Monday, February 17, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
St. Paul Miki and the Rise of Japan’s Hidden Christians
From http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/st-paul-miki-and-the-rise-of-japans-hidden-christians
On February 5, 1597, by order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the regent and de facto military ruler of Japan, 26 Christians were crucified in the port town of Nagasaki. Six Franciscan missionaries (from Spain, Mexico, and India), three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese laymen comprised the group, known as the First Martyrs of Japan and commemorated liturgically as St. Paul Miki and companions.
What historians have called the “Christian century” in Japan began with the arrival of St. Francis Xavier’s Jesuit missionary expedition in 1549. By the time Xavier left Japan in 1552, he had made perhaps three thousand Japanese converts. The Jesuits found the greatest success in those parts of Japan where they converted the feudal lord (daimyo). By 1582, there were about 150,000 Japanese Catholics. The Jesuits, whose material support came from the Portuguese trading presence in Japan, would be joined in 1593 by Franciscans from Spain. The Franciscan effort focused less on Japan’s feudal elites and more on the poor and the sick. Although lamentable rivalries between the two orders sometimes hindered missionaries’ success, the number of Japanese Christians grew to about 300,000 in 1614 (out of a population of 15 to 20 million).
Meanwhile, trouble was brewing, because Christianity had come to a Japan that was in the midst of political and military turmoil. The most powerful daimyo were in the process of creating a new centralized dictatorship amid the decline and fall of the Ashikaga shogunate. Disunity meant vulnerability to western imperialism, and the warlords who reunified Japan can hardly be blamed for seeing the missionaries as agents of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. Despite missionaries’ assertions of independence from foreign politics and commerce, a backlash began in 1587. Regent Hideyoshi issued a sweeping anti-Christian edict that year, ordering all missionaries to leave the islands on pain of death, all missionary property to be confiscated, and all Japanese converts to recant. Oddly enough, these edicts went almost completely unenforced, but Christians were on warning. A decade later, a heavy-laden galleon, guided by a loud-mouthed pilot, ran aground on a Japanese island. The pilot’s bravado sparked rumors of a planned Spanish invasion involving missionary collusion, and Hideyoshi responded by ordering the 1597 crucifixions. The regent strategically chose to make an example at Nagasaki, one of the great centers of Japanese Catholicism.
Among those 26 First Martyrs was a promising Jesuit seminarian named Paulo Miki, who would have become the first native-born Japanese priest. Miki’s vocation was the fruit of a Christian upbringing and the long-term Jesuit efforts to raise up a Japanese priesthood. (As it turned out, the first native Japanese priests would not be ordained until 1601.) From his cross, Miki preached a “sermon” that ended in these words:
As I come to this supreme moment of my life, I am sure none of you would suppose I want to deceive you. And so I tell you plainly: there is no way to be saved except the Christian way. My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves.
The Japanese soldiers dispatched each martyr with a spear thrust and left the bodies hanging for nine months.
Nevertheless, this was not to be the end of the missions. Hideyoshi died the next year, and the Church in Japan grew at an astounding rate, sometimes reaching 25,000 baptisms in a year. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the new military dictator who founded the long-lived Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) permitted this growth for much of his reign, even though he issued low-level anti-Christian edicts starting in 1601.
The great persecution of Japanese Catholics came with Ieyasu’s 1614 anti-Christian edict, which gave the following justification for banning Christianity:
The Christian band have come to Japan not only sending their merchant vessels to exchange commodities, but also long to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow right doctrine, so they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land. Japan is the country of the gods and Buddha…. The principles of benevolence and right doing are held to be of prime importance…. Quickly cast out the evil law and spread our true Law more and more.
Historian Samuel Hugh Moffett, among others, has noted the deliberate opposition here between Christianity and the three great religions of Japan: “Buddhism, Shinto (‘the gods’), and Confucianism (‘benevolence and right doing’).” Another scholar, Neil S. Fujita, has suggested that these three comprised a strong native religion of “Japanism,” which Christianity could not either accommodate or ultimately supplant. The missionaries themselves saw Buddhist monks as chief among their detractors, and advisors to the shoguns busily promoted the stabilizing influence of Confucianism. In any event, the next few decades of persecution were devastating, and the Christian flock was cut in half by a combination of apostasy and martyrdom.
Out of this tragic end to Japan’s Christian century, there arose the remarkable phenomenon of clandestine Catholic communities. For over two hundred years, the “hidden Christians” (Kakure Kirishitan) survived underground, without priests and without contact with the wider Church. During the time of the missions, a perpetual shortage of priests led missionaries to train a lay Japanese leadership for service as preachers, catechists, visitors of the poor and sick, and even occasional ministers of baptism. Thus, as Japanese Catholics lost their priests in the persecution, they fell back on that well-developed lay leadership.
