52: What it means to wrestle with the Catholic Church

Episode 52: Maria describes her Korean Catholic heritage and how in Korea, perhaps unlike Britain, the Church is seen as progressive. Finding ways to 'stay connected with the church' while living as a queer Catholic, she says, 'has brought me close to the Catholic faith... and closer to God.'

Find out more

The Catholic Church in Korea, a podcast episode 

Webinar: 'Children of God: LGBTQIA+ youth ministry and experiences in the Catholic Church'

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. I'm grateful for Pope Francis, who used the image of a caravan, a diverse group of people travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey together. And that image that Pope Francis gave us has helped to shape this podcast. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed, and maybe challenged at times. I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying these conversations, it helps if you rate and review them on the platform where you're listening. Thank you. And just to say, I'm hoping to re record this intro when Pope Leo has had a chance to settle in. But for all the listeners who like this opening music, don't worry, I'll be keeping the music.

Listeners, thanks for joining the episode today. I'm joined by Maria, and we're reaching out into different areas of the church today. Maria is from a Korean Catholic background, so it's gonna be really interesting to hear some of what that's like. So welcome, Maria. 

Thank you for having me.

I often ask whether someone is born into a Catholic family or has become a Catholic later. So tell us a bit about your childhood. 

So I was born into a Catholic family and a very Catholic one. So my mum's family has always been quite devout. My granddad was a very active member of the church, and my mum has been conducting choirs for, I think, over four decades. I have two siblings. We've all been part of her choirs at various points. The Catholic community was a very big part of not only my childhood, but even now, that sense of belonging and having extended, you know, not by blood, but extended families by faith, that has been a big part of my faith and just experience with the Catholic Church.

I think that will resonate with listeners. That sense of being part of a family, which is not your blood relatives, but nevertheless a family of Catholic people and our feeling that we belong to that family. Listeners may not know much about being a Korean Catholic. How might that be different? 

My family moved to England from Korea when I was 13, and I remember, I mean, I didn't speak very much English then. What I do remember is sitting in an RE class and learning about different religions. And what really struck me at the time was how Catholicism was painted as very conservative. You know, we focused very much on the Catholic teachings on, say, I don't know, abortion, variety of social issues. And I remember feeling like that was a very different experience to how I saw and experienced Catholic faith in Korea because the Catholic Church in Korea has very much been part of the human rights movement in Korea and, movement towards democracy in Korea in the eighties. And the church, they literally had their doors open for people to come in and hide from the authorities. And even now, I know that the church I mean, certain priests and nuns, they come to Prides in Korea, and they're not scared to be the face of the church standing in solidarity with queer people. So that was my experience and also the Catholic faith being so much about communities and that being the rock of your faith, but your faith doesn't exist in isolation. When I moved here, I almost had the sense of that doesn't seem fair. The criticisms of the Catholic Church being conservative, I couldn't quite align that with my previous experience of being a Korean Catholic, I suppose. But obviously I've come to know that the emphasis within Europe perhaps has shifted and there is more emphasis on the official teachings of the Catholic Church rather than maybe the lived experiences of Catholics. And that has held true, I guess, in my experience of being a queer Catholic because I feel that I'm more exposed to the potential well, the teachings sort of held in front of my face about queer people as it were here, than I think I would've in Korea. And I feel confident that in Korea, I would have been able to find, and there are, very active Catholic queer groups in Korea that I am part of. And whenever I do go back, I try to attend the events. It has been different very varied experiences. And I guess it mainly comes down to how the church as an institution is viewed, the main difference. 

I think it's really useful to hear from people who've experienced being a Catholic somewhere else and to hear the contrast. Really interesting to hear that the Catholic Church is viewed as quite progressive in Korea compared with here, as you say, from the outside. Can I just check, Maria? You're using the term queer where I would say gay, so maybe I'm not using a good term? 

Well, I just like to use the term queer just because it feels more expansive than gay or lesbian.

Okay. 

In the sense that it encompasses all experiences that are not straight. 

Okay. Well thank you for being open about being a queer Catholic. You know I am trying through the podcast at some points to meet with people in this situation and just give listeners an opportunity, if they may not have already, to hear some voices from the queer community. So tell us a bit about then what your experience has been or what your journey has been alongside the church or within the church. I don't know how it feels to you as a queer Catholic. 

