. In our culture we talk, she says, about a 'propitious death' of a person who dies of old age and wealthy. However, even in such cases we forget what we did very quickly after the funeral. In Korea, like in the West we don't find people going to a cemetery to read and rest.
She mentions how some years earlier she had the occasion to go to Germany for a story, and while in Berlin learned that one of the TV channels was devoted completely to death: obituaries and cherishing images of the departed are shown on the channel, and are popular among the viewers.
In one of the cities when the production team was approaching an old-age home some of the grandmothers came out jubilantly singing one of their folk-songs. In a joking matter, they said they heard the Korean magnolia was beautiful, and the next time they come to bring them some. Death was like a friend, but not only among the old.
In front of the Korean production team, in one of the high schools there was no difficulty in speaking very easily about death. Some 30 years before they began a program on death, and it has been received favorably. In a workshop, she attended on preparing for death with an American professor she was told they had programs in schools on death, which are well received by both parents and students.
A departure that is prepared and one that is not.... Clearly we have a great difference in the way they are received. When it is not prepared or covered over the experience is creepy. Whether as a friend or as an unknown reality death is a serious experience. One of the heads of a hospice said that in her opinion you know the way a person has lived by the way they die.
At this point, of the article the columnist wants us to face something uncomfortable, since we all desire a peaceful death. In hospice care, it is not realistic to think that those who are taking care of the patients will give them this gift of peace. Each person has to face death on his own, squarely and sincerely. Life was a gift of God, and we give thanks; death is also within God's providence, but we see it as under our control and sovereignty. She ends the article with the words: "God did not make humans in that way."
Inculturation is a word we often hear when we speak about the Gospel and culture. Evangelization has to be sensitive to the culture in which one is living and how to make the Gospel message understood in that environment. Articles in two Catholic Weeklies introduce a new book to the readers by a seminary professor, Fr. Lee Dae-geun. He received a prize for his recent book on 'Korean Religious History of Ideas' which was the author's efforts to understand why Korea was fertile ground for Catholic teaching.
Korean Catholicism, we need to remember, met people with a shamanistic history and Fr. Lee's efforts wanted to understand the encounter of these two religions. To understand Christianity in Korea, and the people's religious sensibilities, we have to understand shamanism, which influenced Korean culture and temperament, and continues to do so, according to Fr. Lee.
Easy it is for us to think that shamanism, exorcism rites, superstition and the like have mostly disappeared. Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism have come into the country from outside but shamanism was modified to adapt to the teachings of each of these religions.
Studies of shamanism have been going on for some time. No longer is it the study of folklore or history, but now it extends to sociology, anthology, religion, and psychology. Fr. Lee examines the influence of shamanism on Christianity. He wants to examine the motivational force that enabled the Korean people to accept Christianity when it entered Korea. He was surprised at the ease in accepting Christianity. The book is the study of the reasons in accepting Christianity, a foreign import.
Fr, Lee has a doctorate in Korean Philosophy and Asian studies and in his examination of folklore and rites of the harvest, he came to a new understanding of the legendary founder of Korea, Dan-gun, from whom the Korean people are descended. He recommends that their identity as Koreans and as Christians be understood as the meeting of these two religions.
Fr.
Lee's book was praised for his efforts to
understand the religious sensibilities of the Korean people but he has
been criticized in making some great leaps in what he has included in the
book and also in simplifying much. In the critique of the book that
followed the article, it was mentioned that many did find the acceptance
of Christianity easy but with the teaching on Creation and Redemption
there were also many who gave their lives for the faith, which brings
doubt to the minds of many on some of the points that were made in the
book.
Ascetical theology is a branch of theology, which deals with the practice of virtue and attainment of holiness.
An article in the Peace Weekly on spirituality
mentions the work that is necessary not only in controlling and purifying our five senses but also a need to purify our internal faculties of memory, and imagination. We work on the external, but need concern also with the internal.
Imagination is a neutral faculty it all depends on the way used if it is to be a help or a hindrance in the spiritual life. Jesus in his teaching used parables and worked on the imagination of his hearers. If our use of the imagination in the past has experienced a great deal of positive information, we will be helped, but if it has many harmful images, the effect on the imagination is injurious.
Our external senses have to be controlled so that we
don't have harmful images entering. It is difficult to imagine anything that has not entered by the external senses. What we consider
not helpful should not enter, if we want to
advance in our spiritual journey.
Our
memory also has to be purified. Whether we liked it or not, we have had
many experiences, some we have forgotten but many we remember. Remembrances that have impacted us harmfully should not control us. Memories of our sins and scars can be
overwhelming, and need to be replaced and forgotten.
When we have experienced God's grace and blessings, these need to be remembered and brought to mind often, and the hope they have nurtured. This is a great help in developing spiritually.
We also have internal cognitive, emotional and volitional acts that have to be purified. Without our emotions being purified, we will be bothered with sensual desires. Our cognitive faculty helps us to put light on our faith life, and foster love in our spiritual life. A strong will is necessary to do what we know we should, and to be conscious of God, otherwise we will be concerned only of ourselves.
Internal senses and faculties are all connected and working with one, will influence the others. In the past, the Church did take an interest in what books and movies the Catholics should not read and view, precisely because of the harm it would do to our imagination and memory. This is no longer advisable for the way society looks upon this interference in our daily life, but the reason was and still is, enabling us to live a healthy and happier life.
