Verse
Turco, Lewis
narrow victory in 1971 grown increasingly hard for post-Vatican II Catholics, especially those with a history of being outsiders, to leave alone. Legally-questionable constitutional...
...It also produces saints...
...In 1975 he was released, when others were pardoned, but three months later he was rearrested and charged with writing pro-Communist literature...
...It is the thought that opposes silence...
...It is what can rightly be called 'the violence of love.' " On Korea: " . . . in the conditions and climate of a country pregnant with contradictions like South Korea, the persistent resistance and the popular tradition of revolution is precisely the material out of which a new principle of human liberation, the principle of the unity of God and revolution, can be moulded...
...Commonweal: 551...
...Recently he was able to smuggle a "Declaration of Conscience" out of his call...
...I am a Catholic, I am one of the oppressed Korean masses, I am a young person who hates from the depth of his soul privilege, corruption, and dictatorial powers...
...He poked fun at everyone and everything, even the leaders of government and their poses...
...But we should wish on Korean Catholicism no great numerical or social success--and certainly no Korean Constantine...
...Daylight lies draped lightly about the hills with their stone tower, its four flights of iron stair-the town unfolds beneath the parapet...
...Under pressure and torture, Kim Chi-ha was forced to confess to Communist sympathies and imprisoned at solitary confinement in Seoul Prison without hope of pardon...
...Kim Chi-ha personifies the struggle of the Church in Korea today...
...JAMES BAKER LEWIS TURCO THE TROLLEY It stands at the end of the line, its vintage windows ros6 with the last of the sun...
...Legally-questionable constitutional amendments and oppressive emergency decrees--all unchallenged by the Nixon-Kissinger-Ford administration have created a stable, economicaUy-productive society in which no one can walk the streets after midnight, school children learn first to stand in straight lines and bend to authority, and anyone who dares criticize the government in any way is sent to prison...
...There are bows of flowers, beds massed beneath the flag poling it windily near the bandshell with its applause of green benches, its rustic orchestration: flagstone, sandstone, half-timber...
...The "proof" of his guilt were notes he had made for a play in which one character would defend Marxism before being proven wrong...
...The trees have leaves thick as Moorish carpets: their silhouettes blot sunlight, drink it off banks and gravel walks...
...The trolley rolls down the distance ringing sparks and reflections as night comes mooning...
...It is the kind of situation that brings out the best in Catholic minorities...
...On Democracy: "What is democracy...
...The park ducks are like sparks about the two swans burning out of blue sconces...
...This letter from prison, standing beside similar statements by Saint Paul, John Bunyan and Martin Luther King, proves once again that under adverse conditions the Church's vision grows clearer and its voice stronger...
...One young Korean who may well be on his way there is the poet Kim Chi-ha...
...The lawn begins to creak out its cricket sounds...
...It is the system that values the free logos, the free word...
...In the atmosphere of disillusionment brought on by the political events of the '70s, his poetry and drama turned ever more satirical...
...A graduate of Korea's prestigeous Seoul National University, where only the top students can enroll and a degree usually means success in a career, he gained early recognition as one of Asia's most promisi.ng Catholic poets and playwrights...
...What I demand and fight to win is absolute democracymnothing more and nothing less...
...Excerpts from it amply demonstrate the Catholic witness in Korea today: On Catholicism: "The reason I became a Catholic is that Catholicism presented to me as a universal message not only the thought that spiritual and material burdens could all be overcome, but that oppression itself could be exterminated by the simultaneous salvation of both the oppressor and the oppressed...
...In this remarkable document he apologizes for his "confession" and tries to set the record straight...
...He was arrested, along with a large body of other dissident religious leaders, professors and students, in 1974...
...We all of course hope that individual suffering and political oppression will soon end in Korea...
...Better that it remain small and despised and prophetic...
...On Violence: "The violence that I affirm is not the violence of oppression but the violence of resistance, not the violence that destroys humanness but that which regains it...
Vol. 104 • September 1977 • No. 18