Yeah. I think about this a lot because I think it's an ongoing journey, and it's a tricky one. So as I mentioned, growing up in Korea, being part of the Catholic Church, I was very happy, I think even proud, of the church's role and how Korea came to be the country it is now. And, you know, it's still - the majority of those who are religious in Korea, I think the majority are Catholic, as opposed to other Christian denominations. I think it's so very relevant. It was part of our everyday routine, not just Sundays, but, you know, going to the choir practices during the week, following my mum everywhere, and her friends and community becoming my uncles and aunties, and it's built into and encompassed all aspects of my life. When we moved here, one of the first things we did was to find a Korean church because, obviously, moving to an entire different continent was a very, very big change for all of us. And I think we wanted to find a community where you know, find that sense of belonging again. And then naturally just the first thing we wanted to find was a Korean Catholic Church. And so it really was jarring and confusing when I came out to myself when I was twenty six/ twenty seven because then I was confronted with the question of, okay, I sought in this country, I sought this community where I get to be part of, you know, the same race and culture, and now I might lose that because I'm queer. It was really alienating because there was an added layer of, there isn't that much visibility in Korea or representation of queer people. So there was that added layer of, okay, I'm part of this Korean church where not only from the religious teachings of what it means to be queer, but also what it means to be queer in the Korean community. But, thankfully, I was at a place where I thoroughly, I don't know if settled is the right term, because I think faith is always changing and it grows, but I didn't feel that I was losing this relationship with God. It felt more like I might lose the place in which I usually practice my faith or where I took for granted as it being somewhere where I would encounter God. Yeah. And lose connections to the sacraments, the rituals. So I did have to take a step back from the church sort of as an institution, But that meant then that I really focussed on my personal relationship with God and trying to find God in my day to day life and what it meant to live as a queer person of faith. Because I knew, and I'm not sure where this sort of conviction came from, but I knew that I wasn't going to live a life that's dictated by the church's teaching. I wanted to meet people. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to get married and have a family. And I felt confident in knowing that that's what God would want for me too, a life of joy, and I think liberation. It's been a journey of figuring out how I still stay connected in some ways to the Catholic Church and what it means to wrestle with the Catholic Church. And yeah. And I continue to wrestle. 

I think often on the podcast, people are, you know, dredging up some of their innermost thoughts and feelings, talking about their faith, but I think there is an extra layer for somebody who is in such a tricky situation with the church, however we look at it. And I think it's really interesting to hear you draw a distinction between your relationship with God and your relationship with the institution. I was thinking while you were talking, I wonder where God is in this, but you've explained that some more that, you know, your relationship with God in some ways has deepened by not just hanging it on the practices of your faith, I suppose. So thank you so much for sharing that. I think it would be good to talk about Pope Leo, and we'll do that in a moment. But just before that, I'm interested in what the Korean Catholic Church might look like for people who are used to a parish somewhere in Britain that doesn't have a Korean community. What does it look like inside the church? How might it be different, or will it look very familiar, and would the practices be very similar? 

I mean, the practices, I would say, are very similar. I think the main differences would be in the people, in that there is a lot of people who are coming in and out because not everyone is here on a permanent basis. Some people here come here for work, studies. So, you know, you form these relationships, and then sometimes you do and and a lot of times, actually, you do have to say bye to them, and they go back. So what the church looks like changes over the course of years, And the parish priest and the nun too, they always come on a temporary basis. And so every couple of years, you would have a different priest and different nun from a particular diocese in Korea. You really see how your experiences with church change depending on who makes up the church. True of any religion, I suppose, but particularly ‘cos our Catholic faith is so centred, I feel, on the people and the community. So, for example, I was hesitant, and I didn't come out to the previous priest that was with us. But the current priest, he knows, and I am able to talk to him about things. You know my mum, I think very proudly, tells him and would share her experiences. 

What about imagery in the church? You know, imagery of Our Lord and Mary. Would they be different from what I might be used to seeing, or would all of those things be the same or a mixture? 

I would say pretty similar. We do have sometimes Mary in the traditional Korean dress, and that's really nice to see. But I think we can be susceptible to the image of white Jesus and white Mary. Yeah. 

That's something for all of us, isn't it?

Yeah. But, you know, there are different spiritualities. One thing that's big actually is and I don't know what it's called in English, but we have very active groups of people who meet on a weekly basis and pray rosary together, and they report on their weekly activities, what they prayed for, and any volunteer work they may have done. And so there are a lot of organised groups within the community. I'm currently part of the youth bible study group that happens throughout the year with various groups. But, typically, we would have three to four people in one group. We study to begin with, the Genesis and the different books within the Bible. And on a yearly basis there is a retreat in Frankfurt, and everyone who has gone through that process of studying a particular book will then come together. And a priest will join from Korea, and then it goes on for three or four days. And then the people who have gone through the retreat process will then go out and teach and form their own group. So it's meant to continue to grow. And that has happened for years and years in Korea, but it's quite recent that here we started doing that in Europe. And I think it gives us quite a hopeful perspective in that the young people within the church are so active and want to learn. And it is in many cases quite transformative. But when people come back from the retreat, they do want to go out and from their own group and then, you know, it just continues. So, yeah, I've been doing that, and that has been my way of being connected to the church on a smaller group basis where that faith sharing is done in a safe and somewhat controlled environment where I get to share that I'm queer, that I'm married, and I have a wife, how I encounter God in my life as a queer Catholic. So that has been one way. There's a lot happening in the church. 

You make the Korean Catholic church sound very alive and mission focussed. That's great to hear. So maybe talk about Pope Leo then. I was thinking to myself, and listeners will remember last week's guest too, we had a bit of a conversation about Pope Francis' pastoral ministry with LGBT communities, which I think even people outside the church were very aware of and, you know, was very positively received. And like you were talking about at the beginning, I think it just contrasts with the way people might think of the church as being very conservative, in Pope Francis' actual practical approach, although teaching doesn't seem to have changed at all. And I wonder whether you're looking at Pope Leo, and I am too, maybe not as closely as you, to see what he says about this and how he takes this work forward. What have your thoughts been so far?

