Faith, Hope And Love with Continued Admonition

 

Integrity, transparency, and anti-corruption are the qualities we want in our public officials. So begins an article in the  Reconciliation and Unity   column of the Catholic Times. 

 

Many are the words used to express these qualities but these principles are the basic virtues we demand of politics and society. The power to allocate resources, observance of given laws, institutions and norms justly managed are seen as major steps in the development of democracy. 

 

Power can be expressed not only in state affairs but also in relationships that appear in everyday work or group life. The degree of fairness and justice are also key indicators for assessing the development of democracy in a particular country. 

 

When discussing North Korea, it is not easy to argue whether the system is fair and just. The anti-smoking law was adopted in North Korea, but it became a hot topic when a photograph of the head of the Labor Party Kim Jong-un had a cigarette in his hand despite the law.

 

It is the testimony of a large number of North Korean defectors that bribes in the relationship between the bureaucrat who manages the marketplace and the intelligence agency that monitors the residents and the market trader are prevalent. Even at the high level of politics, the main elites who assist the present leader are often inherited from the past. 

 

The basic order of democracy aims for an open society where everyone gets equal opportunities, the process is fair, and the results are just. North Korea is a closed society where social status is determined by birth and the system operated by the leader's desires rather than the rule of law, corruption and unreasonableness continue to spread.

 

For this reason, our gaze on North Korea is focused on how and when North Korea will enter the liberalization that must accompany growth and development, and how long the North Koreans will endure the present system? Furthermore, the authoritarian regime in North Korea needs to change. Some even fall into matters where there may be justification for punishment and sanctions to be imposed.

 

Regarding how to lead others in a good direction, the Gospel of Luke recommends that "if your brother sins, enlighten him" (Lk 17:3). Blame is not a basis for hate and exclusion, but when it comes with a willingness to help until it changes, it becomes a good act. Until North Korea turns to the path of an open society little by little, what we need will be faith towards them, hope not to give up, and ultimately love.

Difficulties In Listening

 

Professional Counseling programs have been present in Korea for many years. Counselors are in all areas of society. Because of the rapid social changes in South Korea: high suicide rate, divorce, age gap problems, educational system, unemployment, etc. counseling services have spread and diversified within society.

Consequently, the training for professional counselors has increased as also associations that are involved in the discussion on the practice and training of counseling professionals, one of the fastest-growing fields in Korea. This is also seen in the training of pastoral workers and especially clerics who want more than the training they received in the seminary.
A priest writes in a bulletin about his experience in training in counseling and his felt need for knowledge in this field.

He had some big dreams for his sabbatical year but had to return home due to corona19. He returned to live with a senior priest, living in a small attic room, and decided to continue studying counseling, from which he took a leave of absence for the sabbatical year.

The housekeeper only comes twice a week. He had to do everyday things that he thought weren't his job for the past 50 years— washing, cleaning, cooking and washing dishes, and even maintaining the refrigerator. The pastor told him: "The daily routine of eating, washing dishes, and cleaning is holy."

The pastor suggested counseling—intern training along with graduate school classes; he didn't know what to expect and accepted it. After registering for the internship, the pastor gave him a terrifying warning: "Now you will be in the race of death." It really was a race of death.

At the end of the second semester, the pastor asked: "What do you think you learned?" "When the consultation was over, recorded, and written, there were many times that I wanted to sew my mouth shut," he answered. He didn't realize how much he talked about himself without listening to others. And coming across as a self-important braggart. The pastor told him: I have been studying for the last 8 years, and have been able to fix little. But knowing that we're not listening to others is an important lesson."

In counseling 'listening with empathy' is important. The writer learned that listening is the most important thing in pastoral ministry with believers. In fact, his sabbatical once in his life became of great significance to him. Isn't  listening also the most important factor that separates the bishop and priest?

Usually, bishops think they know everything, and when priests share their concerns or opinions, they only try to judge, direct and teach them. After experiencing this a few times, the priest seems to give up speaking in front of the bishop. It's not just himself, the bishop has little experience in listening sincerely. The bishop seems to want the priest to follow and obey rather than to listen. It will be difficult for us to create a warm church atmosphere with this way of relating, in which the bishop and the priest run endlessly along parallel paths.

When looking at the conflict that society is experiencing recently, usually it is only one's own story without listening to other people's stories. This is also due to asserting only stories related to the interests and capabilities of their own group and unconditionally opposed to others. Doing what his own group did. Our society is now uneasy about what to integrate and create for the future.

This year, he was appointed as a parish priest after the sabbatical year. He wants to continue studying counseling. It is his desire to become more aware of himself and to listen and empathize with the pain of others more so than he has done in the past.

