t eanc 0 VOL. 32, NO. 32
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Friday, August 12, 1988
FALL RIVER, MASS.
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Je!~~_ \' ~ . FATHER DUBUC leads Nobeoka kindergarten students in a word game. When arranged properly, the characters spell "God." (Kawano photo)
Providing a Christian presence in the Land of the Rising Sun By Joseph Motta Father Martin R. Dubuc, SSC, recently visited family and friends in North Attleboro. ". arrived on the Emperor's birthday," he said. "April 29." The emperor is Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Father Dubuc, 35, has been a missionary in that nation for nine years. The Columban priest, a 1970 graduate of Attleboro's Bishop Feehan High School, was ordained in 1979 and went directly to language school in Japan. The native of Sacred Heart parish, North Attleboro, told The Anchor he had an interest in mission work since childhood. While a parochial school student, a sister introduced him to the life story of Dominican Oblate St. Martin de Porres, known as the wonderworker of Peru and one of the church's great missionaries. The saint's story stuck hard in his mind. The first St. Columban's Foreign Mission Society priest Father Dubuc knew was a family friend stationed in Rhode Island. Through that priest, he said, he met other society members and soon found himself wanting to join them. Language school, a fulltime endeavor for two years, was tough, Father Dubuc said. "Some days I couldn't get myself out of bed to take the train to go to school," he remembered with a laugh. "Other days I'd get to the front door but I couldn't make myself go in." The oft-smiling priest spent two hours and 40 minutes traveling to and from school. The average Jap-
anese businessman, he adds, has a daily four-hour commute. Father Dubuc is pastor of Nobeoka Catholic Church in Nobeoka, Japan, a city of 130,000 on the east coast of Kyushu, one· of Japan's four main islands. Nobeoka's church has 300 members. "It's the second largest church in the county," Father Dubuc said, noting that over half of its members are converts. About 6000 of the millions of persons residing in the Oita diocese, which includes Nobeoka, are Catholic. Father Dubuc explains that only about three-tenths of one percent of Japanese are Catholics. Most are Buddhist and / or Shinto. The pastor says Nobeoka is "an avera~c middle class parish." Most of its wembers have "some sort of relationship with the city's large chemical factory," he adds. It'3 a 40 minute drive to the bordering parish to the south. The northern neighbor is an hour and 15 minutes away and the next parish west checks in at three-and-ahalf hours. How about the neighbor to the east? "California," grins Father Dubuc. 178 children are enrolled in Nobeoka Catholic Church's kindergarten where Catholicism is not a requirement for attendance. The priest said Japan's Catholic bishops' conference recently issued a statement stating that although most Japanese do not seek bap~ tism the country's priests and religious must work to instill Christian standards into society.
Father Dubuc teaches English at the school and offers weekly Bible talks to students. Another grin: "And I play with the kids every day." He also meets regularly with school parents' groups and teaches English at Nobeoka Junior College, operated by the Missionary Ursulines of the Sacred Heart, an Italian-based group of mostly Japanese nuns. Father Dubuc is a head of the Oita diocese's Ministry to Foreigners and in that capacity works with some ofthe thousands of Filipinos who, legally or illegally, enter Japan to work, hoping to share its wealth and escape the poverty of their own nation. 90 percent of those aliens are Catholic. Father Dubuc said most intend to work as entertainers but find themselves employed by sleazy establishments. "Some ofthem are forced into prostitution, beaten up, not given any pay." The peace and justice-minded priest cQunsels Filipinos, helps them with passport problems and celebrates Mass for them in English, an official language of their home country. He recently was involved, he said, with seeing a group of Filipinos home after they had had particularly negative experiences in Japan. Social issues, he said, also matter deeply to his parishioners. He cited their involvement with a village in the parish, once the site of arsenic mining. Many villagers sickened and died after the eleTurn to Page Six
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S. Catholic Conference has urged a Republican Party platform panel to oppose abortion by supporting a human life amendment and to protect "life after birth" by opposing euthanasia and discrimination against handicapped infants. In a summary of written testimony presented in New Orleans by Frank J. Monahan, USCC director of government liaison, the conference also urged the party to support nuclear arms agreements, combat discrimination in housing, oppose capital punishment and assist parents who send their children to Catholic schools. A text of the testimony was released in Washington. The same testimony was presented to the Democrats in May during that party's platform hearings. The Republicans held hearings in New Orleans a week before the convention was to convene Aug. 15. Earlier hearings were held in Kansas City and Los Angeles. On abortion, Monahan said a legal system that allows it "contradicts the principle that human rights are inherent and inalienable." He said that unless the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision legalizing abortion and subsequent court decisions were reversed, restoring protection of the unborn would require a constitutional amendment. "We specifically urge the platform committee to support such an amendment," Monahan said, adding that it should also address the "eroding" of laws protecting life after birth, namely efforts to
deny basic care to newborns with handicaps and campaigns promoting euthanasia and assisted suicide for the termininally ill and seriously disabled. Quoting from the U.S. bishops' statement on political responsibility issued last September, Monahan said the bishops were "convinced that a consistent ethic of life should be the moral framework from which we address all issues in the political arena." Referring to the U.S. bishops' 1983 pastoral on war and peace, Monahan noted that the bishops condemned "the countercity and counterpopulation use of nuclear weapons," rejected the "notion of waging limited nuclear war" and gave strict conditional acceptance of nuclear deterrence. He urged that the intermediaterange nuclear forces treaty signed by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last December and later approved by the Senate be "a point of departure to mutual, verifiable arms control measures that make deep cuts in strategic weapons," ban nuclear testing and reduce conventional forces. Monahan called for financial assistance for parents who send their children to Catholic schools and asked that remedial education opportunities be restored to parochial school students. Monahan also recommended development of a national literacy program for needy adults. The USCC testimony called for public policy to "preserve, mainTurn to Page Six
BISHOP DANIEL A. Cronin blesses the site of a proposed parish center at Our Lady ofthe Cape parish, Brewster, with, from left, pastor Father Rene J. Caissey, MS, parochial vicar Father Robert Campbell, MS, and altar server Patrick Desmond. Groundbreaking for the handicapped-accessible facility, to include a 600-person function room and religious education classrooms, is planned for next month. (Kuhn photo courtesy of The Register, Yarmouth)