Ricci and the "Rites Controversy"

(continued from previous entry: "Matteo Ricci and the Holy See - the shroud of controversy")

The cause of sainthood for missionary Fr Matteo Ricci was re-opened in January 2010.* Here's a little bit more about the much debated historical controversy between Ricci and Rome.

Having read a little about Matteo Ricci myself, I recommend the following article, a fabulous piece of work by Michael Billington, called "Matteo Ricci, the Grand Design and the Rites Controversy", which contains all the intriguing elements of the story, in just a few pages.

I believe it is faithful to all sides of the Matteo Ricci story - consisting of a partial biography of Ricci, his faith and science background, and all the most controversial points of the great Ricci-China evangelisation drama including the dramatic assaults of Rome and the Franciscans against China and Ricci.

Having read the entire book on Ricci by Englishman Vincent Cronin entitled, "The Wise Man of the West", I'd say that this article concisely and faithfully presents all of the essentials of the Ricci saga - his life and his works in the sociological, cultural and religious contexts.

Michael Billington's article is a great read, giving the reader a sense of the intensity and heat of the drama between the Vatican and China, between Ricci and his opponents. It reveals the Chinese Emperor's fondness for Fr Ricci and his respect and honour for the missionary's religion, but also the emperor's outrage and disappointment at the later anti-Chinese Papal edicts, which caused the Emperor to withdraw the country from Christianity. The tides finally turned when the anti-Chinese papal bull was lifted in the 1940's, by Pope Pius XII, but it was 400 years too late. Nevertheless the Holy See from then on, has acknowledged the work and prophetic intuition of Fr Matteo Ricci. This recognition was further affirmed by popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who lauded Ricci as an exemplary missionary who was "gifted with profound faith and extraordinary cultural and academic genius." The cause of canonisation of Fr Matteo Ricci is once again open.*

Michael Billington's story presents this picture and provides the answers as to why China did not convert to Christianity, despite the monumetal work of Ricci and his associates. It shows some of the disturbing but objective downfalls of human weakness, cultural intolerance and Eurocentrism, closed mindedness and pride.

It presents the little known achievements how Christian missionaries played vital roles in some pivotal geo-political events that took place between China, Russia and Mongolia in the 17th century.

It was so saddening to read that the Chinese Emperor who once appointed the Jesuit missionaries to hold all leading positions in the astronomy and engineering bureaus of the imperial court, and who issued an edict granting all Christians the right to teach, preach, and convert throughout the empire, could later, many years after Ricci's death, have been so outraged at anti-Chinese edicts from Rome that led him to believe that Christianity was actually "closed-minded" and "superstitious".

The Franciscans who came into China a little after Ricci, rivalled the Jesuits in an effort to evangelise the Chinese. They modelled their strategy on the evangelical success they enjoyed in Japan, India and the Americas by demanding a complete severance of native people from paganism. They demanded the Chinese to do the same, little knowing, and refusing to recognise and learn for themselves, that Confucianism was an entirely different thing from paganism and superstition which they saw in other places. This disparity led to the bitter and fierce conflict that ensued between the Jesuits and Rome upon the persuasion of the Franciscans.

Anyway, I am rewriting the article and making a blunder of it. The original is much better. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know about Ricci and just what happened in that high drama of the 16-17th century between Rome and the ready-to-convert China and the most unfortunate downfall of the whole story.

Here is the link:

"Matteo Ricco, the Grand Design, and the Disaster of the 'Rites Controversy' "
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2001/2843m_ricci.html

PS - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who is mentioned in the article, is the European philosopher who discovered the link between the I-Ching and the binary code.

* Fr Paul Zalonski, "Matteo Ricci on tract for sainthood?"
http://communio.stblogs.org/2010/02/matteo-ricci-on-tract-for-sain.html

Related entry: "Is Tai Chi Opposed to Christianity?"
http://thetaoandchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/is-tai-chi-and-taoism-opposed-to.html

Matteo Ricci and Rome: The Shroud of Controversy

Servant of God, Matteo Ricci. 400 years ago, his work changed tens of thousands of lives in the Middle Kingdom, now known as China. But soon after, Rome barred his work and put a stop to the Jesuit missionary activity. What happened?

His name has been raised to the forefront of the West-East inculturation movement in recent decades. Any cultural scholar or historian of China, religious or secular would nod respectfully to the name of this cultural giant of the West who had once visited the orient. In fact, Matteo Ricci and his missionary activity 500 years ago has become the singularly most effective work that any missionary has made in Chinese and Roman history. If Ricci was so successful in his evangelisation, why isn't China a Catholic country by now?

