Korean community concert in Singapore

I came across this video in the Nov 13 edition of CathNews Asia. It seems to be a trailer for a concert put up by the Korean community that gathers at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd. I’m not sure when the concert is, but I’ll find out.

There are about 1,000 Korean Catholics in the community. Weekend Masses in Korean are held about three to four times a month at the cathedral. Darren wrote a story about the community recently. You can find it here.

ADD Nov 19: The concert was held on Sep 19 this year. The aim of it was to show that Korean hymns can be sung like pop songs. There will be another concert in September next year.

Needed: Catholics with a missionary spirit

Today, my desktop died. It flickered a little last night, and then it died in the morning, while I was desperately trying to back up all my data. I’m currently using a laptop which I’m not so comfortable with. Guess it’s time I got comfortable.

I got this laptop about a year ago. Eleven months actually, since my anti-virus program just alerted me today that the one-year trial subscription will expire in a month. I had tried to make the switch from my desktop using Windows XP to this laptop using Windows Vista, but the resistance to change was too strong, not to mention that Vista is actually inferior to its predecessor especially in terms of user-friendliness. But now I have no choice but to use this laptop and its accompanying Windows Vista. It has become a necessity.

Last week, I interviewed Father Gregoire van Giang, MEP (photo), for our Year For Priests section. In every issue of CatholicNews since the Year For Priests started on Jun 19, we have had a feature on one priest or more. One writer suggested we feature Father Greg, a missionary priest, because of his fluency in a number of languages.

In the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour where he is parish priest, Father Greg celebrates Mass in Indonesian, Tagalog, and Mandarin. Having grown up in Cambodia and Vietnam, he also speaks those national languages. Being an MEP priest means that he also speaks French. MEP refers to the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris. In addition to English, he also speaks Bahnar, a Vietnamese dialect.

You can read the rest of his story in this weekend’s issue of CatholicNews.

One thing he said during our interview has left a deep impression on me. He said that he doesn’t learn languages for the fun of it. Rather, he learns them because he has to. He sees a need for it in his priestly ministry and therefore studies the language, daily practicing it until he masters it.

Today, I understood what he meant, because today, I have to learn to use Windows Vista. It has become a necessity.

In yesterday’s edition of ZENIT, there was an interesting article about the Church in Europe conducting a self-examination on its use of the Internet to reach out to non-Christians. You can read it here.

The last part of the article says that although there are more Catholics than Evangelicals in France, Evangelical websites encounter greater success than Catholic websites. I think the same is true in Singapore.

Part of the reason why the Catholic Church, at least in Singapore, is slow to pick up the use of the Internet in our ministry is because we still don’t see the need. We think that things are fine the way we have always been doing it, so why change? We have an attitude of “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. We are slow to embrace new technologies for a simple reason: no one likes to change.

It’s true for you, it’s true for me, and it’s true for the Church. We won’t change unless we see the need for it. We are not adventurous, which is perhaps why our archbishop constantly calls for us to be a missionary church. We don’t like to explore new territory and try new things.

Take, for example, a Jesuit missionary friend of mine who lives in India. When I visited him a few years ago, he stayed in a rural area next to a forest. A real forest, not the kind we have in Pulau Tekong. A real forest where every other night or so, a herd of wild elephants come out to feed on the crops grown by the farmers in his parish. Every month or so, an unfortunate villager gets killed by an elephant or some other wildlife. The week I was there, a villager lost his life after he was mauled by a tiger.

In the middle of these farmlands that stretch to the horizon is the two-storey Jesuit community house which is partially solar-powered. But the most amazing thing about it is that it has a wireless Internet connection. The Jesuits said it was necessary to switch to wireless technology because the villagers kept stealing the copper wires in their telephone poles.

Today, Father John Tigga is no longer at this mission. He has been posted to the front lines, to a place that is even more underdeveloped than his former mission. To get to some places in his parish, he has to cross mountains on foot because there are no roads there yet.

But you know what? He’s got a Facebook account and uses a mobile phone to connect to it. He says it’s costly, but he finds that the youth in his parish uses it, so he uses it too in order to connect with them, to relate to them better.

Perhaps our archbishop is right. Perhaps we do need to become a missionary church. Not merely one that goes for mission trips in overseas countries, but one with a missionary spirit to embrace new technologies for the sake of reaching out to and connecting with those who have never known Christ before.

It is something we cannot continue to ignore. It has become a necessity.

Long before your time…

She was the daughter of the first governor of Malacca. But rather than use her father’s name to achieve wealth and influence in the world, she chose to give it all up to follow Jesus.

Her name is Sister Tarcisius Leong. She was the young Asian to join the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM) in 1951, two years after FMDM missionaries came to Singapore in 1949. The Sisters had come to the region at a time before Malaya gained its independence, when Singapore and Malaysia was still united.

Sister Tarcisius’ father was Tun Leong Yew Koh, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare in the first Malayan Cabinet (1955), and later Minister for Justice in the subsequent Cabinet, both under the leadership of Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, the first Prime Minister of Malaya. He was one of several Chinese visionaries who were instrumental in the founding of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), which later became the Malaysian Chinese Association. He was the man who refused to accept a knighthood from the Queen of England, saying that he will only bow down before the sovereign king of an independent Malaya.

I would not have learned of this if a 90-year-old man had not volunteered the information to me.

Ho Weng Toh, a World War II veteran, recalled how in 1962 he once spent an entire night in the chapel of Mount Alvernia Hospital which was built by the FMDM Sisters in 1961. He was praying for wife who had complications with the delivery of his youngest son, David. In the morning, FMDM Sister Thomasina Sewell came to greet him with good news that both of them were well. It was Sister Thomasina who took care of David for the six months that the baby had to stay in the hospital.

