Eddie Kim

First thing's immediate: I'm performing Monday night (the 12th) in front of Baskin-Robbins (640 W Covell, in the Anderson Plaza, Davis, CA). We have several vocalists, a drum set, piano, soprano sax, clarinet, several guitars, and possibly more. Random people might join in... we can only hope that they're actually good. Well, that's going to be at 7 pm.

Then, in the evening, I'm going to go see my high school friend Steph Poirier at her 21st birthday party! Earlier in the day, I'm probably grabbing lunch with Scott Sutherland and some of his friends at Murder/Redrum Burger.

What else? I'm going down to Berkeley on Friday. Not quite sure exactly when I'll arrive. But I found out that Ani Sittig may be in town, and if Friday's the day she leaves, I'll have to come to town early. That would let me see coworkers on the weekday, and hang out longer in general. The band's NorCal fundraiser event is that night, and I've got my ticket. I will hopefully finally return Shereen's clarinet to her (as well as America: The Book). I'm crashing Friday night.

Saturday, I'm going to the Cal-Illinois game (some old rally commers are going to be at the Bear's Lair 3 hrs before kickoff). Since I bought a ticket, I don't have to lug around all kinds of camera crew stuff before the game. I can go to a bit of Lindy on Sproul! If the Cal game looks decided, I'll leave early and head to Stanfurd. I bought a ticket for the UC Davis game.

Oh, so much college football! Last Saturday, I went to a sports bar in Davis and saw SO MUCH FOOTBALL, it was insane. My butt was sore from all of the sitting. The Cal offense is finally shaping up. Fewer penalties this game, and Booya looked like he got his confidence back. Whew! After watching Cal/UW (and the 4th quarter of ND/UM), I saw bits and pieces of other games, such as Stanfurd/Navy, OSU/BSU, and so on.

Then, I saw my first UC Davis home football game. Although it was a loss, it was a very exciting game, and the offense showed its hidden talent toward the end. I sat in the student section (much worse than at Cal... they were endzone seats, and there's no net for the uprights... yeah) with Emi (a fellow new grad student) and Josie (whom I met at Picnic Day).

The following weekend, I need to find a TV showing the Cal/NMSU game on Friday night. The Saturday following, Davis plays Sac State in Sacramento, and you guessed it... I bought a ticket.

Like I said, so much college football.

I really have to watch as much as I can now, because when school starts, I'll barely be watching my own alma maters. Like Jen Wong said, I'll fit a season's worth of games into a month!

So, what about since Megan and Peter's wedding? The Monday after, I get a call from a friend of a friend. He's getting married on Saturday and needed a pianist for his wedding. Now, my friend put in a good word about my playing skills, but playing on lead sheets at a worship service is very different from playing classical (sheet music... it's been such a long time) wedding ceremonial music. Well, I got the gig, and outside of a minor hiccup, no problems occured. And now, I have a wedding on my musical resume.

On another front, my new roommate (Aaron) has this cute kitten, and Kayle makes a daily change of appearance on my Facebook profile. Also, I set up my math website: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~ekim

In a June 2000 study, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) note this alarming fact: There are 433 priests over the age of 90 and 298 priests under the age of 30. Let's assume the best of all possible scenarios, that each priest lives to be 100 years old. In ten years, all 433 of those priests are gone. (The USCCB study was titled "Executive Summary: The Study of the Impact of Fewer Priests on the Pastoral Ministry" and is available online.)

See, in an ideal world, those two numbers would be switched. Take the Cal [Marching] Band for example. There are more first-year band members than there are any other class. Because there has to be. Because nothing else would be sustainable.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University provides population statistics that better show the problem: In 1962, there were 35,925 diocesan priests. That number went up insignificantly in 1975 to 36,005. Then the steady (and ever-increasing) decline: 35,052 in 1985, 32,349 in 1995, 30,607 in 2000, and 28,375 in 2005. The number of ordinations stood at 994 in 1965, but since 1995, the trend shows ordinations to the priesthood at 500 or so, and from this count, we'd need to take a cut to get the number of priests actually entering parish ministry.