Within the Ricci-China saga, is a shroud of conspiracy and darkness that needs to be told. The main obstacle to the fuller success of the evangelical work lies primarily in what has been termed the "Rites controversy", a controversy between China and Rome that lasted centuries.

Within and surrounding this controvesy, is a tale of intrigue and astonishment, of heroism and defeat. It reveals a cultural attitude of superiority and intolerance that prevailed at the time. Pride, coupled with religious presumptiousness, led ultimately to the tragic fall of Italy's own Fr Ricci's monumentous and holy campaign for the Church in the East.

As dreadul as it sounds, it makes an interesting and important piece of Church and geopolitic history. It is surely a story that needs to be told in the West as well as the East, that the lessons wrought by the efforts, the blood and sweat of our spiritual and temporal ancestors, may be learnt and held in acknowledgement by us today.

Perhaps then, we might be able to accomplish what they had hoped and inspired to accomplish, but could not.

...Continued in: "Ricci and the Rites Controversy"

Definition of A Gentleman

Confucius reserves the noble title of "Gentleman" to the man who attains the highest virtue of charity (ren).

Here is a beautifully written tribute to a western scholar and priest who would rightly be called a Gentleman.

The venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, who is soon to be beatified this year.

http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0771.html

"Their faithfulness echoes the Confucian ideal of sacrificing oneself for a noble cause"

9th July marked the celebration of the feast of 121 Saints in China.

87 were Chinese and 34 expatriate missionaries. Among them, the youngest was 7 and the oldest 79. Canonised in 2000, the Saints were martyred between 1648 (the Qing Dynasty) and 1930 (the period of the Republic of China), including 6 bishops, 24 priests, 8 brothers, 7 religious sisters and 76 laypeople.

Hong Kong's Sunday Examiner said that, "The martyrs of China gave the ultimate witness to the Gospel with courage. Their faithfulness echoes the Confucian ideal of sacrificing oneself for a noble cause."

"The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians" (Tertullian, ca. 160-220AD), and "certainly, this seed of faith will bear fruit in China."

Is Tai Chi and Taoism Opposed to Christianity? A Response

The following is an extracted and extended version of the article "Tai Chi and Christianity", by Jing-Ping Wong, 8 July 2010, The Record Catholic Newspaper.

In recent years the West has seen an influx of various eastern philosophies and practices. They are largely promoted in the alternative health and New Age circles. One of these practices is Tai Chi, a discipline that originated in China.

Despite its growing popularity in the West, Tai Chi has been criticised and even condemned by some members and leaders of the Christian community. They warn that the oriental discipline is dangerous for the soul and that it may even attract demonic influences. The practice of Tai Chi has been labelled pagan, occult and New Age. Its philosophy, Taoism, is said to have a worldview that is unbiblical. These allegations have been extended to a host of other forms of ancient Chinese practices which share a common underlying philosophy as Tai Chi, including Traditional Chinese Medicine and its subsidiary practices, Herbology and Acupuncture.

How applicable are the warnings, and how true are they? In this article I debate the critics’ key points and provide some important clarifications. In so doing, I hope to propose why an appreciation of Tai Chi and Taoism are of particular relevance to today’s Christian.

Tai Chi has much in common with Christianity
I am an Australian-born Chinese. I grew up in a Chinese family with a strong adherence to the Chinese moral tradition. I was raised my whole life with a dynamic affiliation with Tai Chi and its philosophy. As a young adult I had a profound conversion experience that led me to re-discover the Church anew and embrace it with greater fervour. Subsequently, in re-looking at Tai Chi and its philosophy through the eyes of faith, I have discovered that far from contradicting Christianity, Tai Chi and Taoism actually presuppose Christianity. The lived tradition of Taoism that has become inherent to the Chinese mind holds the ethics and an outlook of life which are fundamentally in common with the Christian ethos. Because of this, I believe Taoism awaits its fulfilment in the Catholic Faith.

What is Tai Chi?
In China, the traditional and conventional use of Tai Chi is for self-defence, health and moral cultivation. Tai Chi is a physical and intellectual discipline with a goal of personal reformation. It is about the practice of virtues, especially humility and reverence toward others. Tai Chi is built upon the classical Chinese philosophy called Taoism.

