In recent years, education and the philosophy on which it should be grounded has been discussed repeatedly. The Catholic Church has shown a great interest in the need for a new pattern in educating our children, and has begun this in many of its institutions. The results of our present educational programs have educated for the society in which we live: education to get ahead, get a good job and make a lot of money. However, this has to be for a select few, and the many others are left with a feeling of being losers, and many of those who succeed lack the humanity we need in a happy and mature society.
A priest, in the diocesan bulletin, writes about the need to revamp the way we teach catechism to our children. The problems in our Sunday School programs are not what we see in the secondary educational system, but their problems are influencing the way the parents and children see religious education. Most of the students in the 12 years of primary and secondary education have not read the complete Bible. Do they really have a Catholic world view, Catholic values? In his opinion, there are very few. And bluntly states that it has been a repetition of what they learned in preparation for First Communion. The Reading of the Bible is not of course all that is necessary for a Catholic, but with a program in our catechism classes, he stresses, that doesn't have this goal is missing something important.
This may have been the unexpressed goal for decades in the teaching of our children, and yet we have failed. He puts the blame on the lack of vision by those involved in the education of the children: parents, teachers and clergy.
He feels that the parents do not see the need for a holistic approach to education, and do not consider the teaching of the catechism as equal to what they are getting in their educational programs in schools. He mentions 'The Duke of Edinburgh's Award' program. He feels that some of these principles should find a place in our catechism programs: non-competitive, available to all, voluntary, flexibility, balanced programs, progression, record of achievement, value of progress, marathon not a sprint and enjoyable.
Parents have to see a need for the education of the whole person and not see education as a means of succeeding in society. This is a big order and the reason why a change in our catechism programs will not be successful until parents see education in a new way. Holistic Education is of the head, the heart and the body. Nature, community and humanitarian values are important. However, in the society that we have made parents will see this approach as beautiful and noble, but not what the competitive society that we have made wants or needs. Consequently, parents will continue to feel without the academic rigor their children will not find employment and have a hard time adjusting to our society. That is the dilemma of parents: to educate for happiness or for worldly success. A hard decision to make, but shouldn't be for a Christian.
What are Catholics saying about the Church in their daily lives? What do the Catholics find enjoyable about their lives? In order to have the answers to these and similar questions, we need a way of listening to what Catholics are saying, and a good way is the new media; simply put, going to the Internet. These are the words of a priest who is an authority in the study of media, and writes in the Catholic Times on the new media.
One of the research groups in the United States reports that during 2013 those who visited Pope Francis' Twitter account, 84 percent reacted favorably to what they read. Indirectly, he says, we know there are people who in their daily lives are interested in what the Church is saying and are happy with the leader of the Catholic Church.
Important as it is to have a theological blue print of what is happening, likewise, necessary is to know what people are saying and feeling about the goings-on in the Church. With this information, we are able to prepare the nourishment and make it more digestible. It is precisely this need that will make it easier for the Church to convey its inexhaustible treasures in a way persons will be open to receiving them. This requires a need to know where to listen and to examine what is being said. The traditional media: radio, television, newspapers and the like are communicating news; their interest is not recording what people are saying but to explain and circulate information. It is here that the SNS (Social Networking Service) is of value.
From the SNS, we learn how people relate to things religious, what they find helpful and what gives them vitality; the way they relate to Jesus and how they experience him in their lives. We learn what they expect from the Church. These are all very important answers needed to understand what the Church has to do to address the problems people have in society.With the new media, we hear the voices of the people and their witnessing within the Church and become acquainted with what they feel and need for living the spiritual life.
The new media as with all of life, there is a need to discern what is of value and what is not. Since the voices are many, it requires patience and good judgement to determine what is of help and what isn't. There are still many who use the new media without any desire to inform: negative, disparaging, and participate in less than human ways. This can be seen in some of the responses to the Pope's Twitter account. Since most of the responses are positive, we are thankful, but that is the price we pay for a free Internet. The criminal use of the Internet is illegal and when done authorities are notified and legal steps are taken, but there is a lot between the very bad and the very good that is of little worth.
A chaplain of a prison community writes about his experiences for a pastoral bulletin. The community is a very interesting one, he says, for the officers are elected by the community and are taken from the members with the heaviest sentences: it is only these members the community will follow. The president is the one who has a life sentence.
On Layman's Sunday, the prisoner president of the Catholic community gave the sermon, and his topic was the Ten Commandments. No problem with the first three, when he arrived at the fourth commandment, there was a change. He asked the congregation: "Who has obeyed their parents?" He asked them to raise their hands; nobody did. Since we are all in this place, he said, we have not been obedient.
