Korean Priest in France

The relationship of the Catholic Church of Korea with France goes back to the time France was sending their priests to Korea to do missionary work. Recently, Korea received the visit of the ordinary from the diocese of Le Mans who has, together with the diocese of Andong, promised to be in a relationship of  solidarity and affection.

The 4th bishop of Korea was the martyr Saint Simeon Berneux, who was born in the diocese of Le Mans. The French Church years ago helped the Korean Church by sending us its priests; now is the time for the Church of Korea to help the Church in France.

This was written up in the  Peace Weekly, with an interview with the bishop of Le Mans and with an article on the first priest who will be working in the diocese, Fr.Lee Yeong-kil. While the ordinary was in Korea for his visit, Fr. Lee was his interpreter.

Fr, Lee had been sent to France for studies and received a doctorate from the Paris Catholic University. He is now pastor of a parish in the diocese of Le Mans. To his many parishioners interested in the Korean Church, he tells them:  "Koreans have a great interest in the Catholic Church. Their Catholics are very enthusiastic and try to live the life of faith.  Confucianism has also helped them have  respect for the  elderly. These are the strong points of Korean Catholicism. Now that God in his providence is guiding us in this relationship with France, isn't this what we can give the French Church?"

The Church of Europe is far ahead of the Korean Church in academics,  but when comparing the spirit of the times that is opposed to the Church and the small  percentage of those attending Mass, the Korean Church is far ahead of the European Church. Korean priests can help to change this situation, the columnist believes, by bringing some of the Korean enthusiasm to the French Church.

The big surprise to the bishop of Le Mans was seeing Koreans meeting in their villages to read and discuss the Scriptures. French Catholics, he said, do not read the Scriptures.

Fr. Lee says that from the time of the uprising in France of May 1968 (the largest wildcat strike in history, involving more than 10 million workers) the people have shown a coldness toward the Church. The protesters took to the street with placards: "We are against all  that are against."  A good interpretation would be: give us freedom to do what we want. Since the Church is against so many things, this was seen by  many as motivation to  turn their back on the Church.

In France, it is difficult to find any spiritual group meetings like the Legion of Mary, and village groups are not seen.  The few who go to Sunday Mass return immediately to their homes. French Catholics would number about  80 percent, but the majority don't practice their faith and don't know much about it.

Recently, Fr. Lee had a barbecue party with his Catholics, similar to what is done in Korea, and the response was enthusiastic. Our way of fellowship does appeal to the French, he says. We can learn the scholarly ways of the French, and the French can learn from our dynamism and vitality. We can both benefit from the exchange.

The Koreans, with their background in  the Yin-Yang philosophy of life, seem not to have trouble with many things that bother those in the West. Being against means that you are for something; and when you are for something, it means you  are against something. There are two sides to the one life we have to live.

"Facts" Are Not Always Facts

The Desk Column of the Catholic Times had an interesting understanding of Napoleon Bonaparte's stature, which is understood by most to have been short. Students who are short have looked to Napoleon to give them hope and confidence when competing with their taller peers. When hearing this was not the case, they tend to have doubts about other long-held beliefs.

The columnist gives two reasons for the misunderstanding. Those who were guarding Napoleon were the pick of the army and taller than normal. In comparison to them--and he was often in their company--he looked short. Secondly, after he was sent into exile to the island of St. Helena where he died, the report of the postmortem examination stated that he was 5.2 pied. Converted to standard English measurements, he was 167.6 cm (5' 6-1/2") which was slightly taller than the average Frenchman of that time.  When the English took pied to be their feet, they came up with 158.5 cm (slightly more than 5' 2") and the misunderstanding about Napoleon's height began.

What happened in the case of Napoleon is found in not a few cases in history. A fact of life Napoleon knew well--having manipulated facts throughout his career to further his own ambition--when he said, "History is a set of lies people have agreed upon." And these agreements about facts (when not outright lies) that are not facts often result from a trusting and unquestioning attitude about the validity of long-held beliefs.

The columnist then turns to the Four River Project and the protests of many religious groups to stop the government's plan to develop the rivers to ensure a better water supply. He sees this controversy as embodying the same kind of confusion that surrounds Napoleon's height. The  government sees the project as necessary for the economic health of the area, creating thousands of jobs and revitalizing the countryside along the four rivers.  This is illusory, says the columnist. It is not what is happening. And even members of the government, he says, are not seeing the practicality of the project, as was promised. 

Improving the quality of the water by improving the 'containers' is what is being said by the government. But they are not using, he says, our standards of water quality, which raises doubts about the other standards they are using.