Let's Stop A Greater War

 

The head of the news desk of the Catholic Peace Weekly gives the readers something to think about during these trying days of Corona19.

 

The world has been struggling with Corona 19 for nearly a year. The fight against infectious disease unfolds in a fashion similar to a war. Urgent, special, unpredictable situations occur every day. Daily life is restricted, families are separated due to quarantine. 

 

The war against Corona 19 began with a local war from China and expanded to a world-wide-war. The statistics of the unnamed confirmed sick, and deceased, are numbered as if they were the perpetrators, and communicated to all regularly.

 

The war against corona 19 is unprecedented in that

mankind has never experienced a pandemic to this extent before. It is not a war between human forces that kill each other but against an invisible virus. The form, penetration path, and attack direction of the enemy are always uncertain. A preemptive attack is not possible, so we build a defensive position called quarantine. The situation is always disadvantageous to humans. Humans are helpless in the face of attacks from 'viruses', which change weapons and mutate from time to time. 

 

There is a saying that "if you want peace, prepare

for war." Humanity’s preparation for war led to the development of weapons. It was a belief that victory could only be achieved by creating an imbalance of power with weapons that maximized lethality. 

 

The most destructive and most powerful weapon in the history of war so far is the nuclear bomb. So, what is the most powerful weapon to win the war against coronavirus? Countries around the world are now vying to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. If the vaccine is distributed, the war on Corona 19 will end. 

 

Whenever a new infectious disease emerges, humans have developed vaccines. In 1928, the first antibiotic penicillin was developed that saved mankind from infectious diseases. However, super viruses resistant to any antibiotic continued to appear. It's as if they laugh at the arrogance of humans who regard science and technology as 'all-mighty'. 

 

Why does the virus constantly threaten humans? To stop the war, we need to know what causes war. When humans destroyed the virus's habitat in the name of development, climate change occurred; viruses set out to find humans as hosts for survival. The war against Corona19 is a foolish war, initiated by human carelessness and immorality. 

 

Professor Jared Diamond, the author of the best-selling Guns, Germs, and Steel, said, Corona 19 is spreading worldwide, but it is mild compared to the three problems that are slowly killing humanity. He cited climate change, resource depletion, and social inequality as the three major problems of humanity. It is the product of human greed and desire. 

 

The history of war should stop with the war against

Corona 19. For the first time in human history, it is reminding everyone around the world of a "joint solution" through "joint consensus." No one can guarantee safety without a common response.

 

Pope Francis stressed that to achieve peace, on earth,

the common home for both humans and natural ecosystems, viewing nature as an object of exploitation needs to change to ecological repentance. It means that humans and nature must care for each other, protect, preserve, and take responsibility for each other.

 

"The heavens and the heavens above the heavens, and the earth and all that is in them belong to the Lord your God" (Deut. 10:14).

 

Humanity working together, cooperating, living

temperately, and with concern for creation will prevent a greater war.

The Public And Media Relationship

 

A professor in political journalism brings to the attention of the readers of the Catholic Peace Weekly some interesting thoughts in the column Diagnosis of Current Events.

In general, people considered extroverts are active and confident, while introverts usually are assessed as being quiet and shy. However, each of our dispositions is achieved through a combination of different personality and temperament traits. A quiet person may be active, and a shy person, confident.
 
As a simple example, consider the Myers-Briggs widely known personality type test. The criteria for judging the personality are largely composed of four categories, but there are 16 personality types, which results from the interaction among the 4 preferences.
 
Susan Kane's book "Quiet", she read a few years ago, made a lot of sense to the writer. This book sheds light on the value of introverts in a time when extroverts are recognized today. "The highlight of the book I think is that it provided an opportunity to understand and empathize with the dispositions, personalities, and attitudes of others and myself." Acknowledging the difference of the other person, from which communication with others can begin.
 
Understanding others is never easy. It is even more difficult to go beyond understanding to communicate with others. We often face the task of communicating with others whether we like it or not, taking on the role of a leader or follower in the situation in which we find ourselves.
 
Good leaders are important factors driving organizational and social success. Methods of implementing the leadership necessary for a good leader vary according to the characteristics, goals, and culture of the organization or society. The fact is there have been leaders with different leadership qualities in politics, society, and culture in our history.
 
Some organizations require gentle leadership that carefully considers and coordinates the diverse opinions and positions of individual members, while charismatic leadership can be more effective in other organizations.
 
