First and Focused - College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University

Saint
John’s
mendation of Chinese bishops, Maryknoll brings Chinese Church
personnel to the United States for graduate study and spiritual
training, helping them serve on their return as seminary teachers
and spiritual leaders. Saint John’s became involved in 1993 and has
enrolled 19 participants.
Most program participants since 1998 have been ordained priests
and vowed religious.They come from China with some English and
study at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash. Once proficient, they
begin graduate studies at Saint John’s and elsewhere throughout the
U.S. Their areas of specialization include Scripture, systematic theology,
moral theology, liturgy and pastoral counseling. Participants
gather at annual retreats and seminars at Maryknoll headquarters,
Ossining, N.Y., and discuss subjects of concern to religious—and
to all of China—such as AIDS, domestic violence, psychological
growth, spirituality and respecting the environment.
A visit home is required during the four or five years participants
usually take to finish their degree—to maintain contact with the
changing social and church situations in China.
At Saint John’s, S. Johanna continues to be a member of Saint
Joseph Convent of Beijing, a diocesan community, and S. Therese
of a diocesan community called Holy Family—neither Benedictine.
Saint John’s impressed both.
S. Therese will remember the School of Theology’s ready inclusion
of non-Catholics and lay people. In China, she will welcome
discussions with people of other faiths.
On another front, she may organize support groups like the one
at Saint John’s that helped her adjust and find her way. “I hope to
use small-group sharing in China,” she says, “among people who
need to be listened to.”
Finally, at Saint John’s, S. Therese learned patience—with herself.
At first she rushed to finish papers. Her frustration grew. Later, she
says, she developed “a slow process of achieving something, without
giving up.”
In China, patience may serve her well. “I need to be patient with
work and with myself, without giving up,” she repeats, as though
reminding herself. “I put my trust in God and do my part.”
15
Jilin
Beijing
China’s Catholic community, estimated at
12 million, is centuries old. The nestorians
reached China in the 600s. By the early 16th
century, Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians
and Dominicans were active. By 1925 Benedictines
had established Fu Jen Catholic
University in Beijing—the first Catholic
university in China. Communist rule began
in 1949 and for years public worship was
banned. It is allowed now, and the School of
Theology is helping to train Chinese Catholic
religious leaders.
S. Therese and S. Johanna will join other School of Theology•
Seminary graduates now serving in China, including two bishops, a
seminary rector and several members of the commission translating
liturgical texts into Chinese. Through them Saint John’s is touching
the lives and shaping the faith of Catholics all across China.
Marc Hequet is a Twin Cities-based journalist who writes about
religion and other issues.
S. Johanna talks to Walter Cardinal Kasper, who received the Pax Christi
award in 2009 from Saint John’s Abbey and University. After earning her
master’s of divinity degree at the SoT, she hopes to teach when she returns
to the Saint Joseph Convent of Beijing.
Paul Middlestaedt