The structure and degree of catechesis in these communities varied a great deal by locality, but most remained faithful to a core set of beliefs and practices, especially baptism. They prayed the Our Father in Japanese and the Hail Mary in broken Latin. To avoid detection, they used devotional objects—such as statues of Madonna and child—that could be easily taken for Buddhist ones.
In 1865, after Japan had reopened itself to western influence, a newly arrived French priest named Fr. Bernard-Thadée Petitjean was overjoyed to find a large Christian community in Nagasaki. Japanese law only allowed him to minister to foreigners, but the hidden Christians came to him secretly, saying, “The heart of all of us here is the same as yours.” Through the centuries, they had handed down criteria for recognizing the Church when it reappeared: the priests would be celibate, and they would obey “the great chief of the Kingdom of Rome.” Despite the non-Christian elements that had slipped into hidden Christian practice and belief in some areas, the reuniting Christians had preserved much of the faith intact, from the celebration of Christian feast days (especially Christmas, the Lenten season, and Easter) to the rudiments of Trinitarian theology. Two to three thousand Christians from the Nagasaki area soon officially reunited themselves to the Catholic Church, and their numbers would swell as hidden Christians around the islands revealed themselves.
As we celebrate the heroic example of the Japanese martyrs and of the hidden Christians, we can also take Japan’s Catholic history as a cautionary tale. We are sometimes tempted to quote Tertullian (“the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”) and thus dismiss the terrible effects of anti-Christian state action. The great Japanese persecutions halved the body of the faithful. When the hidden Christians were rediscovered in the nineteenth century, about half of them chose not to reunite with the Catholic Church. This was not the first time that persecution had led to large-scale apostasy and schism. The last major Roman persecution, under Emperor Diocletian in the early fourth century, showed that many Christians were too weak to face death, even for Christ. After Christians received official toleration, the Donatists went into schism over questions of how to treat repentant apostates. When King Henry VIII began his sixteenth-century schism in England, only one bishop, St. John Fisher, remained steadfast against him. In short, the persecution of Christians works, and we cannot presume that we ourselves would go joyfully to our deaths. Nor ought we let ourselves become complacent about the plight of suffering Christians worldwide in our own day. For, as beautiful as is the story of the hidden Christians, what might have been the history of a Japan wherein these Catholics never had to hide? All that said, let us pray today that the blood of the First Japanese Martyrs may be the seed of a vigorous, growing Church in Japan!
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Samurai's cause for beatification forwarded to Rome
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Takayama Ukon, a 16th-century samurai who faced exile rather than giving up his Catholic faith, is being considered for sainthood because of his fidelity to Christ and his Church.
The Japanese bishops’ conference submitted a 400-page application for Takayama’s beatification to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints last year.
Takayama’s life is an example of “a great fidelity to the Christian vocation, persevering despite all difficulties,” Fr. Anton Witwer, general postulator of the Society of Jesus, told CNA Jan. 30.
Takayama was born in 1552, three years after the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Japan. When he was 12, his father became Catholic, and Ukon was baptized as Justo by the Jesuit Fr. Gaspare di Lella.
The Takayama were daimyo: members of the class of ruling feudal lords who ranked second to the shogun in medieval and early modern Japan. Daimyo held vast estates and were entitled to raise armies and hire samurai.
Given their respected position, the Takayama were able to support missionary activities in Japan, serving as protectors of Japanese Christians and of the Jesuit missionaries. According to Fr. Witwer, they influenced the conversion of tens of thousands of Japanese.
In 1587, when Takayama was 35, Japan’s chancellor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, began a persecution of Christians, expelling missionaries and encouraging Japanese Catholics to forsake their faith.
While many daimyo chose to leave the Catholic faith, Takayama and his father chose instead to forsake their estates and honors to maintain the faith.
Fr. Witwer recounted that Takayama “did not want to fight against other Christians, and this led him to live a poor life, because when a samurai does not obey his ‘chief,’ he loses everything he has.”
Takayama “chose poverty to be faithful to the Christian life. During subsequent years, he lived under the protection of aristocratic friends, and was able to live a more dignified life.”
“Many people tried to convince Takayama to abjure his faith,” Fr. Witwer explained, “because he was a noble, and a known person, and because they did not want to kill a Japanese; the persecutors founded easier killing Christian foreigners, while it was difficult to kill Japanese Christians.”
In 1597, Toyotomi ordered the execution of 26 Catholics, both foreigners and native Japanese; they were crucified Feb. 5.
