Contagiousness of Loneliness

 

 Charles Darwin wrote a book called “Emotional Expression in Humans and Animals” along with “Origin of Species” laying the foundation for the theory of evolution. The Jesuit director of a human rights center writes in the Catholic Peace Weekly, Diagnosis of the Times column on the contagiousness of loneliness,

Chimpanzees are said to have almost the same level of social attachment as humans, so they express sadness and joy similarly. People experiencing deep grief sometimes find comfort in easing their loss and grief through intense body gestures, and the same goes for bereaved chimpanzees. They may cry out strange noises, slam their bodies against the iron bars, or stick their heads under straw bales and moan as if their hearts will break. It is a way of facing the fear that comes from the loneliness of being left alone.

 Humans are much more social than chimpanzees. We crave intimacy and cannot survive without it. Before the 20th century, only 1% of the world lived alone. But things have changed. Historically, as competition, polarization, and individualism intensify, the need for privacy increases, and the price is loneliness.

Currently, 3 out of 10 people in Korea are one-person households. Six out of ten people feel isolated, but at the same time, many more say they prefer to be alone rather than with family. You can live alone without feeling lonely, and you can be lonely without living alone, but loneliness and ‘living alone’ are connected. 

At this time, loneliness becomes a state of ‘homelessness.’ Feeling a sense of belonging means feeling at home. Anywhere can be a home, but this does not happen to those who experience existential loneliness or those who are homeless. Loneliness is not ‘cultural’ but ‘social’. Living alone is not a choice, but a result of the society in which we live.

Loneliness is not an empty sentiment or a personal emotion, but a state of deep anxiety and worry, both personally and socially. It is expanded sadness. Often the reason for numerous problems such as anxiety, violence, trauma, crime, suicide, depression, political apathy, and even political polarization. Not everything in the world can be reduced to loneliness, but it is one of the important causes and a new social problem.

In 2018, US health authorities declared that loneliness was an ‘epidemic’, and the UK appointed a minister ‘in charge of loneliness’. ‘Social isolation’ and loneliness are also related. The two share common symptoms and results. They are all associated with bereavement, old age, living alone, low levels of education, low income, and childlessness, particularly evident among the vulnerable and sick. If loneliness continues and becomes a chronic condition, it is no different from poverty. 

In Catholic social teaching, poverty is ‘exclusion’. This is because it is not only economic poverty, but also social, political, psychological, and spiritual. The persistent feeling that one's unique value is denied or the suspicion that one cannot share the value in the lives of others is the poverty of relationships and existence. Existence and relationships are everything to humans. 

The causes of loneliness are very complex and multifaceted. Loneliness is now a policy agenda, but also a universal problem so there is something we can all do, no matter how small. Loneliness is one of the deepest pain we can testify to. We can do the work of friendship, the work of being together in places of such deep pain.

These are the words of Henri Nouwen. “When someone listens faithfully to us and shows genuine interest in our difficulties and suffering, we sense something very deep is happening within us. Slowly fear and anxiety disappear. “The experience of being valuable and precious to someone is a tremendous creative force.”

 

 

 

 

 

A Listening Church

 

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The students she teaches come from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds, but there is something special about students with Christian backgrounds, both Catholic and Protestant. 

In the past, people went to church with their families, but now many who went to church no longer go. There are cases where people naturally become distant after entering college, but there are also many who are waiting to do so on entering college. For these people, the church is not the place they want to return to.

Young people are often seen as selfish individuals and “a generation that seeks only material goods and enjoyment” based solely on outward appearance, but what she observed was different. Just as much as the older generation, they long for new insights and wisdom beyond the horizon of reality, pursue a community where they share thoughts and experiences, and are interested in the climate crisis and a sustainable future. The way they express themselves, connect with each other and form a community are just different from the older generation.

Young people's spiritual pursuits do not necessarily lead to Christianity. She is more concerned about how the church is seen through the eyes of young people. When discussing with students what role and contribution religion can play in our lives and society, unfortunately, many of them show hostility and indifference. For young people, the church is “a group rife with hypocrisy, exclusion, sexism, hatred, and egoism.” They are no longer even disappointed in the church since they have no expectations. The church not only does not understand the difficulties they face in life, nor willing to listen.

The pain that young people face varies depending on the situation they are in but is usually expressed as depression, anxiety, and isolation. These are issues that the Church has paid pastoral attention to for a long time, and the Church's spiritual tradition also has abundant resources to examine and comfort them. It is not that the church is not interested in young people. Both dioceses and parishes have already made great efforts to retain young people for a long time. Nevertheless, young people still, or increasingly, turn their backs on the church. Where did it go wrong? The problem is not a lack of interest, resources, and effort, but rather the fact that the church is "unwilling to listen?"