Tai Chi was introduced to the West around the 1960’s. Tai Chi has since been put to the test and used in sporting and health sectors. Allied health professionals such as physiotherapists often prescribe Tai Chi and similar exercises as part of remedial therapy for patients. Academic and scientific studies have been undertaken to test the effectiveness of Tai Chi on health and fitness and demonstrated positive outcomes.(1, http://www.taichiresearch.com) One such study conducted by the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the National Taiwan University Hospital, shows that Tai Chi can bring a host of benefits to practitioners including increased peak oxygen intake, increased motor skills, balance and flexibility.(2)

What about divinisation and psychic powers?
Tai Chi is not about divinisation and psychic powers. This highly spiritualised lingo comes more from associations with Gnosticism or the New Age movement in the West.

I have been exposed to Tai Chi and Chinese martial arts in various parts of the world and have taught the art for many years. I have noticed that most people who take up Tai Chi seriously are usually intelligent, gentle and mature people and who value the important things in life. Some of these are devout and committed to the Christian Faith.

So why has Tai Chi been criticised by Christians?Tai Chi and Taoism have sometimes been misused and presented in erroneous ways. In the West, people’s exposure to Tai Chi and Taoism has in part come through New Age propaganda. The New Age Movement’s incorporation of Tai Chi and Taoism has given an impression that these disciplines are part of, or synonymous with, the Movement’s belief system. I believe that it is these that have been caught in the radar of Christians wary of dangerous spiritualities. In such a case, their warnings against Tai Chi are therefore accurate for these deviated forms that have been infected by New Age ideas, but not for the traditional and conventional Chinese form.

A proper distinction thus needs to be made between deviated and authentic versions of Tai Chi and its philosophy. A generalisation of the warnings over all forms of Tai Chi would risk throwing the real thing out with the bath water. It would be like tossing out a diamond ring passed down as a family inheritance because a New Ager has called it a magic charm – and this does not do justice to a very valuable discipline and philosophy.

Is Taoism at odds with Christianity?
The short answer is no. Taoism of which Tai Chi (and other related disciplines such as Traditional Chinese Medicine) is based, is a philosophy of natural law. It is grounded in the natural order (this worldly) and hardly exceeds it.

Christian critics have frequently warned against Taoism as a philosophy that is fundamentally at odds with the Christian worldview. It has been said that Taoist doctrine denies the existence of good and evil – that it is about rising above the confines of morality and requires one to abandon the faculties of human reason and discernment. This is either a critique of a misrepresented New Age version of Taoism or it is a misunderstanding of the basic tenets of authentic classical Taoism.

The most accurate readings of Taoism emerge from the great Chinese classics, two of them being Lao Tzu’s, Tao Te Jing (~500BC) and Confucius’ Analects (~500BC). They are about understanding humanity through nature and about the striving for human perfection through virtue, morality and learning.

The hallmark of Confucius’ teaching is: “self-cultivation through education to arrive at virtue”. This has become the lived tradition of Taoism in China for over 2,500 years (and those of her neighbouring countries such as Korea and Vietnam). It has become intrinsic to the Chinese ethos. I believe this is completely congruent with fundamental tenets of Christianity.

So what is “Chi” and “Yin and Yang”?
These terms, as used in Tai Chi and Taoism, have largely been misinterpreted in the West due to cross-cultural complexities. They are anglicised phonetic translations of ancient Chinese philosophical terminologies. A proper understanding of these terms would require them to be read in their original cultural context. Otherwise, their meanings are inevitably shaped by the cultural nuances and philosophical presuppositions of the West, which differ significantly from those of classical China.

“Chi” has been roughly translated into English as “energy” or "psychic force". In today's climate of spiritual pluralism, Christians often associate “energy” as it is presented in the New Age circle, and is read with a spiritual nuance. The term “Chi” therefore has been read with a more spiritual meaning than the word actually conveys. In conventional Chinese usage, and especially in the field of Chinese Medicine (along with Acupuncture and Chinese Herbology), the meaning of “Chi” lies merely in the natural order, not the supernatural. It is not overlain with spiritual nuances. It is not taken to mean other worldly energies or personalities.

The Yin and Yang principle, being a foundational tenet of Taoism, is both deep and rich in meaning. Contrary to common belief, it is not a principle of Dualism. Adopted by West in the 60’s, the Yin and Yang symbol was trivialised to a mere symbol of novelty. It had since been associated with the freedom loving hippy movement and also construed as an occult symbol or even a charm of devilish nature.

Further, popular New Age proponents have sensationalised oriental symbols and ideas along with their own occult worldviews. It little wonder then that unassuming Christians have hence developed a disdain for so called Eastern Philosophies.