The talk that the project will enhance the ecological life of the river basins and beautify the rivers is one-sided thinking and narrow-minded. Without backing their claim with proof, their talk doesn't deserve to be considered rational.

During Lent we are  trying to extend our vision, concludes the columnist.  Let us see how this lesson on the confusion and misunderstanding surrounding Napoleon's height can help us be more discerning and less gullible about the many subtle deceptions that are sometimes unwittingly passed along because they've been accepted for so long, and sometimes deliberately passed along because they serve someone's vested interests.

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Creativity in Pastoral Work With Youth

One of the dioceses in Korea has attempted a new approach to spreading the gospel among our young people.  Each of the six deaneries of the Suwon Diocese will set aside a parish for use by the youth of that deanery, offering them an opportunity to meet together in one parish with other young people from the deanery. 

An attempt will be made to make these 'youth parishes' as inviting as possible to the young, so they will have a place they will want to come to. Although the young people are welcomed, the priest responsible for the youth of the diocese said it is meant primarily for the many young people who have stopped going to church. They will have their own Mass, catechism and religion classes, service programs, clubs, cultural events and festivals to match their desires. Each parish will have their own specialties that fit the make up of the deanery to which they belong. And each youth parish will have their own youth council to draw up plans and implement them with the pastor, the assistant and parish sisters. Parishes that have good youth programs may have no need for this approach. But all will be free to participate or not.
 

The diocese has promised  to make this an auspicious start with financial help and whatever else is necessary for success. The experiment will be evaluated at Christmas next year. If successful the number of parishes involved will be increased at the 50th anniversary of the diocese.

The success of this dream will depend on how well the youth parishes implement the programs and motivate the young  people to attend.  No matter how good the  programs are, without  the cooperation of the parishes the experiment will not succeed. The bishop is in full support and is asking the priests of the diocese to do what they can to make this innovative outreach to our young people a success.

Attempts of this nature have been tried in many dioceses over the years with all kinds of programs and events, but with mixed results. Hopefully, this attempt will be successful and point the way to even greater success  in other dioceses in Korea.                                                                         

A Peek into the Life of a North Korean Refugee

Another vignette about the life of  North Korean women refugees living here in the South appeared in a column in the Peace Weekly by the Sister working with refugees in Incheon. Taking one of the women to a large market, she noted how everything surprised her, from the  size of the market to the number of products on the shelves.

The Sister stayed  close to her so she wouldn't lose her in the large crowd. The woman bought a 5kg bag of brown sugar. The Sister asked her why she bought so much; she laughed, telling  Sister it would be alright if she didn't  know.

But knowing the Sister's desire, she relented and said that it was to wash her face to make it smoother and more woman-like. She then sang a little North Korean ditty: "Womanhood is a flower/ a thrifty flower of the house/ an affectionate wife and sister/ without them an important part of life would be empty." The song uses an old word for a wife not used in the South, meaning "the sun of the house."

These refugees are thinking of those they left behind and are dreaming of being reunited with them some day. So they try  to save money in every way possible. They will walk instead of taking a bus. When they need to call Sister, they will often hang up after the first ring, not  wanting to run up the telephone bill and hoping the Sister will know who called and will return the call. 

Since they have no skills they work at odd jobs, such as packaging chocolates, assembling hand phones in their homes and in restaurants washing dishes. In trying to realize their dreams, they pay little attention to their health. And feeling sorry for the children left behind, they try to make up for it by buying for the children that manage to rejoin them, but too young to appreciate it, expensive clothes and hand phones.

Their life is full of intensity and warmth for the family, a part of life the South was accustomed to in the past. These women from the North are showing us the kind of life that once was the common experience of many in the South,  but now is fast disappearing.

Addiction to Internet Games

We revisit again the  problem of internet game addiction of the young. A professor emeritus in preventive medicine of the Catholic Medical School writes in the Culture of Life column in the Peace Weekly that the level of addiction is serious.

A survey made last year of 123,000 students from a 4th grade grammar school and a 1st year middle school found about the same level of addiction in the grammar school as it did in the middle school-- over 5 percent. Another survey of students, age 9 to 19, found that 14.3 percent, or about 100,000, were addicted  and in need of therapy.

The effects of this frightful addiction are not limited to the excessive amount of time spent in gaming. The effects are also felt throughout society, as our young people, becoming languid and spiritless, withdraw from society. This addiction, like alcohol and drug abuse, can lead to mental and physical health problems and complete lose of self-restraint. The very young who take up internet gaming are even more susceptible to being harmed, and the prognosis less hopeful. And for some, depression and suicide are possible outcomes.                                                                                                                                                           Even though the facts are clear the government still views the problem of internet addiction as an individual problem. To promote the internet industry, they are willing  to accept this dysfunction. The Korean market for internet games is vast, and the foreign news media see this economic fact as not unrelated to the addiction. The income from the internet game industry this year is expected to increase by 17 percent. The professor wonders how many more problems are we going to have before the harm is seen as serious.

