So what I say! Is he going to make Christmas a national holiday? Is he going to publicly live out his faith and do very Catholic very pro life things? Is he going to invite the pope to visit? If he does then hooray a Catholic PM if not then does it really matter what religion he is? I checked for Japanese news articles on google for anything about Mr. Aso and his religion and no mainstream media has said anything about it. On tv nothing either. So if the general public doesn’t know and he doesn’t live out his faith in a good way then like I said before it doesnt matter what religion he belongs to.
Catholic in Japan
THE VIEWS OF A TWENTY-SOMETHING EXPAT
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I am not from Japan and I know that Mr Taro is catholic. I suppose many more people around the world also know about this fact. I think this is very significant for the catholic community of the world and having always hope, my belief is that Mr. Taro, in one way or another, will accomplish God’s plan in the benefit of Japan (and the World). There were outspoken apostles, there were calm and quite ones as well, their styles were different but all of them working hard for the same purpose. Is Mr. Taro being very quite at proclaiming his faith? He is a very inteligent person and who knows, he might have his own strategy to help to extend Jesus Christ’s kingdom in your country.
I tried to find some information in Japanese about Mr. Aso and his faith. He isn’t the first Christian PM, apparently, though he is the first Catholic. I couldn’t find too many specifics about his behavior, though. Apparently he has a history of some problematic (abiguously racist or nationalist) statements. He also visits the very controversial Yasukuni war memorial (which is also a Shinto shrine) each August.
One opinion I saw which did discuss the issue directly said that he may not be a very strong Catholic so much as a “Catholic member of the imperial cult” (paraphrased, since I’m not looking at the original Japanese right now: basically implying that it’s country first, religion second, but 天皇教 is a word for emperor worship). But another talked about Aso as a representative of Catholics throughout Japan, and seemed pretty pleased about the prospects. So it’s hard to judge.
I really do hope for the Church in Japan’s sake that he’s sincere and devout. For the time being I am willing to be cautiously optimistic, since it is a first. Do I expect much to change under his leadership? Not really. Nor, I think, do the Japanese. Honestly, more and more Japanese just want Koizumi to come back for an encore. So let’s hope and pray that lots of people are pleasantly surprised.