4Real Forums: St. Paul Miki

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ALmom
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Posted: Feb 05 2007 at 7:27pm \| IP Logged

Tomorrow is the feast of St. Paul Miki and companions (martyrs of Japan). In the process of looking up some information on him, I ended up sketching out a timeline of the history of Catholicism in Japan (based primarily on the Harmony Catholic Encyclopedia CD). If you have a chance to do this, it is really miraculous the tenaciousness of the Japanese Catholics. One city related to Catholics in Japan that kept coming up was Nagasaki. Anyways from 1549 with St. Frances Xavier for about 30 years you had rapid growth of the faith. Then you had unrelenting persecutions with martyrs including 6 year old children. Missionaries were expelled and not supposed to come in starting in 1587 - but there was still some slipping in (I imagine that was a bit hard considering the obvious difference in appearance of W. Europeans and Japanese) until the borders were absolutely sealed in 1643. For 200 (or 300 years,depending on the source), Japanese Catholics survived on the grace of God. Without a bishop (the bishop appointed for Japan never made it there, dying enroute), they had to have been without priests for quite some time. The Europeans assumed that the faith was wiped out and were suprised to find a vibrant community still in 1858 when contact was resumed (chaplain allowed in but not allowed to evangelize). Then in 1927, the first Native bishop was consecrated and in 1930 St. Maximilian Kolbe opened up his center at the request of the Bishop in Nagasaki. It survived the atomic bomb and took care of orphans and tended many of the injured.

Janet

Kristen in TN
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Posted: Feb 05 2007 at 8:38pm \| IP Logged

Wow! Thanks for passing that on Janet.

God bless,
Kristen in TN

Erica Sanchez
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Posted: Feb 06 2007 at 1:03am \| IP Logged

Thanks, Janet. We will be studying Japan this month and this will be a wonderful addition. Did you find this information on the internet or do you have a book(s) on St. Paul Miki?

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Erica in San Diego
(dh)Cash, Emily, Grace, Nicholas, Isabella, Annie, Luke, Max, Peter, 2 little souls ++, and sweet Rose who is legally ours!

ALmom
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Posted: Feb 06 2007 at 8:56pm \| IP Logged

I only had saints cards for St. Paul Miki (about 5 X 7 and all black and white) from the Leaflet Missal Company and this had a card with a very short paragraph on St. Paul Miki. Picture was convenient to pass around a group.

It did make me curious about the Japanese Catholics, in general. I had a CD ROM called Welcome to the Catholic Church which includes a Catholic Encyclopedia and church documents. I assume I was searching in the encyclopedia, although I may have been searching the whole CD ROM. Thinking about it, most of the stuff I was reading were church documents on evangelization so that may be a better search on-line than the encyclopedia. I no longer remember where I purchased this CD - probably either Ignatius or CHC. The CD did not mention St. Paul Miki by name, but did mention details about a group martyred at the same time and in the same manner - so I assumed this was the one that he was a part of. There is a stamp on the back of the case with the following:

www.harmonymediainc.com

The rest of the information I garnished from a book on St. Maximilian Kolbe called, No Greater Love and looks like it is sold by Ave Maria press at least on the copyright page. A Polish woman gave the book to me - there was a note in the front cover to her deceased husband, so I assume it was a gift to him and have no way of knowing where they got this. I'm sure many of the details would be in any good book on St. Maximilian Kolbe and you could probably find one from the Kolbe center as well. This particular book had quite a few pictures including one of the church that survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

I did try to look on-line at the EWTN site but without any success and I know there is an on-line Catholic encyclopedia somewhere (but these are often older and may not have anything on later Saints because of this. St. Paul Miki was cannonized in 1862 so you might have more luck with a recent encyclopedia. I know I have a horrible time finding anything on-line so the fact that I was unsuccesful may have more to do with my own inabilities than anything. What I did find on my CD was when I did a search on "Japan martyr" and selected all the words. Hope this helps some - I am a dinasaur when it comes to new technologies. I had a vague recollection from part of a lecture I heard probably 10 years ago at some convention that we went to (I didn't hear much of it because I had a toddler needing attention and was outside in a play area catching bits and pieces but remember him saying something about learning about Japanese Catholics from his wife who was of Japanese descent so I knew I wanted to find some more information and that there was something, somewhere.

Also Roman Catholic Books sells a book collection called Modern Martyrs (I think this is the name of it)that gives more details of the persecutions in Asia (I think most were Korean in this book, and some in China and Japan). It is definitely an adult read - with details of persecutions very reminiscent of the early church - being burned alive and one case was in a common bonfire where no one was restrained because any move out of the fire was considered a retraction of the faith, crucifixian, and something about a steaming pit. Anyways, I seem to have misplaced my copy of the book (or someone in the house has it or I loaned it out somewhere) but when I find it, I'll give you the info that I do have and confirm the title.

Hope this helps some. This was not a major, in depth study. It was my turn to do a short Saints presentation for our co-op - and I'd forgotten until Sunday night

so there was a quick look on the liturgical calendar and then the rest just sort of happened.

Janet

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