Double Standard Used for Life

 

The number of households living with pets is increasing. Walking the streets, you often meet people with their pets. As relationships with animals become more familiar, social resentment against animal abuse and abandonment is growing. So begins a column in the Catholic Peace Weekly by a bioethicist.

Thanks to this social atmosphere, the Ministry of Justice recently stepped up efforts to protect and respect animals as living creatures and improve their legal status. Article 98-2 of the Civil Code decided to include the clause: "Animal is not an object." If the amendment passes the National Assembly, animals will be recognized for their legal status. The level of punishment for animal abuse is expected to be strengthened.

When she heard the news, she was greatly moved. "Why can't we grant the same rights to the fetus when we improve the legal status of animals to protect and respect them as living things." The double standard of capitulation in one and accepting aborting the fetus in the other is incomprehensible.

Animals are increasingly being treated like humans; sad that fetuses are increasingly treated worse than animals. It seems appropriate to protect animals by strengthening punishment for abusing and abandoning them. But why is the standard silent about the pain a fetus suffers in the abortion process?
 
We often meet people passionately in favor of abortion, claiming to be advocates of animal rights. Among them are those who want to amend the law to allow abortion in all circumstances until just before birth. It is natural to give charity to animals suffering from injury, disability, or abuse, but it is argued that abortions should be allowed to humans with disabilities until just before childbirth.

The dogma of abortion rights can obscure human reason and strengthen the human mind to the extent that those who sympathize with animal suffering may lack compassion for fetuses suffering from violence and extreme pain in abortion. How should we look at this double standard of protecting animals from suffering as creatures and legally respecting their status?

Animals feel pain because of their abilities of perception, so the moral grounds to protect life. So what about the pain of the fetus? During the abortion process, the fetus is torn to pieces and removed.  
Seeing that the government is taking the lead in promoting a double standard in the respect and protection of life, she is saddened by the imbalance and confusion of moral thinking that children and each of us will face in the future. "But it is also a question, in a certain sense, of the "moral conscience" of society: in a way it too is responsible, not only because it tolerates or fosters behavior contrary to life, but also because it encourages the "culture of death", creating and consolidating actual "structures of sin" which go against life" (Gospel of Life #24).
 
She sincerely hopes the government will raise the status of the fetus that like the animals they will become objects in civil law.

What To Do When 'Misunderstood'

 A counselor and priest spiritual psychologist gives the readers of the Catholic Peace Weekly some thoughts on our failure to understand ourselves and what to do.

As a college student, Matthew agonized over the question: "What is the most meaningful way to live in the world?" As a result, he decided to delay his military enlistment and leave for a year of missionary service on a small island in the Philippines. He wanted to practice a life of sacrifice and service to those who needed him the most. Matthew helped the missionaries and taught English and Korean to the children. Thinking that poverty would eventually be passed down because children were not educated, Matthew taught them with sincerity and love.

The day before returning home, Matthew spent a great deal of the night making small packages of gifts for the children. It was difficult to leave the children he had grown attached to and prepared a snack gift with each child's name on it. The next day, seen off at the airport by the children he handed out the farewell gifts. He tried to hide his sadness because he was worried that the airport would become a sea of tears due to the children's crying.

However, the children, who accepted the gifts, rushed out of the airport with cheers, as arrows shot out from a bow. Matthew was shocked.  Anxious about how to say goodbye to the children from the night before,  he was upset, disappointed with the children leaving the airport without saying goodbye. Thinking only of his unappreciated love for the children he looked at the time spent in volunteer service with the children as empty and was filled with anger.

After returning home, Matthew could not understand why his service to the children had turned into anger and betrayal, not joy and a feeling of satisfaction. Moreover, fearing he would be unable to live a life of sacrifice and service bothered him because of his anger towards the children. Realizing that he had a problem, Matthew asked for counseling.

