Fr P. J. McGlinchey has spent his life on Jeju Island, Korea.
Fr Patrick J McGlinchey, a native of Donegal, Ireland, has spent his missionary life on Jeju Island about 80 miles off the southern coast of South Korea. He finds the island a good place to live, with challenging work to do and the freedom and opportunity to do it.
Ordained in 1951, he remembers how things were when he first arrived on the isolated island more than 50 years ago. People were living in an economy easily compared to the 18th century, working the fields with wooden ploughs and oxen. Their farming methods were primitive and the island was mired in poverty. Something had to be done for the farmers since preaching would not feed them.
From the beginning, he tried to encourage the people to avail of their unused resources, like the vast areas of land available, in addition to improving their farming techniques and livestock raising. In short, it was a challenge to apply the commandment “to love your neighbour as yourself,” in a modern way. It was obvious that talking to these people in their poverty about Christ was not enough.
His father was a veterinarian, and he had learned a lot from him. As a boy and young man, Fr McGlinchey heard his father giving advice to farmers. Of course a lot of it was common sense, but he recognized the importance of bringing in experts from the outside to help with the work.
Countless changes have taken place on the island since he first arrived. He has played a significant part in its transformation although the local customs and traditions have mainly survived the rush to modernize. There is a network of new roads with the emphasis on the tourist industry.
Fr McGlinchey said, ‘Despite the modernization, a lot of old people are left on their own and that’s why we started a home for the elderly and a nursing home on the island. At the present time, there are 75 people in residence in the facility, with long waiting lists. In addition, we have a hospice that can accommodate 29 people which we run without government involvement or funding.
The service care we offer in the different facilities attracts a lot of interest in the Church and as a result a number of family members show an interest in becoming Christians. They start coming to Church following their experience of a friend or family member being cared for at the hospice.
Reflecting on the historic missionary approach, Fr McGlinchey stated that, “You know, the longer I’m here the more I believe our missionary approach was wrong. We were all about catechetics and teaching catechumens, when it should have been about evangelization. This has shown up in these times of modern living when lots of people have fallen away from the Church: it really shows they were never fully evangelized by
the missionaries. They were taught doctrine and baptized and confirmed but that was the end of it.
As Korea modernizes, this older missionary approach is showing up as a basic flaw in what was the missionary policy. In later years, it is true, correct emphasis has been put on evangelization, and even with the decline in missionary numbers great efforts have been put into this approach. Here we have tried to reach out to all the people: the poor, the old, the sick, the homeless, the unemployed.
The people see this reaching out as physical proof that we are trying to live the values of the Gospel that Jesus asks us to bear witness to. Down the centuries if it was all about theology and doctrine and catechetics without the practical witness, the Church wouldn’t have survived at all. Jesus himself gave us the lead in all of this. He wasn’t parochial, and He wasn’t limited to narrow confines. Our projects here: the retreat house, the youth centre, the hospice and hospital facilities, all try to reflect and mirror that same concern for the whole person. That’s what I like to call evangelization.
There have been many young people from Ireland and other countries like Australia who have come to help with the different works on the island and they are just wonderful. Sometimes there is criticism of young people and their lack of generosity and faith practice.
However, at the same time, these young people are putting into practice what Christ talked about. They have come and worked for months at a time at different tasks on the farm. In the way they get on with ordinary workers here, these young people were evangelizing in their own way, in their words and work and living. They showed their concern for the people, they attended Mass and they weren’t trumpeting anything, just caring for others.
He added, ‘The Columbans have enthusiasm, and they have the love of Christ, which made them leave home and come out to places like Korea. There is comfort in the thought that the people who built the Titanic were professionals, and the person who built Noah’s Ark was an amateur. That speaks volumes and reminds us to not to be afraid to change and move with the needs of the times. Perhaps if more people were willing to do this we wouldn’t be seeing large swathes of people falling away from the Church here or in Ireland or anywhere else.’
After many years in Korea, Fr Malachy Smyth is the Columban Communication Co-ordinator in Ireland. Fr McGlinchey continues his work on Jeju Island.
Read more from The Far East, May 2011