ASIA/SOUTH KOREA - Laity Day Sunday 14 November to foster more involvement of laity as pastoral helpers and focus on the family

Friday, 12 November 2004

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Seoul (Fides Service) - “Embellishing the family and society” is the slogan chosen by the Catholic Church in Korea for Laity Day on Sunday 14 November. The Laity Commission led by a layman John Bosco Son Byeong-du and Fr. Francis Cheong Wol-gi, distributed information material to parishes all over the country encouraging the laity to help organise and promote the Day. The objective is to involve more lay men and women in pastoral activity and works of apostolate, especially pastoral for families and testimony within families. The Day is centred on the Family first cell of Christian life and the first place where the person is evangelised. Presenting the Day the Commission said: “We lay Catholics have a duty to bear witness to the Lord and proclaim his Gospel with the talents we have received in the front line of evangelisation”.
“In our day - the message continues - we face many challenges: anti-Christian culture, culture of death, negative aspects of religious pluralism of the post-modern era. We must face these challenge with courage, rediscovering the spirit of martyrdom of our forefathers in the faith”. Recently the Bishops of Korea said that the laity must strengthen their spirituality to respond to phenomena such as materialism, hedonism, secularisation, indifference to religious values, spread of religious cults and sects in Korean society. The Bishops also said that the family is not only the object of the Church’s pastoral concern, it is also an important subject of evangelisation.
Speaking about the family, the Laity Commission said “if the family is healthy, society is healthy. Let us make families schools of love and let us pray for the sanctification of families and the spread of a culture of life”.
This year the family is being given special attention by all the local Churches in Asia. And the last general assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences held in August reflected on the theme: “The Asian Family towards a Culture of Life”.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 12/11/2004 righe 37 parole 342)