When he began talking about the 5th commandment, he mentioned this was not easy, for as everybody knew he was in prison because of a killing. The priest lowered his head and kept himself from laughing. Why in the world would he pick such a topic? He couldn't understand. From the fourth to the tenth, in one way or another, they were the reason they were in prison: lack of filial piety, murder, fraud, sexual crime, theft, crimes against families, etc.... They did not raise their heads during the sermon nor did the priest, but the reasons were different. Those in the congregation didn't raise their heads because of shame, the priest looking at them was overcome with compassion as if the commandments were only for them and in no way related to himself and others. In his thoughts, he wondered: Were the commandments only for these prisoners? He really never considered himself a sinner. Although we continually say before God, we are all sinners. He has not committed any serious sins so for him the thought of confession was not welcomed.
Compared to them, he asks, is he a just person while the prisoners are sinners? Was he not like the Pharisee in the temple praying to God? He was embarrassed that his standard of judgement on what was sinful were the written laws of the country.
Time spent in faith sharing and discussing passages of Scripture with the prisoners, he sees their resolve not to sin again. At this time he appreciates why Jesus seemed to enjoy the company of the tax collectors and sinners.
When the prisoners are released the parting greeting is: "Let us not see each other here again." Discharged from prison they are not going out to a welcoming world. They will have to overcome the scornful looks of many. Society will look on them as outcasts and shunned. When they fall into sin again they will hear: "It is what we expected." Is it because people knew they would sin again that they shunned them? Is it not rather because they were shunned, they turned to crime?
Discussions on the tragedy surrounding the sinking of the Sewol Ferry continues with prayers, condolences and diagnosis. Writing in a pastoral bulletin a priest explains Heinrich's law:1:29:300. The theory says for every serious injury, there are 29 minor accidents that precede, and cause minor injuries and 300 accidents that precede these minor accidents with no injuries. Looking at all the facts surrounding the sinking of the ferry it was just a matter of time before we had this disaster take place according to the priest. We are given many signals that we choose to ignore but there comes a time when our eyes are opened.
There is no reason to quibble about the truth of Heinrich's law, for our common sense would give us plenty of reasons to believe that cause and effect are operative when we deal with catastrophes. The familiar proverb: 'A stitch in time saves nine' and 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' are saying the same thing in different ways. Korean society has been hearing of the corruption that has been uncovered in the aftermath of the accident and wants to see some changes made. The President has in her message to the nation vowed to take some very serious steps to prevent future problems.
In a society in which money is all important, the big corporations and business enterprises consider that when they do well the smaller enterprises and the society at large will benefit with the 'trickle-down effect' of their success. With this understanding more than persons and their dignity what is important is money and ways to make more of it.
The
writer lists different problems that we have in society when money
becomes all important to the disadvantage of the persons involved. In
one case, workers who were recently fired from one of the big companies, 25
of the workers and members of their families have died or committed
suicide. There are many accidents and diseases that workers suffer on the job, and
are overlooked by the companies.
The numbers of suicides in Korea are the highest among the developed countries. The numbers of the young who have thought of killing themselves is also the highest among the developed countries. There is a need to set some new priorities and values for our society.
Many in society see a need to change our standards and ethics. or we are asking for more problems in the future. Money does influence the way we think and what we choose to see. The culture that material success has nurtured influences all of us. Pope Francis says it well in Evangelii Gaudium: "One cause of this situation is found in our relationship with money, since we calmly accept its dominion over ourselves and our societies. The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption" (#55).
Recently, in one of the daily papers, a foreign visiting professor has been quoted as saying Koreans have a dual personality. He is considered a world authority within the medical community, and told the foreigner who was replacing him what his image of Koreans was. A priest writing for a pastoral bulletin uses this article to speak about a very important issue in society and the Church, and quotes the words of the professor.
"Koreans are very friendly. However, if you think that is their personality you would be mistaken. They are excessively kind to the powerful and the famous but to those who are weak, and those they consider weaker than themselves, they can be surprisingly arrogant and proud. When in a restaurant, the way they treat the help, the higher their place on the social scale the ruder they are. Humanely speaking I don't want to associate with them."
We all have the dignity of our humanity and should respect this in all whom we meet. However, rather than accepting all as equals we see the power and the wealth. A person's wealth and place in society are what is considered important. In this kind of society, there are many who feel inferior and lack joy. Even those who are flawless have a difficult time within this society.