“It was because of my son that I became ‘famous’,” said Mr Ho. Winkie, as Mr Ho is known by his close friends, fought as a bomber pilot in the China Air Force during World War II. He was the fifth Asian pilot to join Singapore Airlines (SIA), and trained SIA pilots for over 20 years.

“Come, you must meet her,” Winkie said to me as he called the white-haired Sister Tarciscius over. He introduced her to me, complete with full descriptions of her parentage. Sister Tarcisius merely waved away the honorifics. One would never have guessed that this white-haired lady was the offspring of a famous man, if not for the people who have known them for decades.

These old stories were retold and old memories revisited as the FMDM Sisters celebrated 60 years of their presence in Singapore at Church of the Holy Spirit on Oct 12. The rest of the story will be on the backpage of this weekend’s issue of CatholicNews. Look out for it!

Is ’sharing’ a Singaporean thing?

At a seminar earlier this year, I met an American journalist. We spoke briefly about cultural and language differences that people from different countries have. When we spoke about Singapore, he asked me, “What is it about Singaporeans and ’sharing’?” When you say ’share’, what you really mean is ’say’, isn’t it?”

Being a Singaporean, I never thought much about it, but yes, sharing is definitely a Singaporean term. I wonder how it came about. I don’t think there’s a definition of the word that matches how we use it.

What do you think: Is ’sharing’ a Singaporean thing?

Blessed are those who practice what they preach

The verdict is out. Ren Ci founder Ming Yi and his aide Raymond Yeung have been found guilty of $50,000 wrongfully taken from the charity, so says today’s Straits Times front page.

In the article, it reads that

The judge said that though Ming Yi claimed to have made many sacrifices for his “baby” – Ren Ci – these were undermined by his lavish lifestyle, which suggested that the sacrifices were not unduly great.

As I read this, what came to mind immediately was not Father Joachim Kang, who has already paid his dues (though some Catholics don’t seem to think he deserves a second chance and have publicly voiced it). What came to mind were Oakley sunglasses, platinum class credit cards, and swimming pools.

I recalled a conversation I once had with a Christian bookshop owner. He owned one of the biggest Christian bookshops in Singapore, and in our friendly conversation, this Catholic revealed to me his disillusionment with some of the priests in Singapore who were his customers. One, he said, wore a gold watch and regularly flashed his platinum credit card when purchasing items from his shop.

“Is it necessary for a priest to carry around a platinum credit card?” he asked me rhetorically. “Just a simple credit card will do. And why must he wear a gold watch to show off?”

On the other end of the scale, we had and still have frugal priests. I remember when Archbishop Gregory Yong passed away, Msgr Francis Lau who was his vicar general recalled his life of frugality. He remembered with fondness of the bishop who mended his own clothes, and drove an old car (whose battery sometimes couldn’t start) to meetings which including the Singapore president!

Msgr Lau himself is no less frugal and is really a humble man. Even though he was once vicar general to Archbishop Yong, he showed no unhappiness when he was assigned the position of the assistant rector of the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd. Some then had seen it as a “demotion” from his position as parish priest of Holy Cross. But when I spoke to him, obedience was foremost in his mind and he showed it through his actions.

I still remember the interview I had with him earlier this year. He was speaking about his inspiration for obedience which came from the Charge of the Light Brigade. “Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die”, he had said.

In his office is a computer that still has its 3 1/2 floppy disk drive installed. How long he has been using that computer, we can only guess. But why buy a new one if the old one can still be used? That’s probably something that we who change handphones every two years can learn from. (Raise your hand if you’re guilty. I am.)

Obedience and frugality are two characteristics  we laypeople expect of those who give their lives to the Church. The religious, in fact, take up vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. And when people see them, they expect to see models for obedience, poverty, and chastity. We don’t always see that, and we sometimes get disillusioned. It’s not limited just to those in the Church.

While Ming Yi’s trial was ongoing, a businessman shared with me over a bowl of noodles in a hawker centre, that he was disgusted with the lifestyle that Ming Yi was revealed to lead. The conversation turned to a pastor of a mega-church in Singapore who is known to keep several sportscars in his garage.

The point is that people see the lifestyles that religious, clergy, pastors, and ministers don’t match with those of the founders of their religions or orders, people feel that there is something wrong there.

Some years ago, a brouhaha was raised in The New Paper when a parishioner complained to the tabloid that the Franciscans had a swimming pool in their friary (it’s a lap pool, actually). A family member said to me, “How can these friars who are supposed to be living in poverty have a swimming pool in their backyard? It’s just not right.”

To live in poverty is not something that is good. In a talk given by Father David Garcia, OP at Blessed Sacrament Church recently, he cautioned Jesus did not say if you were poor, you would inherit the kingdom of God. Poverty, he defined, is the lack of necessary resources. It is bad and no one should live in poverty. What is a must, however, is to strive to live a more simple lifestyle. To vow poverty is good, and chosen poverty can be heroic.

Incidentally, Father Garcia doesn’t own a mobile phone or a car. He bought a secondhand bicycle, a racer, for $35 and fixed it up himself. He uses that or takes public transport to go to work.

Asking the Franciscans about some of their more expensive items they use, such as Oakley sunglasses (they were a gift from a parishioner) and Mercedes minivans (they are more fuel efficient and in the long run costs less), I learned that they make a distinction between living in poverty and living with the spirit of poverty.

It is easy then to criticise religious and clergy for the lavish lifestyles that they live, but we often forget that as Christians, people are also looking at us and wondering if our own lifestyles match those of our founder. If we are to ask our religious and clergy to live a more simple life, a more frugal life, then we too have to do the same. Just as when we see a priest living in frugality and are inspired by that, so too will our priests who see us living in frugality be inspired by us. They need us as much as we need them.