* Survey on the Faith Life of Youth
The CBCK Committee for Youth Ministry (President: Most Rev. Peter Lee Ki-heon) presented the results of the survey on the faith life of youth in its regular meeting, held at a conference room of the Catholic Conference of Korea (CCK) on December 13, 2011. The survey was conducted on students attending Sunday School in all 15 dioceses in Korea.
The survey has an important meaning as it was the first one of its kind conducted on the students of all dioceses of the Catholic Church in Korea. It is expected that the results will play an important role as panel data for future surveys of the same kind. In this regard, we have now a reliable national point of reference for the pastoral care for youth which has been hitherto carried out on the basis of surveys conducted on the level of each diocese.
The survey was conducted in four categories: personal life; family life; school and social life; Church (Sunday School) life. The results say that the youth have a mostly positive attitude toward their faith life and have quite a good understanding of the basic teachings of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the results suggest that pastoral care for the family must be practiced in a more intensive network with the youth ministry, as the family exerts a great influence on the faith life of the youth. Some respondents said that a faith life interfered with their study, but most of them regarded it as a “natural duty of the faithful” representing a very positive phenomenon. However, most of the students said that Sunday School is “boring.” This tells us that we have an urgent task to make Sunday School an animated program adapted to the youth but not deviating from its proper object.
The Committee prepared 91,000 copies of questionnaires and in March 2010 sent them to each parish in all dioceses in Korea. On June 18, 2010, the Committee started to make an analysis of the answers they received. The tentative results were first reported to the bishops before the issuance of the final report.
The final analysis of the survey was made by Dr. Moon Yong-lin, Professor of the Department of Education, Seoul National University, Mr. Cho Han-su, member of the Committee, and Dr. Won Hyun-ju, lecturer of the Department of Education, Seoul National University.