Within the Church, we also have clerics who enjoy the company of the wealthy and hear often that the poor are having difficulty in coming out to the church. These priests who associate with the wealthy are not in any way rejecting the poor, but the lack of concern for the poor, and the associating with the rich is sending a message to them that hurts and alienates.
In Europe, we have the case in France and Italy where during the industrial revolution, the workers were not a concern for the Church, and because of the alienation they left, while in the United States, there was a concern, and we did not lose them like in Europe.
We have the example of Jesus, who associated with all the different segments of society and was criticized for this by the leaders. We need to stay close to the poor for when the poor no longer find a place within the Church it means the Church has distanced itself from Jesus.
Tragedies bring out the best and the worst from those involved. The columnist in the Catholic Times, in the View from the Ark, reminds us of this in a revisit to a topic that he admits has been given a great deal of space in the media. And yet he wants to visit the topic again with a great deal of sensitivity for it was a devastating blow to Korean society.
The Sewol ferry was not the first disaster Koreans experienced. In the past there was the criticism and proposals for the future. But they had little effect on the way things were done. This situation has demoralized the citizens and many see little hope for the future and remain pessimistic.
Great anger was felt at what happened. The behavior of those connected to the accident that continued to make the news was hard to accept as the actions of fellow human beings. "How could people have acted in that way?" In urgent circumstances our true self comes to the fore. The columnist makes note of the ugliness of what was seen in the behavior of those involved in the sinking of the ferry.
This disaster came at a time when we are asked to make a decision to be optimistic or pessimistic towards the world and its people, despair or have hope, be skeptical or believe. We need to take sides. The way reported, it was easy to be dragged along to lose hope and become skeptical in hoping for change. The columnist compares what we heard on the disaster as a peeling off the many layers of an onion, only to find something harder to accept than what came before, fostering more anger.
He does see the need to make known what happened and why, but at the same time not to take away hope that we should have for a better tomorrow. Where are we to find this hope for a better tomorrow? This hope is to be found in our brothers and sisters. This is where we will see the change. We will never be free from accidents, but we can hope that those involved will act like human beings.
Change is a possibility. All we have to do is look at the actions of many of those involved with the disaster. We had a women, member of the crew, who gave her life jacket to one of the passengers and remained with the passengers. We have a school teacher despite danger staying with the students, a student who returned to the ferry to be with his classmates. The families of those who died who pleaded: "Don't be sorry for us," and gave all their compensation money for scholarships.The many who worked without any fanfare doing the difficult tasks that came with the disaster, and the many citizens who felt the loss as if their own.
He concludes his words by telling us that we are to see the truth of hope in these examples of humanity at its best. Better to keep our gaze on persons who have given us hope than on those who have disappointed us. They are the ones that give us hope for the future.
The poet farmer in two recent articles in the Catholic Times tells us of a farmer who is now in his nineties and wants to make the island of Jeju into an organic farming center. He began a group that espouses correct farming methods: not using pesticides and chemical fertilizers: farming that respects nature and humans.
Our country, he says has asked the farmers for many decades, to increase productivity by using pesticides and chemical fertilizers. There are many who did not listen. Fortunately, the government has changed and is now actively favoring the organic farmers' movement.
In order to learn more about organic farming the poet along with the old farmer went to Cuba some years ago to learn about their methods. When Russia was no longer able to help Cuba and the embargo on trade to the country made the importing of fertilizers and pesticides difficult there was a change to organic farming out of need. They began to rely on natural farming methods and with great success.
Pesticides are horrible. There are those that say it is no problem because it disappears in the air. Some say when you spray the small plants it will dissipate as they grow. Is that the case? he asks. When the pesticides go into the air where do they go? Where does the pesticide go that enters the earth? Rain and snow will bring it to the paddies and the dry farming areas, from there it goes to the rivers and the water we drink.
The farmers knowing how bad the pesticides are, he says, don't eat their produce that they send to the cities.They are produced for the cities. There are few farmers who will eat produce that has been recklessly sprayed with pesticides.City dwellers have to start changing in what they buy. They have to buy produce that has not been sprayed with harmful pesticides. There are all kinds of problems that are connected with the use of pesticides. The government has banned many pesticides, and one of the beneficial results is the number of those ingesting the pesticides, as a means of suicide, has significantly decreased in Korea. This is just one of the many good results of a ban on environmentally harmful pesticides.
The Catholic Farmers Association, along with many other groups are working diligently to make the produce of our organic farms available to our cities. Results are satisfying to both the farmers and the city dwellers.