Matthew was a faithful young man who wanted to live a life of service and sacrifice for others. He had a young man's idealism, a beautiful heart that showed him what a true believer should be like through a life of sacrifice and service. However, Matthew did not know that there was a human need hidden in the practice of love for others that he did not recognize. It was most likely a desire for 'love and recognition'. But Matthew couldn't admit it. Shouldn't children at least express their gratitude for the time he spent with them.? Is it really wrong to expect this much courtesy? He grew even angrier at the fact that he was being dismissed as if he had done volunteer work because he wanted to receive love and recognition.

But before he knew it, Matthew was shedding tears of repentance, feeling truly sorry for the children. This is because a different perspective arose on why children darted off without saying hello. In the meantime, children have met many older brothers and sisters who have volunteered from Korea. The pain of parting for children would have been more unbearable than any other emotion. Children would not have wanted to be hurt by the pain of parting, and the only emotional remedy they could choose was to avoid the reality of parting? Wouldn't he try not to suffer from the feelings of parting by forcing himself to act as if he was not sad?
 

Matthew lamented that he had never thought of such a thing. And he felt so sorry for the children when he realized that the reason was because of his own desire. He left the counseling room with a pledge to seek forgiveness from the children and visit them again. We need to understand ourselves first if someone doesn't understand us. Confucius' words come to mind. "Isn't it a virtuous person who doesn't feel angry when others don't recognize him?" 

Let's Go Beyond a Cease Fire!

The Catholic Times Weekly in its 'Nation, Reconciliation, Unity' column, a priest  representative of  the Bishop's  standing committee gives us his thoughts on  the need to go beyond the Cease Fire situation.

On October 19, 1950, about 300,000 Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River, bringing the Korean War to a new phase.  Kim Il-sung,  boasted a "fast decision," overlooked the U.S. military's willingness to intervene,  MacArthur's wish to ignore China's willingness to participate in the war went awry. The Korean War  turned into a war that neither side could easily win.

In fact, discussions on a ceasefire began early on, even though both sides were confident of winning. After Chinese military intervention, U.N. efforts to support the ceasefire began in earnest. On December 14, 1950, a three-nation negotiation group plan (India, Iran, Canada) was passed, and in March 1951, a ceasefire resolution was introduced again to the U.N and was adopted.
 

Pressure from international public opinion that didn't want a another world war was present and anti-war public opinion in the U.S. wanted a  ceasefire on the Korean Peninsula. A Gallup survey in October 1950 showed that 65 percent of the Americans thought they should defend South Korea, but the prolonged war also changed public opinion. In January 1951, 66 percent of Americans wanted to withdraw from Korea, and 49 percent said the intervention in the Korean War was a mistake.

In fact, the ceasefire talks were held in the form of proposals from the Soviet Union and agreed to by the U.S. The Soviet Union proposed an armistice negotiation on June 23, 1951 through the United Nations broadcast of Malik the representative of the Soviet Union  and the ceasefire talks began in Kaesong on July 10. They lasted for over two years and countless lives were unfortunately lost during the talks with those in power  insisting on their claims.

However, the Armistice Agreement, which was signed on July 27, 1953, was simply a Military Armistice Agreement to stop fighting. The commander-in-chief of the United Nations Army, the commander-in-chief of the Korean People's Army and the commander of the Chinese People's Support Army, who were involved in the talks at the time, suggested a "political meeting" within three months in an agreement to resolve the Korean Peninsula peacefully. However, political negotiations to end the war did not go well afterwards. All those who started the war, and even those who negotiated the suspension of the war, have disappeared from the stage of history, but we have yet to begin full-fledged efforts to resolve this "old conflict."

The Catholic Church's social doctrine asserts that war is "never an appropriate way to solve problems that arise between countries, never have, and never will." "There is nothing to lose in peace. But war loses everything (see paragraph 497 of the simplified social doctrine), remembering the teachings of the Church and praying more earnestly for the true peace of the land.

Changing the Concept of Peace

Peace a word found in almost every culture, depending on the person speaking, has different meanings.  In the Kyeongyang Magazine, a scholar in peace studies gives us his thoughts on the meaning of Peace and how to achieve it.