The population of total Catholics increases quite steadily year after year (albeit Gallup and CARA's own polls indicate that a smaller and shrinking percentage of those people are active). Now, I may be a complete idiot, but I can at least tell you what these numbers mean: a smaller priest-to-parishioner ratio. CARA counts 3,251 parishes of the 18,891 total in the US that DO NOT have a resident priest! I guess these churches either borrow a priest from as nearby as possible, or they do without.

This problem is not just an American Catholic problem alone. For example, the number of priests in England and Wales has fallen from 7,000 in 1980 to 5,500 with half of all priests 60 or older. Honduras has fewer than 400 priests to serve five million Catholics. Australia, with five million Catholics has only eighty seminarians for the entire country. So, the US crisis can not be solved simply by "importing" priests from elsewhere in the world.

And a crisis it is. This is not about a challenge to practices or ideology (well, at least so far). This is simply looking at the statistics and using Calculus 1: we have a negative derivative. Follow the trend (use Newton's method of calculating zeroes, linear interpolation, or just follow along and draw an imaginary line with your hand on a quick graph), and we have a really big problem within this generation or very early in the next. Take into account that these stupid math problems don't take into account the age imbalance (and that the 500 or less entering diocesan priest ministry don't do squat to shift the numbers) and expect to see the crisis in your lifetime. Yes, you can hide a growing ball in a shed for a long time, but soon, it'll break the temporary container it's in.

The touchy issue about proposing a solution to this problem is that it REQUIRES a challenge to practice and/or ideology to do so.

Please try to soak that in. Somebody, somewhere, has to say, "Wait a minute, something isn't working quite right." That somebody could be Ratzinger himself, or national bishops' conferences, or the voice of the people. Somebody who realizes that the problem needs to challenge the idea that "because we've always done it this way" is valid reasoning, especially when it's creating a problem, and more especially when there are better solutions.

"Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." (1 Corinthians 7:1-9)

Paul writes that "It is good for a man not to marry". And, that really is so true. It's biblical, it's accurate, and all of that other mumbo-jumbo. But that's not the end of the text, and where some may be apt to stop there and interpret this to mean that priests should not marry, let's pause for a word about interpretation. True, there are passages that are hard to interpret. Other times, there's the critical view of the Christian church that multiple conflicting interpretations lead to conflicting doctrines and denominations. However, in most instances (and in every essential one), the interpretation of the Bible is best given by ... the Bible itself. It usually means reading before or after the text in question.

So in this case, to put it in cruder terms: Paul tells the Church at Corinth that because there's so much desire for sex, people should get married. At the end of the passage, he says that it's better to marry than to yearn in sexual desire (that is, be horny with no outlet to take care of the problem).

Why am I making such a big deal of this point, and putting it in these uncomfortable terms? Well, I honestly believe that many of the current (and prospective) priests live with a great deal of sexual desire, and we all know about the outlet that some of these priests took: raping boys. After some gradual changes forbidding more and more, the Roman Curia laid down the final law by 1100, saying that no Catholic priest would be married and no married person would be a Catholic priest. One brave man, the Italian bishop Ulric of Imola, argued that the hierarchy had no right to forbid marriage to priests and urged bishops and priests not to abandon their families. Bishop Ulrich said that, "When celibacy is imposed, priests will commit sins far worse than fornication." Bishop Ulric's day has come, and since 2002, we all know about it.

That rules had to be laid down in the 11th century (all finalized by 1095 AD) gives a hint into history: that the leaders were trying to implement a change. Why make a series of new rules if there were no rule breakers? If all priests were already celibate, why establish several "new" rules over several years? On a long shot, maybe all the priests WERE already celibate. Then, it would have only been necessary to establish the list of rules once, instead of issuing new statements that progressively took away more rights. This pattern of SEVERAL proclamations makes it seem more like the leaders were slowly chipping away one additional freedom to ease the priests into the changes. Meaning that at some point in time, the opposite of each of the current rules was the general practice among priests. Meaning that for the first half of the Church's existence, priests could be married. Which throws out even the fallacious reasoning of "We've always done it this way". Because, we haven't.