Last January, she watched a website discussion hosted by the American Jesuit magazine America. Priests, religious, and female believers who attended the first session of the Synod of Bishops on Synodalitas (October 2023) were invited as panelists to share their experiences. Participants agreed that this general meeting was surprisingly new in terms of methodology and process.  

Since the beginning of Synodalitas, Pope Francis has emphasized that a change in thinking and approach is needed rather than resolving individual issues that have piled up. The Pope's vision was embodied in deep listening, with no interruptions allowed throughout the General Assembly. No one interrupted the participants, including women and young people in their twenties, to fully share their stories. After listening to each other's stories, there was mandatory silence to prevent spontaneous and emotional responses. Participants learned how to listen before speaking, and to express different opinions without breaking the consensus, and discussed how they could work together with different positions. I saw hope in that experience.

Isn't the attitude and skill of listening what the church needs most? In an attitude of learning and accepting rather than teaching and demanding, and in the process of stepping back and making way for the church and creating a space to go together rather than insisting that the church is always right, perhaps young people and the church can meet again.

Changing the Way we See

The artist (Maria), who has Down syndrome, became famous after appearing in the drama ‘Our Blues.’ The 'strange' Lawyer Woo ’ significantly changed society’s perception of people with autism spectrum disorder in the drama in which he stared.  It's not easy to meet people like artist Maria or lawyer Woo, but it would be good if prejudice against the disabled decreased.

At a Night School in Seoul, people with severe disabilities and people with developmental disabilities gather once a week and collaborate to create songs. A member of the  Taizé Community in the Catholic Peace Weekly gives the readers a look at their efforts. 

Under the motto,' We make our own songs', they tell their stories through songs. A songbook containing sheet music and activity photos of 45 songs created here from February 2022 to December 2023 has been released. The album  ‘Our March’ included the following song.

"Every Thursday we go here and there, take a walk around the neighborhood / Let's get out of the facility and go outside. I want to live as I want. / I want to ride the buses and subway.  We've been saying the same thing for too long. / Still we need to sing. When we march, the world changes."

On the Nodeul Song Factory website (nonogong.kr), you can listen to the songs they wrote and sang themselves and download sheet music and sound sources. This was made possible through the ‘Seoul-type rights-centered public jobs customized for people with severe disabilities’ project. The ‘cultural and artistic activities’, ‘rights advocacy activities’, and ‘disability awareness improvement activities’ of students with severe disabilities were recognized as customized labor. The students who participated were able to say to others that they were ‘going to work’ for the first time in their lives and received wages. This public job, a one-year contract position, was obtained by Nodeul Night School as a ‘part of the share’ of disabled people excluded from work after occupying and fighting the Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled for three months.

This year, the city of Seoul cut its entire budget for rights-centered customized jobs. As a result, 350 severely disabled people and 50 dedicated workers lost their jobs. The city of Seoul started it as a pilot project in July 2020 and is spreading it nationwide, but this has been eliminated in Seoul. Still, the ‘workers’ at Nodeul Song Factory gather every week to sing. The reason the 76-page songbook costs 38,000 won is to raise publicity and raise funds for the continuation of this song factory.

Maria the painter with Down syndrome, was able to complete her college education thanks to the great efforts of her parents, but she was unable to find a job and because of the prejudiced gaze towards her, she suffered from gaze obsession and schizophrenia. She was healed with her painting and socializing with others. She received a lot of love for ‘Our Blues’.

The writer hopes the new songs will continue to be heard at the somewhat noisy but wonderful’ Song Factory in the glass building behind Horse Chestnut Park in Seoul. You don't have to be a genius. We await the day when the songs created together by our neighbors and citizens, the severely disabled and the developmentally disabled, will be loved like the drama, 'Our Blues'.

World's Lowest Birthrate

Diagnosis of the Times of the Catholic Peace Weekly by a Catholic University professor gives the readers an interesting look at our Korean birth rate.

Our country's low birth rate is unprecedented in world history. In 2022, the total fertility rate (the average number of births a woman is expected to give birth to during her childbearing period) was 0.78, and predictions are made that it may collapse to 0.7 in 2023. The New York Times diagnosed that Korea's ultra-low birth rate was a result of a population decline greater than that of Europe during the  Black Death.

If this diagnosis is correct, our country’s ultra-low birth rate phenomenon is a disaster. Korea's total fertility rate entered the 1-point range (1.74) for the first time in 1984 and collapsed to the 1-point level in 2018 (0.98). In 2003, low birth rates began to emerge as a social agenda in our society. In 2002, the total fertility rate was the lowest in the world, recording 1.17. Since then, our society has dealt with the birth rate issue as a social agenda for over 20 years. As a result, a large budget was invested that was previously unimaginable. However, Korea's budget investment remains at the bottom, ranking 31st out of 38 OECD countries as of 2022. At this point, it can be said that our country's low birth rate measures have failed, despite efforts made over the past 20 years.

