Catholic Cardinal harshly criticized in new book

Posted on : 2014-05-22 15:48 KST Modified on : 2014-05-22 15:48 KST
Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung taken to task for assailing efforts to push for Pres. Park’s resignation

By Lee Jae-sung, staff reporter

A Catholic priest released a book roundly criticizing Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, head of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seoul.

Rev. Kim In-guk’s new book “It’s Time to Fight the New Dictator,” published by Cheol-su and Young-hee, compiles conversations with journalist Son Seok-chun. The book represents a detailed rebuttal of Yeom’s criticism of movement by the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice (CPAJ) to push President Park Geun-hye to step down.

Kim is general manager of the CPAJ and head priest at Okcheon Cathedral in North Chungcheong Province. Since Dec. 2013, the CPAJ has rejected the results of the 2012 presidential election and called for the resignation of President Park, who has neither acknowledged the National Intelligence Service’s interference in the presidential election nor sought a solution to the issue.

“Yeom always quotes the documents of the church, but his interpretations are often distorted,” Kim writes in the jeremiad. “If what Yeom says is true, we would have to condemn not only the political statements made by the late Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan but also the messages of Pope Francis that always astonish the world.”

In an interview that ran in the Feb. 20 edition of the “L’Osservatore Romano,” the official daily publication of the Vatican, which is published in Italian, Yeom was quoted as saying that the CPAJ priests who are calling on the president to step down are “completely unreasonable.”

After this article created a stir, the office of the Archdiocese of Seoul responded that an error had cropped up while the interview, which had been conducted in English, was being translated into Italian. “The transcript of the interview showed that Yeom said, ‘calling on the president to step down is not rational,’” the office said. “This is quite different from how the article presented his remarks.”

“I’m not sure how much difference there is between ‘completely unreasonable’ and ‘not rational,’” Kim said. “I’m sorry, but it seems like the cardinal is not facing up to reality. The way things look right now, he might as well be saying that, procedurally speaking, there were no issues with the unfair election of Mar. 15, 1960.”

Kim also relates how Yeom quoted from church canon to argue that priests were forbidden from involvement in politics. According to Kim, this is “a profound distortion.”

Asked about the Catholic campaign to push President Park out of office, Kim said, “The truth need not tremble even when injustice comes to power. Rather than tremble, the truth should sit in judgment over injustice.”

 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

 

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Most viewed articles