"As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them." (Mark 1:29-31)

Simon, brother of Andrew. Simon, brother of Andrew, mentioned EARLIER in this FIRST chapter of Mark's gospel (so the fear of getting this Simon confused with maybe some other Simon being very weak), mentioned earlier as a fisherman, called by Jesus. Simon, later named Peter. Does this guy sound at all familiar? This is THE St. Peter, the one claimed by Catholics to be the first Pope, the first bishop of Rome.

Pope Peter had a mother-in-law (who was sick, whom Jesus healed). A mother-in-law. And how does one have a mother-in-law? (This is not like adopting some other older woman and calling "mother" because your own passes away. This is a mother-in-law. You adopt someone as a mother, not as a mother-in-law. You gain a mother-in-law in only one way: marriage.) Jesus healed Peter's wife's mom. Peter had a wife. Peter had a wife. Peter had a wife. My my, the married priesthood of the Christian church starts pretty early, doesn't it? Let's toss the "because we've always done it this way" reasoning down the drain because not only is it invalid as a form of reasoning, it's just downright inaccurate! Nor did Peter leave his wife when he began ministry! Twenty years after Jesus' resurrection, when Paul wrote his first letter to Corinth, "Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?" (1 Corinthians 9:5), we see that Peter still has a wife.

But I digress.

The issue at hand is the priesthood shortage, and I've hinted at the mandatory celibacy issue being the problem. Some have argued that our degrading society is causing a decline in interest in the ministry. That's an interesting speculation, but it's wrong, wrong, wrong. See, Vatican II instated the "permanant diaconate". This program has exploded tremendously since its start: CARA reports 898 deacons in 1975, 7,204 in 1985, 10,932 in 1995, 12,378 in 2000, and 14,574 in 2005. There is plenty of desire for Catholics to be religious leaders.

I repeat myself: Proposing a solution to this problem is that it REQUIRES a challenge to practice and/or ideology to do so.

Here's what I think is going through people's minds, "Let's see, I'm a Catholic, and I feel called into ministry, but I really plan on getting married. Hmm, this is a problem, I guess. Well, let's see, I could become a priest. Then I could perform mass, do weddings, funerals, give people counsel, and basically everything. But I can't get married (and I also take on the tarnished image from the bias of the people that associates this priesthood with child molesters). Or, I could try the new permanent deacon thing. I could do weddings, funerals, do counseling, and do almost everything. I just can't perform the liturgy of the Eucharist at mass. But I can get married. So, I can do almost all of the parish ministry without givig up my fiancee. Not bad."

Speculation, sure, but I think I'm right on track on this one. When I saw this statistic, it confirmed that for me: The USSCB Meda Relations office reports "Nearly 14,000 men - 97 percent of whom are married - serve as permanent deacons in the United States. The permanent diaconate, restored by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), is a vital ministry in the United States and has grown an average of 10 percent annually. In addition to holding full-time jobs in their places of work, permanent deacons assist in the worship life of the local faith community by preaching, baptizing, teaching, witnessing marriages, officiating at funerals, and sometimes serving as a parish life coordinator in the absence of a priest."

I'm just some idiot in California, and I don't know anything about anything, but I try to read the Bible and use reasonable interpretations of it. I also try to use my limited brain to think through problems. And here's what I've come up with: Ratzinger, allow Catholic priests to marry.

Given the 97% stat, many Catholic men who would otherwise choose to become priests instead become deacons because of the marriage issue. Those who do become priests do so reluctantly. Some take out their sexual aggression through the children that they're supposed to care for. And why little boys instead of girls? Well, the whole celibacy thing helps to increase the homosexuality of the pool of Catholic priests. Why? A gay Catholic may be thinking "Hmm, my church frowns on my sexual preference. I can't marry who I want to anyway. Maybe I'll become a priest. No loss in the celibacy issue there." In fact, some closeted Catholics might choose this route to avoid their "problem".

Not only is removing the requirement for celibacy practical, ethical, moral, and reasonable. It's also Biblical! This is what the Bible has to say about bishops (and I think that the message can apply to priests in general):

"Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?)" (1 Timothy 3:1-5)

I was recently stuck on the "husband of but one wife" issue. Take, say, the Mormon church in the 1800s. The Mormons of the previous generation would have interpreted this to mean "bishops should have more than one wife". What are other interpretations? "The bishop is married up to once: once or never", or "The bishop can never be marry and must be celibate", or "The bishop is 'married to God'".