Despite the threat of such a fate, Takayama refused to leave the Church, choosing to live a Christian until his death. When the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu definitively banned Christianity in 1614, Takayama went into exile.
He led a group of 300 Catholics to the Philippines, where they settled in Manila. Arriving in December, he died Feb. 4, having been weakened by persecution in Japan.
“Since Takayama died in exile because of the weakness caused by the maltreatments he suffered in his homeland,” Fr. Witwer explained, "the process for beatification is that of a martyr.”
If Takayama is accepted as a martyr, he will not need a miracle before being beatified.
The current efforts to canonize Takayama are the third such attempt, following one shortly after his death, and one in the 1960s.
Takayama Ukon, a 16th-century samurai who faced exile rather than giving up his Catholic faith, is being considered for sainthood because of his fidelity to Christ and his Church.
The Japanese bishops’ conference submitted a 400-page application for Takayama’s beatification to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints last year.
Takayama’s life is an example of “a great fidelity to the Christian vocation, persevering despite all difficulties,” Fr. Anton Witwer, general postulator of the Society of Jesus, told CNA Jan. 30.
Takayama was born in 1552, three years after the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Japan. When he was 12, his father became Catholic, and Ukon was baptized as Justo by the Jesuit Fr. Gaspare di Lella.
The Takayama were daimyo: members of the class of ruling feudal lords who ranked second to the shogun in medieval and early modern Japan. Daimyo held vast estates and were entitled to raise armies and hire samurai.
Given their respected position, the Takayama were able to support missionary activities in Japan, serving as protectors of Japanese Christians and of the Jesuit missionaries. According to Fr. Witwer, they influenced the conversion of tens of thousands of Japanese.
In 1587, when Takayama was 35, Japan’s chancellor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, began a persecution of Christians, expelling missionaries and encouraging Japanese Catholics to forsake their faith.
While many daimyo chose to leave the Catholic faith, Takayama and his father chose instead to forsake their estates and honors to maintain the faith.
Fr. Witwer recounted that Takayama “did not want to fight against other Christians, and this led him to live a poor life, because when a samurai does not obey his ‘chief,’ he loses everything he has.”
Takayama “chose poverty to be faithful to the Christian life. During subsequent years, he lived under the protection of aristocratic friends, and was able to live a more dignified life.”
“Many people tried to convince Takayama to abjure his faith,” Fr. Witwer explained, “because he was a noble, and a known person, and because they did not want to kill a Japanese; the persecutors founded easier killing Christian foreigners, while it was difficult to kill Japanese Christians.”
In 1597, Toyotomi ordered the execution of 26 Catholics, both foreigners and native Japanese; they were crucified Feb. 5.
Despite the threat of such a fate, Takayama refused to leave the Church, choosing to live a Christian until his death. When the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu definitively banned Christianity in 1614, Takayama went into exile.
He led a group of 300 Catholics to the Philippines, where they settled in Manila. Arriving in December, he died Feb. 4, having been weakened by persecution in Japan.
“Since Takayama died in exile because of the weakness caused by the maltreatments he suffered in his homeland,” Fr. Witwer explained, "the process for beatification is that of a martyr.”
If Takayama is accepted as a martyr, he will not need a miracle before being beatified.
The current efforts to canonize Takayama are the third such attempt, following one shortly after his death, and one in the 1960s.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Pope John Paul ll relic stolen from chapel in Italy
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25911872
Italian police are hunting for a stolen holy relic that contains the blood of Pope John Paul ll.
It appears to have been taken during the burglary of a small chapel that was a place of special significance to the late Pope.
The church of San Pietro della Ienca lies in an isolated spot in the mountains of central Abruzzo region.
Over the weekend, thieves broke some protective iron bars and forced their way in through a window.
They left the collection box, but took a crucifix and the priceless relic, which contains a piece of gauze once soaked in the blood of the late Pope - one of only three such relics in the world.
Members of the local cultural association supporting the chapel are distraught.
"We are very displeased by the theft. We have no idea of who could have done it. The police are carrying out a search," said Franca Corrieri, a member of the association, speaking to the BBC.
The Pope used to escape the pressures of life in the Vatican by coming to the mountains.
"This is an area that John Paul II visited often, with his secretary and not too many bodyguards. We feel very connected to him. After his death, his secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, came and told us that he wanted this church to become a sanctuary," said Ms Corrieri.
Dozens of police officers are now searching the area with sniffer dogs.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Irish Government to reopen Vatican Embassy
From http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0121/499194-vatican-embassy/
The Government is to re-open an embassy in the Vatican more than two years after it was closed for cost reasons.
