At a meeting with Korean laity on October 5, the prefect of the
Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples expressed gratitude for
the tremendous growth of the Church in South Korea over the past five
decades and warned against three threats, the Fides news agency
reported.
In 1949, 1.1% of Koreans were Catholics, and there were 81 priests; just
after the Second Vatican Council, 2.5% of South Korea was Catholic.
Today, 10.3% of the nation is Catholic, and there are over 4,600 priests
and 1,500 seminarians.
In the midst of this growth, Cardinal Fernando Filoni warned against
secularism and materialism.
“If fidelity to the message of Christ and
our convicted testimony are lacking, either at the personal or at the
social level, the Church waters down her proper proclamation and her
witness, thus rendering a terrible service to God and to mankind,” he
said during an October 5 meeting in Seoul.
“The temptation to live a
comfortable faith implies a certain sense of being satisfied with the
results reached, and consequently, reduces or loses the vision even of
missionary and pastoral commitment.”
“An additional danger, in a country with a high propensity for
technology, is represented by the tendency toward bureaucratization and
hyper-efficiency, almost depersonalizing, or depersonalizing oneself,
according to a kind of bureaucratic-administrative style, almost as if
the Church were a for-profit company or a holy NGO [non-governmental
organization], as Pope Francis has warned us about many times.”
“A further problem, it seems to me, consists of the tendency, according
to a Confucian way of thinking, to break apart the composite reality of
the Church, where the virtues of fraternity and ecclesial communion do
not prevail, but rather, distinction, rank, and age,” Cardinal Filoni
added.
The prelate is visiting South Korea to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the erection of the Diocese of Suwon.