The evening shutdown of the games--promoted by a number of groups--from 12:00 midnight to 6:00 am is a help, the professor admits. But in the society we have made, simple regulations alone, he insists, are not going to remedy the situation--urgent problems need urgent remedies.
 

The Catholic Church, with its on-going interest in promoting the culture of life, should be especially interested in developing programs to wean our young people away from the lure of internet gaming, and its potential for harm, into pursuits that will benefit both the individual and the society. 



















    

A Lesson on how to Alienate People from the Church

A diocesan priest, professor at the Incheon Catholic University, writes in the Pastoral Bulletin for priests that one of the big issues confronting the Church in Korea is the large  number of tepid Christians. We also call them "on holiday Christians"  but by whatever name they're called, they have distanced themselves from the Church. Whether it's the weakening of their belief or someone in the Church they dislike or for some other reason, they find going to Church  a burden.

To blame this situation on selfish individualism or the materialistic society we are living in, the priest assures us this is not the proper perspective. In the last  years of the  20th century, many Europeans, he reminds us, still believed in God and in his goodness, but felt a growing dislike for the Church and a conviction that it was no longer relevant in today's world. He wonders if this  perspective would not be  a better way of describing the situation we are facing in the Church today.

The Church has become not a place of hearing the "happy news" but a place where those facing  difficulties and worn out by life have been given more and heavier difficulties to contend  with, without the necessary understanding. The Church, for a growing number of Catholics, has become not a place of rest but a place where they are considered sinners, treated coldly, a place of many words and much weariness. Let us put aside whether they are treated like  adults, he says. They are required unconditionally to obey their priests if they are to be considered good Catholics. Their emotional life often is  treated lightly, and when they are people with little money, power and honors, they often are disregarded and made to feel alienated. Is it any wonder, he says, that the Church has become a place where we cultivate tepids.

The Church should be, he says, like a mother, a spiritual oasis. A place where the mind finds rest: a place of religious experience, of sharing. A place where through sacrifice we become acquainted with grace. A place where we don't look for money or material things but happiness and freedom.

For those of us who believe in Christ, the Church should be a place where the cross is not an embarrassment but a sign of the resurrection and of our salvation. This world is the place we are to find liberation, to feel the great love of God and his providence. To give ourselves fully to the quest for fulfillment, we turn naturally to the Church. If the Church can change into this kind of refuge, then it is not only God that becomes believable and good but the Church as well.

Interview with Korean Ambassador to the Vatican

Korea's new ambassador to the Vatican, Han Hong-soon, appointed last year, gave his guarded opinion on a few subjects dealing with the Korean Catholic Church in an interview with the Dong-A-Ilbo.                                                  
The ambassador was the head  of the Catholic Lay Apostolic Council of Korea and knows the Church well from his many years in positions of authority. He was one of five members selected in 2008 to the Vatican's International Council on Financial Matters. Previous ambassadors were career diplomats, but his background is in academia, receiving his doctorate in economics from the Roman Gregorian University; he taught  economics for over 30 years in a Korean university. He did not look for the job, he said, and when it came, he suddenly felt like the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusulem for the last time.

Asked about the future of the Korean Church with the retirement of Cardinal Chong: there will be changes. The Cardinal had submitted his resignation before his 75th birthday as is required. (Cardinal Kim's resignation was accepted when he reached 76.) Cardinal Chong is now 80 years old and his resignation has still not been accepted. He is highly respected in Rome, said the ambassador, and in canon law few are his peers.

To the question what  did the Pope say about Korea when he presented his credentials, he answered that the Pope said that Korea has gone from a receiving Church to a giving one, and  a great deal is expected from such a large group of educated Catholics.

He was asked about the possibility of another cardinal for Korea. (Japan, which has only 500,000 Catholics, had  two  cardinals in years past.)  The ambassador mentioned that Cardinal Kim, on his visits to Rome, had asked for another cardinal, and that he also will when the occasion presents itself. Korea, he said, is entitled to another cardinal. 

The interviewer asked about the priests in the Catholic Peace and Justice Committee ,who were asking for the Cardinal's resignation. A position criticized  by many lay people. When asked what the Vatican thought about this issue, he said they were pleased with the way the Cardinal handled the situation.

The ambassador also discussed, off the record, some of the possible candidates who are in a position to follow Cardinal Chong, and when asked about one possible candidate, who is not on good terms with the Government, he had nothing to say.