In response to your email



In terms of mass time change, yes we do change mass time by combining 10:00 mass to 11:30 Korean Mass. That happens 4 or 5 times during the year. As you pointed out certainly it would be difficult for locals who are used to 10:00 mass and some of Adults, Youths and children who do not understand Korean at all. That might be very difficult for them to sit through Korean mass. However, why do we choose to do that? To torture some of our members or exercise insensitivity or cultural arrogance?

None of the above, we do that because it is the only time when we can be together as a whole and as a family. In the whole year we never have the chance to get together. We do not want to build walls or differences among our parishioners. So we choose to gather altogether like New Year, Easter, Christmas Day or day of Bishop's Visit. Yes, it causes some difficulties and problems here and there; but we can minimize that by mixing liturgies, music, languages, and servers or as best we can. I admit there is ample space for improvement; however, it is a blessing to gather all together since we have the luxury of space to have young adults, seniors, youth, children and all our members together.



I asked Sister Schola about mandatory class for young mothers. She said that she noticed few of them have no Korean and difficulty to stay in the class. She offered them to fulfill some other assignment instead of Korean speaking class. However, she reported to me that they wanted to stay in the class and wanted to continue in Korean speaking class. No one was forced and sensitivity has been exercised.

Of course we should do a better job, no doubt. We will work harder to continue to improve our pastoral approach and sensitivity but I hope people should appreciated the efforts and courage of Sister all the way from Korea since we do not produce any nuns here who can do the job. Regarding Korean School, we reopened a year ago and tried to lower the tuition and eventually make tuition free.


I have attended many other ethnic English masses. Polish priest came with polish accent and others with their own. I have rarely met any Polish Catholics who complained about their second reading proclaimed in Polish or made announcement in Polish. I have served the Archdiocese over 15 years now. Do we know how many ethnic priests are in Newark diocese? Yes, they all come with different accents.

They all have been respected and welcomed and we all celebrate the uniqueness in Catholic universality. In our 10:00 mass about 95% is done in English and probably even higher. Only the second reading is read in Korean only after English reading and occasionally announcement in Korean especially when directing to parents and older generations. That can be improved when we put them in English in Jubo.

As you pointed out, when some other priest is invited for 10:00 mass there should be a great care to assure that he possesses good quality English, that I concur. I might have the attitude that our young people would understand and that might not be right for young adults as you pointed out.