Some of us, who lack the opportunity of assisting regularly at Mass, have been exhorted by priests to follow the example of those Japanese Catholics who were deprived of priests, the Mass and the Sacraments for a very long period of time.

They are supposed to have kept the faith via the services of lay catechists and family prayer. Humanly speaking, can such measures help one preserve the Faith for an indefinite period of time?

I once saw pictures of some of the present day descendants of those early Japanese Catholics. On the family altar in their houses they had both Catholic and Shinto statues. The Faith they practiced/practice is a mixture of Christianity and Shintoism.

Last night when our priest was trying to hold up the Japanese example to us, in view of his possible retirement/abandonment of his flock, I told him about the syncretic practices of the Japanese Catholics to which he retorted that I must not try and minimize their heroic past.

Some years ago, when thinking about this issue, I emailed a Traditional Catholic writer and asked him if it were really possible that all those Japanese Catholics had no access at all to priests. He replied in the negative saying that in those days it was easy for people from the Korean peninsular to enter Japan and there would be every chance that Catholic priests from Korea, disguised as ordinary travelers, would have entered Japan to try and alleviate the plight of the Japanese Catholics.

 

Japanese used to have extreme proscription of Catholics in their country. Many unknown martyred.

The real Apparition of Mary -Lady of Akita- to the Japanese nun and the weeping statue has been filmed and docuмented. YouTube has a video of the weeping statue.