The Challenges and Hopes of the Korean Catholic Church towards Synodal Church: A Religious Sociological Approach

Abstract

This paper examined the challenges of the Korean Catholic Church and the seeds of hope that the Holy Spirit sowed in the Church. Before the Universal Church summoned Synodalitas, the Korean Church had tried to fol-low the image of the Early Church, which is a model of the Synodal Church. Nevertheless, the emphasis on Synodalitas in the Korean Church to-day reminds us that the Korean Church is still on a journey toward renewal, and that there are many challenges that block the way to the Synod church. In fact, there is a conflict between priests and faithfuls in the Korean Church, and there is an atmosphere of leaving the Church or looking at each other indifferently because they cannot find joy in their religious life. In ad-dition, the rapid aging phenomenon is bringing unexpected problems in the Church, and the male-centered system is causing another conflict of gender inequality. Of course, there are not difficulties only. Priests devoted to believers, and believers who obey the Divine authority of priests, the Church that approach members, and the Church that try to be with the underprivileged in the soci-ety are all seeds of hope sown by the Holy Spirit so that the Korean Church can move toward the Synod church. These seeds may look small now, but they will soon become big trees that support the Korean Church “just as mustard seeds grow into big trees.”