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The Chinese Church Under Communism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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The Holy See, ten years ago, re-established the Catholic hierarchy in China, shortly after the creation of the first Chinese cardinal, His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Tien. Three of the nineteen archbishops, including those of the capital, Nanking, and the national cultural centre, Peking, were native Chinese. Twenty-nine of the hundred and forty-five ecclesiastical territories (dioceses and apostolic prefectures) were governed by native Chinese.
A long, exhausting war had just ended; a war from which the nation had emerged morally enhanced but materially handicapped. The native clergy were comparatively numerous (2,500 priests) and able to assume ever-increasing responsibility. The missionaries who had been interned by the Japanese resumed their work with fresh enthusiasm and missionary reinforcements began to arrive. It was easy to imagine that the evangelization of China, whose population represents a quarter of humanity, would continue to receive the fullest support from nearly all missionary congregations and societies. The members of these missionary groups come from all the European countries, except the Orthodox ones, from North America, and even from South America (Colombia). The chances for the increase of Christianity seemed good, in spite of the civil war and the Communist occupation of vast northern and central areas where religious activity was restricted.
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- Copyright © 1956 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
1
Translation of an article from Vie Intellectuelle for July 1956.
References
2 We say ‘re‐established’ because, without counting the period of Jean de Montcorvin in the Middle Ages, there had been bishoprics at Peking and Nanking since the seventeenth century, until they were eliminated by the spreading of the system of Vicars Apostolic last century.
3 Excluding, of course, the specifically African societies like the White Fathers and the African Missions of Lyons.
4 Mgr Kong, although he was taught by the Jesuits, does not belong to the Society of Jesus, as many seem to think; he belongs to the diocesan clergy.
5 Bulletin de la Société des Missions étrangères de Paris, no. 91, p. 404. We are happy to note our agreement with the author on this point, though indicating respectfully that he is by no means alone in thinking this. His caricature of the missiologues and other enthusiasts for adaptation, with the aim of further discrediting them, appears less welcome to us. Other passages misinterpret obvious facts. For instance, the architectural style known as ‘Chinese Renaissance’ is due as much to the Chinese themselves as to the foreign missionaries. The Communists have sometimes used it; they insist on the value of certain traditional artistic elements and seek to appropriate to themselves the Chinese‐style artist Pai‐Shih, etc.
6 This observation, though completely Catholic, is not understood by all. The reactions to the Vie du Père Lebbe by Chanoine J. Leclercq (Casterman) shows this all too clearly.
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