Various diagnoses were raised regarding this ‘failure’. One of them is that women's avoidance of childbirth is believed to be at the root of the failure. They argue that we need to create policies and a social atmosphere that encourages women to give birth. Examples include restricting women's participation in the labor market or providing incentives to women who have given birth. The idea that childbirth can be encouraged is at the root of the recent anecdote in which the chairman of a certain company offered 100 million won per child to employees who gave birth. However, this one-time provision alone cannot solve the low birth rate problem. Because the problem of low birth rates is not this simple. 

The low birth rate problem cannot be solved with money alone.

To look back on past ‘failures’ and find solutions, the low birth rate problem must be viewed as the result of people’s rational choices based on cost calculation. In other words, the low birth rate problem is not due to people's wrong actions, but the result of people's rational choices to survive. People believe that to adapt and live in Korean society, they cannot get married, and even if they do get married, it is foolish to have children. 

When we view the ultra-low birth rate problem as a rational choice of people and a natural phenomenon, the low birth is not solved simply with money. Policies of various government ministries must be actively implemented under long-term plans with changes in the overall educational system including the cost of private education for children, cutthroat competition and long working hours, lack of cultural infrastructure, and expensive housing costs. However, it seems impossible to expect this from the current government. This is because the current government's family policy is mainly limited to raising the existing benefit level for childbirth and childcare. The basic birth income and housing support measures proposed by the opposition Democratic Party are somewhat advanced from existing policies. However, it is not known whether these alone will solve the low birth rate problem.

Church Interest in Climate Change-

 A member of the Catholic Climate Action Steering Committee gives the readers of the Catholic Times some thoughts on Climate Change and what we can do.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a specialized agency of the United Nations, announced that human influence is the cause of climate change in 2023 and that carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has reached its highest level in the past 2 million years. In addition, it was announced that a 1.5°C rise in global temperature has been advanced from the previously predicted period of 2023 to 2052 to the near future, 2021 to 2040, making short-term response important. We are entering an era of global boiling, not global warming.

In a global climate crisis, the present government is going backward. The target for the share of renewable energy generation, which is important in the transition from fossil fuel energy, was lowered from 30.2% to 21.8% by the previous government. In addition, among this year's budget increases and decreases, the project with the largest budget reduction in the 'Industrial Small and Medium Business Energy sector' was the 'Renewable Energy New Industry Revitalization Program', which decreased by a whopping 463 billion won (-40.3% compared to 2023).

What about the Church? Last year, Pope Francis announced the apostolic exhortation “Praise God” (Laudate Deum) targeting the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28). Through this recommendation, the COP28 General Assembly called for an effective and binding energy transition centered on renewable energy and a binding policy agreement for the elimination of fossil fuels. However, as a result of the COP28 conference, a decisive plan for reducing important greenhouse gas emissions was missing. It focuses only on reducing coal power generation, rather than a phased reduction, and omits reductions in major emission sources such as oil and gas due to the influence of oil-producing countries.

It appears that Pope Francis is working alone to respond to the climate crisis in the Catholic Church. Of course, since the publication of the encyclical “Laudato Si’,” the “Laudato Si Movement,” a climate movement group of the church in solidarity with Korean Catholic Climate Action, has been active.  However, the movement of local churches appears to be minimal. 

In 2020, the Korean Church also presented practical methods to protect our common home, Earth, by announcing a special pastoral letter, ‘Before Our Crying Mother Earth’, and practical guidelines following the 7-year journey of ‘Laudato Si’. However, except for a few dioceses, that have declared carbon neutrality, news of efforts and actions to respond to the climate crisis are rare.

There was a general meeting of Korean Catholic Climate Action not long ago. At the meeting, activists read the 10 oriented values of the ‘Laudato Si’ movement and shared how they felt called to the climate movement. In an era of global boiling, we seek hope by sharing the 10 values of the ‘Laudato Si’ movement to respond to the climate crisis in local churches.

1. Grounded in faith. 2. Committed to spiritual transformation. 3. Caring for one another. 4. Being Prophetic. 5. Taking an integral approach. 6. Cultivating unity in diversity. 7. Being in the  Church and the world. 8. Building Bridges. 9. Embracing contemplation in action. 10. Living in hope. 

"I ask everyone to accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home and to help make it more beautiful because that commitment has to do with our personal dignity and highest values"(Praise God paragraph 69).

The Cardinal and Theologial Virtues

 

The catechism defines virtue as a “habitual and firm disposition to do good” (1833).  They are the building blocks for Christian moral living.