Good leaders are also created by good followers. The criterion for judging good followers is not limited to a single issue. In some cases, the role of the helper who unconditionally obeys the leader leads to the success of the organization, and there are situations where the role of the helper is to speak straightforwardly to the leader to what he believes is unreasonable. Therefore, requesting only the role and disposition that I want from the other person in the communication results in communication behavior in which dialogue between the two can no longer progress.
 
The media presents their chosen agenda to society and provides a forum for dialogue between people of various opinions. Through dialogue, we help people face problems in our society and think about ways to solve them.
 
The social influence of the media is truly enormous, the recent problem of child abuse, known through recent reports, has expanded the discussions on the necessity of reforming the relevant legal system beyond mobilizing the anger of many people.
 
However, the media often leans in one direction when dealing with agendas related to issues of political value or interest. Although there are various positions and understandings in interpreting the phenomenon, the act of focusing on the voices of those with the media's own viewpoints and positions is not the correct attitude of the media to take. The media's care not to discriminate against specific groups is also intended to allow the public to face the issue from the perspective of interested parties. 

The media should follow the various opinions of the public in leading public opinion in the right direction. Also, the public should not be negligent in exercising their leadership as a strong helper in making for a good press and information on public opinion. 

All I Need Is "Wholeheartedness"

A retired journalist, now a visiting professor in a Journalism School reminisces on his life and how he comes to where he is today. He writes in The Eyes of the Believer Column of the Catholic Times. 

No money, no talent, ugly…. Barnaby, an acrobat with nothing, had nowhere to go, so he turns to a monastery. The monks in the monastery each showed their wonderful knowledge and talents and were living a life of consecration to Our Lady. Writing poetry or drawing, doing construction work or playing music.
 
Barnaby laments for having nothing to offer. One day, the monks went looking for Barnaby and found him in the chapel where a strange scene was unfolding. In front of the statue of Our Lady with no one present, Barnaby was standing on his hands and spinning a ball and a sword with his feet. This was the only skill that Barnaby had developed. The monks saw this as a form of blasphemy, grabbed him, and were ready to move him out of the chapel when an unbelievable sight arose in front of them.
 
When Barnaby, who had been performing with all his might, fell exhausted, the statue of the Virgin moved and approached Barnaby; she wiped the sweat on Barnaby's forehead with her blue hem.
 
The above short story entitled "Our Lady's Juggler" is the work of French Nobel Prize-winning writer Anatol France. It is a reconstruction of a folktale that has been handed down in Europe since the Middle Ages. He read this short story by chance long before he was baptized, and he remembers vividly the emotion that spread from his heart to his whole body.
 
After baptism, the words in the passage about the "widow's donation" (Lk 21:1-3) also spoke to his heart. He doesn't know why. "As Jesus looked up he saw rich people putting their offerings into the treasury; then he happened to notice a poverty-stricken widow putting in two small coins, and he said, I tell you truly, this poor widow has put in more than any of them; for these have all contributed money they had over, but she from the little she had has put in all she had to live on."
 
These two stories emphasize that my everything, my sincerity is more important than the size and worldly value of material things like money.
 
After he was baptized, he found great comfort and courage from these stories as he lived his life of faith. These stories always say: "It's okay, nothing else matters. All I need is my wholeheartedness" he was encouraged. What could he offer with all his heart? Rather than money or any other talent, it had to be writing or work related to media.
 

First of all it was important to faithfully comply with the teaching of the Catholic world. The first media of the church that received his manuscripts was the bulletin of the Seoul Archdiocese. After writing in the Seoul Bulletin for a month once a week, there were many requests for manuscripts from media inside and outside the church.
 
At first, he was afraid to write because he didn't know the social teaching of the church. There were many worries that he would be saying things that were contrary to church teaching. Because of this, it took him a lot of time to write while searching for materials and asking around. Thanks to that, he did a lot of studying in areas in which he felt inadequate.  

After becoming familiar with social teaching, he focused on social issues in editorials and columns that he uses to write for his newspaper as well as other media. There was little that was not in some way a social issue. The principles used in interpreting and acting on social phenomena: the principle of human dignity, the common good, were actually very similar to those of journalism. When he was working as an editorial board member, he piled up books on social issues on his desk and studied them and now feels comfortable in his work which continues in retirement.

 

Human Rights in North Korea Seen by South Korea

Relations with North Korea have been a troubling issue for the last 70 years. The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, and relations have remained pretty much what they were 70 years ago. The Catholic Peace Weekly reported on a seminar on the public perception of North Korean Human Rights and the South.

In a survey made on North Korea's universal human rights, 64.6 percent of South Koreans said we should make it our concern; 30 percent said, it is an internal matter in North Korea, so we should not interfere.