In the military and connected fields: if you want peace, prepare for war are words often heard. The longing for peace is often expressed as national security, and the reason peace between countries is often so fragile.

When we have silence and compliance from orders in an undemocratic situation we often look upon it as peace. When we talk about peace of mind and continue with problems of inequality and racial conflict, structurally present and violent, we are closing our eyes to reality.

In the era of imperialism, war scholars believed war was a political maneuver and that power came from the gun barrel. This has passed on to this day.

There was a time when the intelligence agency had posters in subways and bus stations with the text: "When all seems peaceful is when things are dangerous." No one saw any problem with the wording. This way of thinking was around for some time. The resistance to this way of thinking was the beginning of a new understanding.

John Galtung the father of peace studies often mentioned the distinction between 'negative peace' and 'positive peace', direct violence and structural violence. Negative peace is the absence of violence.  Positive peace is working for the restoration of relationships, building social structures that work towards the resolution of conflict. Galtung didn't want the meaning of negative peace used. He also distinguished between direct violence and structural violence.
 
Passive Peace is only intended in the short term to prevent war and violence.  But for long-term results, it is open to all kinds of problems and violence continues. Galtung consequently was for the nonuse of the passive concept of peace. Active Peace requires we get rid of structures of confrontation, national rivalries, contention for domination, structures of inequality, structures that have to be examined. This thinking was hailed in many quarters.
 
Peace-making capabilities are required. He divides them into five steps.
 
1) Continue with capabilities to lay the foundation for peace and its increase.

2) See the many sides of the conflict, analyze and have the capability to manage it.

3) Each nation and citizen needs the capability to be leaders and show this by their words and actions.

4) We need a consistent strategy: dialogue, citizen peace structures, workshops to solve problems, prevent discrimination, and the capability to cope with the aftereffects of conflict.
 
5) Able to deal with the conflicts that will arise, and using this capacity to prevent permanent conflicts and achieve changes in the structures and systems.  

Peacemaking requires we understand prudently the violence and conflicts of daily life and can endure them. We use them to expand our thinking and spread peace and its value—management of conflict and the fostering of capabilities in dealing with frustrations. Need women, young people, and minorities to enter into the discussion and our need to continue the study. We work to make the system less violent and more manageable and regulated.

In the middle of the last century, we began to see a movement away from passive peace to active peace, from direct violence to a concern for structural and cultural violence, We saw a movement away from national security and the armament race, to peacemaking.

Briefly, we can say peacemaking has made an appearance, nations and various citizens groups have fostered non-violent capabilities and have worked to spread this within society. In conclusion, peace is not to imagine or assume others are enemies, but to move forward in looking for ways to live together. This is peace.

On Caring for Our Common Home the Earth

 

In the Catholic Times Weekly, the director of Our Theological Research Institute gives her ideas on the Corona 19 pandemic and Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si, "On care for our common home."

 

Expectations that we would be able to take off our masks and return to our usual lives when vaccinations started was shattered, and due to the spread of the 4th level of the pandemic, social distancing is being applied again around the metropolitan areas of Korea.  

 

The COVID-19 virus, which continues to mutate and does not want to go away, is scary, but this summer is even more suffocating due to the sweltering heat. In addition to the corona-related daily notifications, the heatwave disaster warning text is also sounded every day, so we have grown used to living with disaster situations. 

 

In recent years, the average temperature has risen to become a subtropical climate, and the phenomenon of abnormal climates in which torrential rains suddenly pour from clear skies has increased significantly. Environmental disasters are taking place not only in Korea but also around the world. In North America, wildfires and droughts are followed by a murderous heatwave. In Western Europe, an exceptionally torrential downpour caused great floods, and in the frozen land of Siberia, large-scale fires frequently occur.  

 

Scientists say that this abnormal climate is a warning from the earth, a phenomenon that is caused by the aggravation of global warming due to a surge in greenhouse gas emissions. When the average temperature of the earth rises by 2 degrees, the so-called 'tipping point' (the point where things that were in balance suddenly and explosively fluctuate), a turning point in which the global temperature rises out of control, is reached, and inevitably changing climate could push parts of the earth into irreversible change. 