"Church opened to the world, renewal and adaptation" were maxims used after the close of the Second Vatican Council: 2015 is the 50th year from the end of the council. Korea has still some way to go to implement the changes according to the participants of a recent international conference on the theme: "Gospel and evangelization, 50 years after the II Vatican Council." The following are the subtopics: *Dialogue among religions and evangelization *Paradigm change in evangelization *Evangelizing Church * Mediums for the Gospel in evangelizing.
Interrelgious dialogue has been part of our reality from after the council. Reason for the dialogue is not to convert the other but as companions in search of truth. This, said one of the participants, is a change from our traditional ways.
Our understanding of evangelizing has changed from understanding others only as people to be saved by baptism. In the Americas, missioners risked their lives to go to the aboriginal peoples and using pressure to save them was the understanding of evangelizing. Salvation of the non-baptized was the thinking and the council has shown us a need to walk with others and discover how God speaks to them in their culture, a need for inculturation: not only to receive a response of religious faith but sowing love. The lives of the Christians become attractive and people want to join, not imposing but proposing.
One of the results of the Council was a Reforming Church: always in need of renewal for it is continually being secularized. We need to renew the face of the earth with God's original plans for the world. We need to help those who are weakest to appreciate their dignity and showing them God's love. Another participant said more than stressing the word renewal is to live a life of renewal: a poor church, poor priests, born again Christians.
We have to give Jesus by our lives. We have to work for justice and peace for the common good. This work for justice when seen by others will be admired and people will want to join.
The process of catechizing in Korea has been by transmitting knowledge; we have to change to accompany them. It is not changing the way we have worked in the education of the Christians but to add another facet to what we were doing.
Lay people should feel free in giving their opinions and the clergy and the diocese should listen. Dioceses have to spend money in the education of lay people.
One of the participants stressed that the Council was a pastoral one, and this must be remembered. Lay persons must realize they are the church. He wonders whether most of the lay people see themselves only as objects of pastoral work and as helpers of the clergy, but they are the church and have been given their mission by Jesus. Both papers had articles on the conference. On the front page of the Catholic Times, the article ends: without change in the thinking of the clergy the ideas that have followed from the Council will be impossible to achieve.
Anything that is written is done with a bias. Historians admit this rather obvious reality. Some biases will help one get closer to the truth than others. One danger is that history, for the most part, is written by the victors and written by the most favored in society.
Korea is conflicted at present by the governments desire to control who writes the history books used in the secondary schools. Schools can choose the books they want but from 2017 all schools must use the books selected by the government. Present government does not like the left-leaning, American bashing, and pro-North Korean language. How much that is the case is a matter of debate. In the Peace Weekly a history professor, emeritus, gives his opinion on the matter by answering a series of questions.
History is the combination of fact and interpretation. There is much room for interpretation, and this gives life to what we read. We don't have any established theories unless it is controlled.
To the question, whether we have any international standards to go by, he rules out being influenced by ideology or politics. With the United Nations, history is turned over to the historians. Most of the developed countries do not get involved with the history books used and turn this over to those writing the history. Those using the books have freedom to select the ones they deem the best. When the government does the selecting, we are approaching totalitarianism.
He reminds us the books considered left-leaning now in use were approved by the government, and if there is a left-leaning, the Education ministry is at fault and not the editors of the books.
When history has to be approved by the government, we have a black-and-white camera with pictures that are in color. History is not to be interpreted by a certain class of society or written to imbue patriotism in the citizens. Danger is high that, controlled by the government, it will be written to build up love for the country.
A Christian way of looking at history would see it with the glasses of love and peace and the universal extension of fundamental rights, which would not be much different from the way the historical academy would see it. If we have a love for humanity, peace and the pursuit of happiness as values, they will help in the writing of history: against war and on the side of the poor. We have to keep in mind the universal common values: a proper view of the world and life requires a universal outlook on values that serve as our starting point for interpretation and teaching.
Renewal, reformation, being what we are called to be is an ever present
desire on the part of many. Seven religious groups Buddhist,
Protestants, Catholics and others began the movement for the members to live according to their own groups' teachings: like human beings, like religious people,
like government officials, like workers, like fathers, like mothers and
so
forth.
Doing what we are called to do
by our duties in society, giving an example to society with the hope
society will follow. Since over half of the Koreans have a religious
affiliation this would make a difference in society. The movement was
written up in the Catholic papers and also in the secular press
mentioning a diocese that in a general meeting, 461 priests promised
to carry out the proposal, the first group of priests in the country to
do so.
*They have promised to be faithful to their duties as priests.
*To be evangelizers to the best of their ability and live by the Gospel.
* Read the breviary devoutly and be an example of a prayerful life.
* Serve God's people.
*Will work for the unity and fraternal love among the priests of the diocese.
They have promised this in the presence of their communities.
They have also decided to help with a gift of about 1,000 dollars for
all the families with a third child, and for any third child 1,000
dollars for high school, and if accepted for college, another 2,000
dollars.
In surveys made to determine the first need for renewal within the church, the answer in first place was priests'
authoritarianism and clericalism. The response of the diocesan priests
is an understanding of this reality and an effort to bring about a
change. It was a surprise to many to see the response of the diocese to
the movement 'to live like we should'.
Dec. 8th begins
the Year of Mercy and the diocese has decided to set up a permanent
place for confessions, and next year in May, they will have a day for all
all couples with a renewal of the marriage vows.The response of the diocese has already moved another diocese to follow their example next year.