It will be a scaled-back "one-person" mission focusing on development aid and it will be located in new premises in the Vatican.
There was controversy in late 2011 when the Government decided to close the mission on cost grounds.
The Italian embassy was then transferred to the Villa Spada, which had housed the Vatican embassy.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the return of the embassy in the Vatican will "enable Ireland to engage directly with the leadership of Pope Francis on the issues of poverty eradication, hunger and human rights".
Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Charles Brown said: "I am very pleased by the announcement of the Irish Government regarding the reopening of a residential Embassy of Ireland to the Holy See, and the appointment of a resident Ambassador. "
He said: "It is an excellent decision for the people of Ireland and will be beneficial to Ireland in making its distinctive and important contribution to international relations."
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin welcomed the announcement and said the Vatican is an important place of "interchange on questions of global development".
He said that a resident Irish ambassador will enhance relations between the Vatican and Ireland.
Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade Pat Breen said the embassy will provide a vital link between Ireland and the Vatican and the move was a "sensible resolution" to the issue.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Monday, January 13, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Five Marks of a Catholic Family
From http://catholicexchange.com/five-marks-catholic-family
The Church cares deeply how we treat one another especially in our marriages and families. The problem is that it can be difficult to translate theory into practice. You shouldn’t have to have a degree in theology to know how to be a Catholic couple or family. There needs to be some kind of articulation of the Catholic vision of marriage and family life that even the simplest, poorest-formed Catholic (or non-Catholic for that matter) can point to as the ideal Catholic couples and parents should be striving for.
In my response to the survey for the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, I suggest 5 Marks of a Catholic Family. I don’t suggest that this is a complete list. There may be some glaring omissions. The point is to get a conversation going about what a practical guide to Catholic family life (as articulated by the relevant post-conciliar documents on family life) should look like. Here are my modest suggestions.
2. Catholic Families Pray Together–As “domestic church” we recognize that we cannot love one another as God loves us unless we ask him, together, to teach us what this means. Therefore, in addition to our individual prayer life, we gather together as husband and wife and also as a family for prayer each day. In that time, we praise and thank God for his blessings, we ask him for the grace to love each other and the world better, we seek his will for our lives, and we pray for both our needs and the needs of the Family of God. We recognize in the words of Servant of God, Fr. Patrick Peyton, “the family that prays together, stays together.”
3. Catholic Families are Called to Intimacy–Tertullian once proclaimed, “The world says, ‘Look at those Christians, see how they love one another!’” The Christian life is first and foremost a call to intimate communion. We recognize that families are “Schools of Love.” Therefore, as a family, we constantly challenge ourselves to seek to discover new ways to be even more open with and loving to each other as husband and wife, parents and children. We recognize that children are to be a visible sign of the loving union between husband and wife and we work to make this a reality in our homes both in the quality of our relationships and in our openness to life. Further, we cultivate marriage and parenting practices that make each member of the family–husband and wife, parents and children– willingly open up to one another and seek to freely give themselves to create a deeper “community of love” and practice all the virtues that help us live life as a gift.
4. Catholic Families Put Family First–We recognize that– because our family relationships are the primary vehicle God uses to perfect us and challenge us to become everything we were created to be–family life, itself, is the most important activity. To protect the intimacy we are called to cultivate as the domestic church, we recognize the importance of regular family rituals and we are intentional about creating and protecting those activities such as family dinner, family prayer and worship, a game night and/or “family day”, and regular time for one-on-one communication and relationship-building. We hold these activities as sacred rituals of the domestic church and value them over all other activities that would seek to compete with them.
5. The Catholic Family is a Witness and Sign–God wants to change the world through our families. We allow ourselves to be part of his plan for changing the world in two ways. First, by striving to exhibit– in every way possible in our daily interactions as husband and wife, parents and children– the love and intimacy that every human heart longs for. We must show the world that this love is a possible dream worth striving for. Second, we will carry this love outside the home by serving the world-at-large in a manner that is responsible and respectful of the integrity of the family unit. We do this by committing ourselves and our families to the intentional practice of all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy within the home and outside of it. To this end, the ways we, as a family, are trying to fulfill this responsibility will be a regular topic of conversation in our homes.
As I said above, I have no doubt that this may be an incomplete list. Nevertheless, I believe it represents the kind of effort that must be undertaken by the Church to evangelize families. People do not know how to be a family anymore much less what it means to be a “Catholic family.” I think the faithful deserve concrete, practical recommendations (drawn from the relevant documents) that can serve as an effective launching point for delving more deeply into the Catholic vision of marriage and family life.