According to the current trend, the time will come when the global temperature will rise by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 or earlier. 

  

Both viruses and abnormal climates are the results of man's reckless destruction of nature, and there are growing calls to realize the seriousness of the climate crisis and environmental problems and change our lives. 

 

However, possessing a lot is still considered a virtue, and life is successful only when we climb higher, do more, and succeed— this world order that encourages our desires infinitely seems well entrenched.  

 

Many people agree that religion is now the only thing that can lead people to reflect on their greedy life and lead them to temperance and offer alternative values in the face of the mighty power of capital. 

 

In 2015, Pope Francis published 'Laudato Si' an ecological encyclical, urging us to practice ecological conversion and make concrete changes in our lifestyle, taking good care of our common home, the earth. Catholic churches around the world are preparing or starting Laudato Si’s 7-Year Journey. The Korean church also started this seven-year journey through the opening Mass on May 24. 

 

Not only the church but also society responded. A documentary was aired on KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) 'Environmental Special' recently, where 100 people read the rules of 'Laudato Si' together as a climate change special. As she watched the broadcast repeatedly asking the question: "What kind of world do we want to pass on to our descendants and children who are growing up now?" The 'bread of life to be shared was the ecological gospel. 

 

After the broadcast, at an internet bookstore, 'Laudato Si' ranked No. 1 in weekly sales of religious books. Interestingly, women in their 40s, their 50s, and their 30s ranked 1st to 3rd who bought the most books, and especially women in their 40s accounted for 30% of the total purchasers. Some of the nuns at the forefront of Catholic Climate Action activities come to mind and the hopeless feelings of mothers that cannot pass on to their children the kind of world they would like. 

 

As a woman in her 40s, the writer, reread the Encyclical of Laudato Si this summer, reflecting on her call to respond to the cry of the earth and be a leading worker in caring for the poor who suffer from environmental disasters.

 

Hearing the Voice of the Earth

Today, every breeze, blade of grass, branch of the tree seems to be taking a deep breath as they pause for a moment. At the same time, they are looking over countless microorganisms in the bosom of the earth in this continuous cycle of life. So begins the column on listening to the sounds from the earth column of the Catholic Peace Weekly. The religious sister columnist is the gardener for the House of Ecological Spirituality.
 
Every year in early spring, they cook a pot of rice and go to the back mountain. Make delicious rice as if you were preparing a ritual meal, put it in an onion net, put it on the soil, and cover it with fallen leaves. If you go after a week or ten days, you will see white flowers in the onion nets. These flowers are the microorganisms and fungi that save our land. If we help them become friendly with our soil, all living things will live healthily. Countless microbes live in a handful of soil.
 
We need to do something to make sure these microbes are well established in the soil. Not spraying pesticides on the earth. Microorganisms cannot live in the soil sprayed with pesticides. Plants cannot grow properly in soil without microorganisms. So the farmers fertilize the land.
 
Fertilizers are growth promoters, earth absorbing more and better than it can absorb originally, you get a good-looking crop. However, the earth on which the  plant rests is broken and becomes hard soil. Farmers plow the fields with tractors to farm on hard soil that even a hoe cannot enter. In the past, she wondered how farmers would have done that when they farmed only with cows and plows, but she thinks that it would have been easier since you could use less labor for the soil was soft and alive.
 
The soil where microorganisms live does not have to be cultivated with a tractor, the soil is soft because the earth and microorganisms are creating space to breathe. Microbes and roots provide each other with what they need to live. Isn't that amazing? The fact that microbes invisible to our eyes cooperate with the roots to save the earth and other life…. She sees traces of God in this great cycle. Because this little microcosmic life reminds us again of the participation of God in our life— Koinonia.
 
Humans too quickly forgot these traces of God that nature remembers. Pesticides, fertilizers, and tractors prove it. And this is her feeling on the reality she has described. When we can see the soil properly and are conscious of the countless living matter that lives in it our eyes are opened to a new reality. It is like the disciples at Emmaus. We know that our current structure of thinking does not allow us to see reality as it is although we pretend to know.
 
