Prologue; My way to be a Catholic

Hi! It's Shellile Linn.(^O^)

There are about 1% of Catholics and 4% of Christians are there in Myanmar where  where "Al-Qaeda in Buddhism" rule the religious culture over the nation.

Catholics and Christians in Myanmar have still been in very difficult situations according to their letters and faxes which have sent to fellow missionaries in Japan.

In Nepal, there are about 1.5% to 3% Catholics and Christians, although Nepali government recently banned to encourage the religious conversion by law.

By above law had put in force, many missionaries and priests had to leave Nepal. All missionaries had lost their valid visa to stay in Nepal.

In Vietnam, there are about 7% of very faithful Catholics, although the Vietnamese government has been strictly limiting the number of novices to enter the Seminary, have an ordination and to be a nun or a monk novice in convents  and monasteries.

Yokohama Diocese in Japan have been accepting the Vietnamese Seminary students to support the Catholics in both Vietnam and Vietnamese living in Japan.

Compare to these Asian nations which are offensive to Catholicism and Christianity, you see no strict persecution in Japan. Japanese people seem to be enjoying the freedom of religion under Japanese constitution article No. 20th.

Catholic Miyatsu Church in Kyoto. Second oldest Church in Japan with Tatami mat.

However, why Catholics in Japan are still 0.2% of total population?

Many Japanese people believe that Catholics and Christians are clannish and "unsuitable to Japanese society".

I know this belief of anti-Christianity have been a political myth with malicious intention.

Let me tell my family case. My case seemed to be rare and stormy, but it surely tells you the worst situation Japanese Catholics and Christians have been.

My blood-related grandma was an accountant and had baptism in some protestant church by her faith. The time she had lived was just before the Kanto Great Earthquake and died on about 1925.

According to my father, she was a kind of friend with Yobun Kaneko, the famous socialist before the WWII.

Her baptism had made whether her family or people around her so mad. She seemed as she had strong faith.

By the social conform pressure, she was forced to live with an old mountain ascetic layman who is my grandfather in blood.

Maybe she was forced to laps from Christianity by him, suffered, and raped.

Finally she left a picture, an ebony calculator, a set of old and new testament
Bible, and a baby. She died by postpartal heavy bleed on the day she gave my father a birth.

My father often tells me that he remember the Italian pastor and his wife, whose denomination is not sure visited him time to time when he was a little boy.

So as the socialist Kaneko visited him just like some relative or family member.

After my grandfather died, he was adopted to his uncles' couple.

After his death, my father started to visit Sunday school of Holiness church near by his little house, which is surely different denomination from the one my grandmother had believed in.

During WWII, her Bibles had turn to ash by the great air strike in Tokyo on 1945.

My father is kind of easy going and float-scared type man whose characteristics is exactly opposite to me.

My father left that Holiness church when I was about three years old. And the church disappeared, Since he had been looking for something to belong, not something to believe in, he had never try to find any other church to visit.

For him, the disappearance of church meant the extinction with the relationship with Christianity.

My family might had loose all the relationship with the Christianity in general if there is not a hand from Holy Spirit work on me.(To be continued)