Both in the East and West we have the Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Justice, Courage and Moderation. (the word  cardinal goes back to the Latin adjective cardinalis, which meant 'serving as a hinge'.The root of this word is the noun cardo, meaning hinge of a door permitting its opening and closing. 

They are considered natural moral virtues and have a history that goes back to the Greek and Roman Philosophers and also appear in the Catholic Bible in the Book of Wisdom. The Stoics considered these the road to happiness.

In the old Chinese Culture connected with Confucianism, we have the maxim: The brave general is not as good as the wise general, and the wise general is not as good as the virtuous general. They have added in modern times, a lucky general is better than the three of them but here we have the misunderstanding of virtue which may be the result of humor but a more serious misunderstanding of virtue.

In the Book of Proverbs, we are reminded that "Better an equable man than a hero, a man master of himself than one who takes a city" (16:32).

 A  priest in the Catholic Times gives us some thoughts on these virtues that come from one's own efforts.

 We hear often the saying that heaven helps those who help themselves. To gain these Cardinal  Virtues that lead to Christ, we must give up our obsession with worldly things. If the wise men had not dared to give up everything they had for the true meaning of life, they would not have followed the star. If you don't grow in the Cardinal Virtues you won't feel the attraction of the Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. 

 The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. (1813)

 The wise men from the East had these cardinal virtues allowing them to see the star in the sky that led them to the Savior. The star in the sky were the Theological Virtues.

 The Cardinal Virtues are the basis of all virtues that humans should pursue and which depend on our efforts. They provide the true meaning and direction of life. 

 "The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man's faculties for participation in the divine nature: for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity." Catechism of the Catholic Church (1812).

 

 

 

 

Offline and Online Church

The Catholic Times in its featured article gives the readers a pastoral observation of the church since the past-corona era.

The “Korean Catholic Church COVID-19 Pandemic Pastoral White Paper” published on January 31st by the Korea Catholic Pastoral Research Institute of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference states that the pandemic has affected Korean society and the church. 

‘Pastoral Outlook in the Post-Corona Era’, contains contributions from experts in eight fields, including society, religion, medicine, religious orders, liturgy, youth/young adults, ecology, theology, and pastoral care. Focusing on the fields of religion, liturgy, theology, and pastoral care, we reflect on the reality of the church community that has gone through the pandemic and forecast the church's pastoral care in the future.

‘The impact of COVID-19 on our lives and faith’ included in the pastoral white paper are data that provide a glimpse into the reality and immediate tasks of the Church. One priest introduced the salient features of the survey results and said: "In the journey of secularization, religion has been reduced to an element of culture, for people faith is taking a lower priority than economic life, health, and various existential issues." The importance of faith and religious life in the life of a believer is not that great.

A pastor who wrote a pastoral paper in the liturgical field with the title ‘Our life and faith about liturgical life after COVID-19’, also said: "Even if I don’t attend Sunday Mass or participate in devotional group activities, there is no substitute for that in my life. There is a lot to do." This was a problem revealed in the survey.

What problems have become more evident due to the pandemic and how can we solve them? “The time ahead should not be limited to resolving the problems that have arisen, but should be a time to newly recognize the problems within us that have been highlighted again by COVID-19 and seek alternatives.”  

"We must remember that COVID-19 has asked the fundamental question of faith, ‘Why'?   Those of us who have been living only worrying about ‘How'? should not worry only about applications and methods according to changes and trends in the world. Rather, ‘why’ we must live our faith and ‘why’ our faith is important?" 

"The purpose and direction of faith must be found especially in Baptism and the Eucharist. Considering social changes where face-to-face and non-face-to-face methods coexist, it is important to experience the presence of God in the same space and at the same time." 

COVID-19 has clearly shown the limitations within the church, it has been suggested that an accurate diagnosis and analysis of the reality and phenomenon of the church should be made and that public discourse should be formed toward change and renewal.

“The survey results show that the people, regardless of whether they are believers or not, believe that the church should strengthen its social publicness. Based on a strong change in consciousness that the church must make efforts to lower the church’s threshold and widen its doors.”  

In an age of secularization, paradoxically, expectations for religion still remain. People hope that religion will awaken the importance of mental and spiritual values through its public role and become a source of alternative values.

Along with the reflection that the localism of the church could fall into crisis as the non-face-to-face culture spreads, there was also a suggestion that the possibility of changing into a hybrid church that utilizes online and offline simultaneously was reviewed. There is a possibility that the combination of offline and online will become common. Focusing on the face-to-face liturgy, education, and care for faith maturity in a non-face-to-face manner should be complementary, not a replacement.

Another participant also said: Considering the continued aging and reduced mobility of believers who are currently active participants, face-to-face meetings continue but— A hybrid church that actively accepts and utilizes online methods, which are also the communication method of future generations in addition to offline methods will expand the reach of Church.