The 'way to life is not the way for me to live alone, but the way for other lives to live'. Thich Nhat Hanh the Buddhist monk says that what we need to do to save our world: "Is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying." Only when we hear the cry of the earth within us will true healing be possible in our time.

What do we need to remember in the cycle of life? What choices should we make in this cycle?  Let's stop and listen to the countless sounds of life on the earth. It is really new the act of putting a pot of rice on the ground in the early spring in the back mountain like approaching an altar today. Come to think of it, the earth is the altar of the universe, and the farmer is the priest of the earth. I pray that many people will regain the preciousness of this work. Listening to the cry of the earth today....

When Enough is Not Enough

 

In the Catholic Peace Weekly a priest, spiritual psychologist, in his weekly column On Various Subjects treats the subject of "possession and use".

The human desire to possess seems boundless. A strange era to have a company that is selling land on the moon and Mars. The company, Lunar Embassy began on the say-so of one man, in 1980. More than 6 million have paid money for acreage on the moon and the planets.

 

They say they own the moon for fun, but they purchased land as an investment, preparing ahead for the age of space development.

Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants is a legendary U.S. baseball player who has set a single-season best of (73)home runs and a career-best of (762). 

 

When he hit his 73rd home run ball in San Francisco in 2001 it was caught by Alex Popov with a glove but because the crowd rushed towards him the ball fell from his glove and fell into the hands of Patrick Hayashi. Popov was so upset that he filed a lawsuit claiming that he was the owner of the ball. As a result, it was admitted that he had caught the ball first for 0.6 seconds, so he earned half of the ownership. The pair decided to sell the ball and share their income, the home run ball was sold for $450,000 Popov had to pay legal fees, with a loss of about $240,000.

Watching the rise in apartment prices in Seoul day by day, he wonders about the extent of people's desire to possess land or material goods. The root of possessiveness is the desire for survival. To survive, humans must possess the goods they need. However, when this possession arises to satisfy a need other than survival, we may suffer from greed. Even though we know that the cause of suffering is desire, why can't we get rid of it? Is possession the only way to satisfy human desires? 

  

When he goes for a walk in nature, he sometimes thinks: "Don't all these beautiful mountains, fields and valleys have owners? But what are they doing now?" The reason why this question comes to mind is dialog from a movie he watched a long time ago that impressed him and often comes to mind. The film features a scene in which a father, who is about to die, and his beloved daughter come out to the front yard of a hospital and have a conversation while looking out at the distant mountains. 

 

"My dear daughter, I have been climbing that mountain every day, and I have lived my life with that mountain all my life. Now I have to say goodbye to the mountain I lived with."  

 

"Father, there must be many unnamed landowners of that mountain you have been climbing. You have been climbing someone else’s mountain and think as if it belongs to you." 

 

"Yeah, that mountain must have owners. But how many times do you think they've been up and down that mountain in their lifetime? Perhaps they went there once or twice to see the location and shape of the mountain? After that, they may have lived with a satisfied expression for the rest of their lives, looking at the land documents they owned. But every day, I have lived by drinking the fresh air provided by the trees in the mountains and the freshwater of the valley. Nature received me unconditionally and healed me without any conditions when I entered the mountain after being hurt by people and the world. If it wasn't for that mountain, I probably wouldn't have lived this long. So who did the mountain really belong to? Wasn't I a happier person because of the mountain, feeling the benefits of nature with all my body, than those who owned that mountain only through documents?” 

Wouldn't it be great if you could change the desire to possess into a heart that enjoys? Rather than buying moon land, would it not be better to feel the mysteries of the universe once more while admiring the soft moonlight. Rather than finding and purchasing the things of a player you like, you are able to enjoy the player's game to the fullest. Instead of buying a mountain would it not be better to make the body and mind healthy by hiking. It seems this is a time when we should be able to see the beauty of flowers without the desire to want to pluck the flowers and bring them home.