I looked at the challenge of articulating the uniquely Catholic vision of family life that is spelled out in documents like Gaudium et Spes, Familiaris Consortio,
and other post-conciliar documents. In other words, “Should Catholic
families be different in some way from other families (other than in the
ways we pray and the rules we follow) and, if so, what does that look
like?”
Most Catholics, I think would answer “yes, we should be different.”
But at the same time, most Catholics, I think, would be hard-pressed to
say whether or not the particular secular or Protestant experts they
were relying on for advice on how to build their marriage or raise their
kids were actually articulating ideas that were consistent with a
Catholic view of marriage and family life. In my experience, most
Catholics think that as long as they say Catholic prayers in their home
and go to Church on Sunday, they can rely on whatever sources they
choose to tell them how to treat each other. But nothing could be
further from the truth.The Church cares deeply how we treat one another especially in our marriages and families. The problem is that it can be difficult to translate theory into practice. You shouldn’t have to have a degree in theology to know how to be a Catholic couple or family. There needs to be some kind of articulation of the Catholic vision of marriage and family life that even the simplest, poorest-formed Catholic (or non-Catholic for that matter) can point to as the ideal Catholic couples and parents should be striving for.
In my response to the survey for the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, I suggest 5 Marks of a Catholic Family. I don’t suggest that this is a complete list. There may be some glaring omissions. The point is to get a conversation going about what a practical guide to Catholic family life (as articulated by the relevant post-conciliar documents on family life) should look like. Here are my modest suggestions.
The Five “Marks” of a Catholic Family
1. Catholic Families Worship Together–The Eucharist is the source of our love and the sign of the intimacy to which we are called. Therefore, as a family, we attend Sunday mass weekly (and Holy Days and at other times as we are able) and we actively participate in parish life–our spiritual home away from home. We also recognize that as fallen persons, we struggle to be the loving community we are called to be. Therefore, as a family, we regularly go to confession (recommended: monthly) to seek God’s healing and grace so we might better live his vision of love in our lives and homes.2. Catholic Families Pray Together–As “domestic church” we recognize that we cannot love one another as God loves us unless we ask him, together, to teach us what this means. Therefore, in addition to our individual prayer life, we gather together as husband and wife and also as a family for prayer each day. In that time, we praise and thank God for his blessings, we ask him for the grace to love each other and the world better, we seek his will for our lives, and we pray for both our needs and the needs of the Family of God. We recognize in the words of Servant of God, Fr. Patrick Peyton, “the family that prays together, stays together.”
3. Catholic Families are Called to Intimacy–Tertullian once proclaimed, “The world says, ‘Look at those Christians, see how they love one another!’” The Christian life is first and foremost a call to intimate communion. We recognize that families are “Schools of Love.” Therefore, as a family, we constantly challenge ourselves to seek to discover new ways to be even more open with and loving to each other as husband and wife, parents and children. We recognize that children are to be a visible sign of the loving union between husband and wife and we work to make this a reality in our homes both in the quality of our relationships and in our openness to life. Further, we cultivate marriage and parenting practices that make each member of the family–husband and wife, parents and children– willingly open up to one another and seek to freely give themselves to create a deeper “community of love” and practice all the virtues that help us live life as a gift.
4. Catholic Families Put Family First–We recognize that– because our family relationships are the primary vehicle God uses to perfect us and challenge us to become everything we were created to be–family life, itself, is the most important activity. To protect the intimacy we are called to cultivate as the domestic church, we recognize the importance of regular family rituals and we are intentional about creating and protecting those activities such as family dinner, family prayer and worship, a game night and/or “family day”, and regular time for one-on-one communication and relationship-building. We hold these activities as sacred rituals of the domestic church and value them over all other activities that would seek to compete with them.
5. The Catholic Family is a Witness and Sign–God wants to change the world through our families. We allow ourselves to be part of his plan for changing the world in two ways. First, by striving to exhibit– in every way possible in our daily interactions as husband and wife, parents and children– the love and intimacy that every human heart longs for. We must show the world that this love is a possible dream worth striving for. Second, we will carry this love outside the home by serving the world-at-large in a manner that is responsible and respectful of the integrity of the family unit. We do this by committing ourselves and our families to the intentional practice of all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy within the home and outside of it. To this end, the ways we, as a family, are trying to fulfill this responsibility will be a regular topic of conversation in our homes.
As I said above, I have no doubt that this may be an incomplete list. Nevertheless, I believe it represents the kind of effort that must be undertaken by the Church to evangelize families. People do not know how to be a family anymore much less what it means to be a “Catholic family.” I think the faithful deserve concrete, practical recommendations (drawn from the relevant documents) that can serve as an effective launching point for delving more deeply into the Catholic vision of marriage and family life.
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