Again, the way to find the best interpretation is by looking at the Bible itself, if possible. The passage, as quoted, says that the "overseer" (in Greek, the "episkopos", from whence we get the word "bishop") must manage his own family well. That is, he has CHILDREN who obey him. To seal the deal, Paul parenthetically gives a PRACTICAL reason for having this rule: he compares the bishop's own family (of wife and children) to the success of taking care of God's family. And that practical parenthetical reason further solidifies the CORRECT interpretation.

In fact, as mentioned earlier, Peter was married. The Roman Catholic Church's inflexible rule that says no married man will be a Catholic priest and that no Catholic priest will marry, is harmful to the welfare of children, harmful to the future of the Roman Catholic Church, and completely anti-Biblical.

I'm sure there are other objections. I can only address so many. And, when you compare the behavioral trend with other organizations, you realize much faster that the common differentiator is celibacy. I've gone as far as to try and address to objection that St. Peter abandoned his wife (which, in my own opinion, is strikingly ludicrous that people would actually believe that: Make up something impossible to support an odd interpretation of the Bible instead of taking it at face value).

Ratzinger has the power to effect change. But he's self-admittedly too focused on keeping tradition, on doing things the way that they have been since 1095. Maybe the next pope will make the change. But the longer it takes for the change to occur, the more frustrated the regular people will be. They'll just leave, with only the die-hards remaining. Then, as interest in priestly ministry dwindles down to nothing, the Vatican would have to break and allow priests to marry. Perhaps by then, the remaining people (with a higher concentration of traditional views) would find the change to be too much for them and their pattern. They would be disillusioned themselves.

The change needs to be made now. The Catholic Church changes slowly so as to not make mistakes? A thousand years ago, Rome made the mistake by deciding to be anti-Biblical on the matter. The slower the changes are made, the more people well be disillusioned. Maybe people will deal with the priest shortage with some other solution (honestly, I haven't seen any other solution proposed at all, much less one that's even plausible). Practices contrary to scripture deserve immediate, not gradual, change. Time is of the essence, for practical and Biblical reasons.

[This and similar issues have been chewing me up a lot recently. I think several future posts will focus on what it means to actually follow Scripture as being authortative instead of merely saying that you do. After having seen the Cal Band at FTP Davis this year, I'm convinced now more than ever that traditions change. The written word stays the same. Jesus said, "Watch out that no one deceives you" (Matthew 24:4), and that includes me. It's time to not rely on someone else, and check the unchanging Bible as the source of authority. Jesus mandates that we do it. He says not to have a "blind faith".]

No more blue and gold for a while. There's still some things to fix with this design, but it will do for now.

The biggest issue is with my scheduling thing: the OCF changed the PHP register_globals thing, so I have a lot of code to fix before that's up and running again.

Well, I've moved to Davis, and I'm beginning to deal with the heat. I haven't quite told many Davis-area folks yet because I had to leave town for a number of days. It would have been very anti-climatic to say, 'Hey, I moved into town, but wanna hang out next week?' I'm going to call people I know in the area tomorrow.

I finished my job on Thursday August 4th. Finally, the move of all that customer donation data made it from Raisers Edge (read: evil computer program) to Tessitura. It's been my main work project since January, and I'm glad to see it done. So are both of my bosses, I'm sure.

On Friday the 5th, I moved to Davis. Kengo, a guy who used to live in the house, let me borrow his truck so that I could move everything in. What a nice guy! One of my housemates is a 40 year old woman who goes by Chris. She's totally awesome and you could hardly describe her by her actual age. I like seeing the motivation that she has for medical research, and I think she'll go really far. The other person who is staying a year is a guy named Aaron. He's on the D-line for the UCD football team, and he played with Aaron Rodgers when they were both at Butte College. He's a very nice guy. Finally, there's a new (like me) guy to the house named Francis. He's been back home busy with work, so I haven't seen him at all yet.

After moving in, I went to Richmond with my parents to buy a car. So now, I am the proud owner of a 2005 Toyota Corolla. It's a nice dark blue color. I'm really jazzed about it, and so happy that we didn't have to go from dealer to dealer to get it at a good price. I did my research on cars that are reasonably priced and the Corolla LE was definitely what I was looking for in a car.