I want to begin by talking about the late Pope Francis because I think when he passed, it really hit me that he helped me stay connected with the church, not because I thought that, as you say, he didn't change the teaching or the tradition, but the way he showed up touched so many people's hearts and invited the queer community back to the church in a way that was very humane and, I think, grounded in in the lived experiences. Although I was not happy that he didn't go far enough to change the teachings, I think he allowed me to wrestle with the church, criticise the church, and see how we could also be part of the church. And I think when you wrestle with something, it's because you're staying. Once you leave, you don't do that anymore. And so I think he really helped me to wrestle. You know, when he passed, I said to my mum, I hope the next pope will continue to let me do that with the church. I think when you are wrestling with something, it's because there is hope, and you hope that there would be change. So that's what I prayed for. I am happy that Pope Leo appears to be someone who is paying attention to marginalised people and has spoken up against, you know, the Trump administration. I did feel relief that that he was someone who was openly criticising immigration policy, for example. I did see that in his first official meeting that he made a comment about marriage being between a man and a woman. And it does hurt me because I am in a marriage with a woman. Even though I know that the official teaching is that people like us can't get married or have the blessing of the church as a as a married couple, it does hurt. I think especially because we have felt like some progress was made with Pope Francis. I will continue to keep an eye on where this dialogue goes, and I hope there will be a dialogue. And I hope that he will leave room and will have grace in seeing the lived experiences of queer people because I feel that God is present in my married life and in the love that I have for my wife and the love that she has for me. And I think the love we have for the world and how we want the world to be a better place for people on the margins. I think that's what this space is all about. So I hope that Pope Leo will be someone that, at the very least, allows me to continue to wrestle with the church. That's where my hope is for now. 

Maria, you've spoken really, really well about that from your experience. I think that's going to touch the hearts of listeners wherever they may stand on this. I think you can't help but be moved hearing someone's lived experience. And especially I'm struck by, despite being hurt, this has not somehow become bitterness and anger in you, maybe because you feel the presence of God in your life. Maybe that's something that helps.

I mean, I think what has really helped me throughout my journey as a queer Catholic is, it's God's presence in my life and how actually living out my queer part of myself and believing that I am created in his image, including my queer part, knowing that I am loved, knowing that, you know, not just me, but the queer community. Because how could you not? Knowing that we continue to face persecution around the world and within the church. I do believe that God is very close to our community. So many things I've learned as a Catholic feel even truer now that I am living out this part of myself. There is something very profound in not just me as a queer person, but when we live out the life that we're called to live and live out the life that we're created to live, that it does have power to transform because I think that calling comes from a place of love. We all face oppression, whether that's capitalism or systemic racism or more homophobia, and I think God wants for us to be liberated from that. It feels very simple to me, actually, that God would want me to live a life that is reflective of his love for someone like me. I am very aware of what the church teaches and what the official teaching is and what tradition is and what the popes have said. But I think, ultimately, it is how we experience God in our lives and how closely we feel Him in our lives. The sacraments which are unique to the Catholic faith, and how sometimes the Catholic Church tries to sort of differentiate between being gay and acting on same sex attractions. How the former isn't sinful but the latter is. And I find that distinction to be quite meaningless, contrary almost to what the Catholic Church teaches in other aspects because sacraments hold so much meaning for me because I think we recognise that as human being, our physical beings, not just spiritual, are so important. And there is so much to be gained by doing physically. And that's what sacraments are all about. Right? They are holy acts. And I think just tying back to what I was saying about living out my life in the way that I have. Living the physical truth in a way of being queer has helped me to live a whole, as a whole self, because we can't really separate the physical and spiritual. I see it also in the incarnation. You know, God wasn't just someone up above just telling us what to do, but Jesus was the very - I think it just sums up what our faith is about and that God loves by becoming. That physical aspects of who we are as human beings, it's important to God. Yeah. I just wanted to say that me living as a queer person, not just someone who is aware of the identity but isn't necessarily practising, and I say that in air quotes, that part of themselves. But I think that has brought me close to the Catholic faith because it makes a lot of sense to me, and closer to God. 

Thanks so much, Maria. We're gonna draw this conversation to a close. Reflecting on Pope Francis beginning us on our synodal journey, being a church who hears the voices of people on the margins, I think it's really important that we've heard from someone who is on the margins of the church. And I say that, not meaning somebody who's small and doesn't know much. I've also heard it said that the church is on the margins, and if you aren't with people on the margins, you probably aren't in the church. So it's been a great privilege to be in conversation with you today, and I think you've demonstrated such a lot of deep insight and real thoughts. You know, your wrestling with the church has led you to some really deep insights there, which I think are really useful for people to hear and show what Pope Francis has been trying to tell us that people on the margins have the answers, that people on the margins are close to God. So thanks ever so much for spending some time with us today and I hope listeners find much there to reflect on.

Thank you. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X/ Twitter, and Facebook accounts @KindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.