The North Korean Human Rights Information Center made the following remarks at a seminar on the results of the "2020 North Korean Human Rights Survey" held in December. The survey was conducted for four days from November 27 last year. They randomly selected 100 men and women aged 19 or older living across the country and conducted telephone interviews with a 95 percent level of confidence. This is the seventh time since 2014 that a survey on public awareness and policy evaluation of North Korean human rights has been conducted.

In the survey, 43% of respondents expressed a need for pressure through cooperation from the international community on North Korea;  second, improvement and support through steady dialogue (27.9%);  expanding and revitalizing support for North Korea (15.9%);  making known North Korean human rights infringements (9.3%).

Regarding human rights in North Korea, 58.9% of respondents said there is no possibility of further improvement, while 37.0% said there is a possibility of further improvement.

When asked about the awareness of the situation and improvement of human rights in North Korea, 21% of respondents answered that it is 'deteriorating'; 16.5% answered that it is 'improving'; and 53.2% answered that it is 'unchanged'. It turned out that more than half of the people perceived that human rights in North Korea were poor.

In the questionnaire on the possibility of improving human rights in North Korea, 58.9% answered that there is no possibility of further improvement; 37% said there is a possibility of further improvement. Regarding the need to prepare for a change and to punish the perpetrators of human rights violations in the North, 62.7% answered that it is necessary and 28.9% answered that it is not necessary.
 
Regarding the countermeasures that the South Korean government should take in the event of a large-scale North Korean refugee outbreak, 37.9% of respondents answered that they should be accepted because they are our compatriots, but 48.7% said, they should be selectively accepted in consideration of our economic capacity and diplomatic burden. 12.2% responded that they should not be accepted, and the way they looked upon the refugees was colder than expected.
 
Regarding the activities of North Korean human rights groups, 59.7% said they were helpful, while 38.4% said they were not helpful. Also, 60.3% of respondents answered the government and private organizations should cooperate investigating human rights infringements in North Korea, and 21.6% thought international organizations should do it alone. Only 3.4% desired private proceedings.
 
The director of the Center for Human Rights information on North Korea, said, allowing private research institutes to investigate and research the results of the Unification Ministry's North Korean Human Rights approach will be an institutional and civilian response to improve human rights in North Korea.

Can I go to Fortune Tellers and Church?

This year in the Lunar Calendar we begin the year of the Ox. A time for the exchange of greetings which this year is done mostly online because of the coronavirus. A priest writing in his column in the Catholic Peace Weekly gives us his thoughts on the way many Koreans look upon the New Year.

At this time of the year, many are looking for a bright future that is waiting for them in the 'Secret Art of Tojeong' and similar books used at this time of the year. They go to fortune-tellers, often called Philosophy Rooms.

Although we have entered the 4th industrial revolution with smart technology, those who frequent fortune tellers are looking for answers to the future by the four pillars—year, month, day, and hour of birth, reading the tarot cards, and other forms of divination have continued to increase. Very easy to find apps on hand-phones that will give you a reading for the future.

He quotes one site that said that over 130 thousand frequent these sites each day and what is spent is in the trillions. Those who work in the field of fortune-telling continue to increase. Two Associations that are in the field of divination have over 300 thousand members each and with the non-members counted you have over 500 thousand in each association. They appear often in the Broadcasting Media with the help of celebrities.

When the future is so much in the dark as these days of the virus, many try to clear away the darkness as quickly as possible and divination is one of the ways. Life is filled with aging, disease, death, economic problems, natural disasters, when some possibility arises that is supposed to solve the problems it is easy to grab onto them.

A professor in this field is quoted: There is the rebirth of 'shamanism' in the world today because of the uneasiness we have in politics and society with the easy availability of information bringing about the upheaval in society. In the Old Testament, it is very clear that all kinds of divination and sorcery are forbidden, also part of Catholic teaching.

In a questionnaire that was made by the Seoul Diocese in 2016, 76.4% of the respondents said that even though they knew about the Church's teaching they had experience in many of these means of divination. An indication that the unpredictable future has brought fear and uncertainty into their lives that their faith life was not able to alleviate.

Prophets are the spokespersons for God to the faith community on future events and to warn them and prepare them for the future to be closer to God while those in divination are there to avoid the future sufferings and distancing themselves from God.

Jesus said to his disciples: "This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms has to be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44). Also, "I shall not call you servants anymore, because a servant does not know his master's business; I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have learned from my Father" (John 15:15).

At the marriage ceremony the husband and wife promise each other: "I take you to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health until death does us part."  No one knows what is going to happen tomorrow, a month from now, a few years from now. We don't go into the future with a fortune teller but with the Lord. He will bring us to our proper destination.