After spending a couple days at home, I went to Tahoe, only getting back to Davis yesterday. My former roommate Peter Symonds got married to Megan, a mutual band friend. It was nice to spend a couple of relaxing days in north Tahoe and catch up with some old friends.

I think that's about it for now. I still have a lot of boxes to unpack.

Well, I guess that there's a lot to report, and this journal has largely been left to neglect. After having applied for a teaching job, and finally getting that rejection letter from the University of Wisconsin, I'll be going to Davis after all. To be honest, my excitement for school has died down a little. Well, perhaps moving to Davis will help. August 1st is fast approaching.

So, why the Latin phrases for the title of my journal? I've been profoundly stuck on a conversation I had on Wednesday night. In small group discussions at BLUR (the summer version of FOCUS), someone mentioned how easy it is to procrastinate from reading the Bible at times. To me, that's very disconcerting. Of course, I'm not perfect at keeping up with my reading, but there are certain history lessons that we who call ourselves Christian should recall.

"Verbum Domini" and "Deo gratias" are Latin for "Word of the Lord" and "Thanks be to God", respectively. Having attended morning worship today as well as the evening, I got to hear this peculiar set of phrases an unusual amount of times. Though I grew up in the church, none of the places I'd been ever used this or similar wording. It was all new to me when I came to Berkeley. To be honest, I never much liked the phrase, and I typically find it gets in the way of truly meditating on the Scripture just studied.

Perhaps it's just my own bitter nature, but I think we live in a generation that overuses certain phrases. Things begin to lose their original meanings from overusage. What does it mean to understand the written Scripture as truly being "the word of the Lord"? When can we begin to understand the profound significance on what these 66 love letters say to us today?

Well, there's show and there's tell. I have the privilege of having a mom as cool as my mom. Though she never taught me the phrase "the Word of the Lord" in Korean or English, she lives and BREATHES this through what she does. I recall, for example... a number of years ago, she took seriously a challenge by her church to write the Bible. Yeah, you saw it right. She copied out the ENTIRE TEXT of the Bible (in her native Korean), filling seveal notebooks and going through many of her favorite Uniball pens. It wasn't so much the action, as remarkable as it was. I found it so amazing to see, in her example, what it means to personally cherish the words of the Bible and to BEGIN showing the kind of reverence this book deserves. Not only did she read the words of the supreme power of the Universe, the [slow] speed of writing forced her to meditate on each sentence, and to hear what God's words were for her in that very moment.

When we just let our Bibles collect dust on display in a prominent place in the room, but never study it for ourselves, how much are we REALLY "giving thanks to God" for these "words"?

I think about the apostle Paul. He very much had the mind of a mathematician. I figure that, like me, he absolutely HATED reading and writing. Let me put myself in Paul's shoes. Honestly, if I were thrown into prison on spurious charges, the absolute LAST thing I would be doing is writing letters to people. What would I do? I'd work out, or do some math. I'd research the law to see if I could find a legal loophole to get me out of my false imprisonment. I'd organize armwrestling competitions. Anything to pass by the depressing jail time and keep my mind off things. Again, writing "nice" letters to people would be the last thing I'd do.

What about Paul? Paul wrote letters to people. He wrote letters about HOPE to people who largely were in much better physical conditions than he was. EXCUSE ME? HOPE!!?? Wow, that really makes me think. If someone in prison decided to pass the time by writing letters about hope to people in other places, then either Paul was a lunatic, or maybe maybe maybe he actually had something profound to say. I mean, this thing would have to be past amazing. It would have to be cooler than Ron Popeil's automatic food dehydrator. It would have to be cooler than free daily rides on hot air balloons. It would have to explain every single problem of the world, and provide the only sure solution for all things.

In fact, it does. The prison-situation of Paul and the amazing letters he wrote while in the slammer give us an appropriate start to refocusing on what Scripture is, and what it can be in our lives if we take Paul's letters, and all the rest of the Bible, as seriously as we should.

If you call yourself Christian, leave you math textbook to collect dust (at least once in a while, if not daily) and read the Bible... daily. It IS, after all, the Word of the Lord.

Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name