Sadly, such misrepresentations have caused a kind of adverse knee jerk reaction in unassuming Christians of the West, which has brought about in some, a tendency of wholesale rejection of eastern traditions and practices.

Grace Builds on Nature
Examples from early Church history show how other ancient pre-Christian philosophies like those of Aristotle and Plato of Greece had elements incorporated into the Christianity. The Church distilled and embraced the intellectual philosophies of ancient Greece that were compatible with Christianity, and distinguished them from the elements of pagan worship that prevailed in that culture. Subsequently Greek philosophy has played an integral role in the development of the promulgation of Christian doctrines, and in the inculturation of Europe. The same can be done with Taoism for the Orient.

Taoism as a natural philosophy predates the Christian Revelation. Taoism is essentially a question and a resolution. It is a sublime expression of the heart of a civilisation that has quietly contemplated the deepest yearnings of the human heart over several millennia. It asks, "What are the laws of Heaven?" and exclaims, "…that I may fulfil my humanity, I wish to align myself to Heaven's Decrees!" It patiently awaits its answer. Heaven revealed the answer 500 years later: Christ. And so for the hundreds of millions of people who are predisposed to the Taoist and Confucian ethos in our world today (whether consciously or unconsciously), we have many who are ripe and ready hear the Gospel. Grace builds on nature. And Taoism is a platform proffered for the work of grace.

Renowned western Christian scholars in our own era have already begun to do the work. C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man uses the term “the Tao” as shorthand for Natural Law. Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft frequently refers to the “Tao” and Taoist concepts in his own writings. These scholars have identified an applicable link between Eastern philosophy and Christianity.

What does the Church say about the Tao?
The Second Vatican Council calls for inculturation of all cultures by the Faith. It calls Christians to “recognise, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men” (Nostrae Aetate n.2). How fertile the ground is for evangelisation of China if we are prepared to do this! I believe the lived tradition of Taoism effectively disposes a person’s mind, reason and sentiment to receiving the knowledge of the Christian Faith. Knowing this can enable us to evangelise in ways that can dynamically appeal to the intellect and sentiments of people from this cultural background.

The Church teaches that there are elements of truth, goodness and beauty outside of the physical bounds of the Church. The Second Vatican Council states that it is the Church’s mission is to recognise, purify and sanctify them so that they may be brought to fulfilment in Christ and offered as a gift to Him (Apostolicam Actuositatem, n.5). Through Taoism the Church can bring the rich and complex culture of China to its perfection by permeating it with God’s life and grace. Thus in its newness, it has more potential of bearing numerous and wonderful life-giving fruits for the Church and for the world. China was once called a sleeping giant but today the giant is awakening. There are millions waiting to benefit from Christian dialogue and inculturation. There are also many of oriental cultural backgrounds living in cities of the West. Their spirits yearn to know of the revelation of Grace from Heaven that the West has been privileged with for so long. Is it not our honour and duty as Christians to help see it brought about?

The Pope, The Wise Man of the West and China
In May 2009, Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to renowned 16th century Catholic missionary Fr Matteo Ricci for his genius in evangelising China. The Pope pointed to Fr. Matteo Ricci as a model for evangelization and inculturation. When Ricci arrived at this land of the Orient, he was astounded at the sophistication of its culture. He exclaimed that while Europe had the greater scientific and mathematical methods, China had a high culture at least as noble, if not more, than his own in Europe at the time.

In order to engage in cultural dialogue and evangelisation, Ricci studied and became an exemplary Taoist and literary scholar and so won the hearts and minds of many of his Chinese contemporaries. He converted thousands of Chinese to Catholicism and almost reached the Emperor before he died in Beijing. Pope Benedict praised Ricci, whose cause for beatification opened in 1983, for his "peculiar capacity in approaching, with full respect, Chinese cultural and spiritual traditions in their totality".

Bishop Claudio Giuliodori of the diocese of Macerata, Italy (Ricci’s birthplace) in October 2009 acclaimed Ricci as "a model of evangelisation of the Gospel culture and inculturation that, in many aspects, has no equal in the history of humanity."

Taoism lays the foundation for the Christian faith in China and Ricci testifies to this. We stand at the brink of a new epoch of the Church's mission of evangelisation in continuation of its great and Sacred Tradition. I believe Taoism and an appreciation for its associated arts such as Tai Chi, is of crucial relevance to Catholics of the West today.



(Extracted and extended from: Jing-Ping Wong, "Tai Chi and Christianity", The Record, 8 July 2010)

References

1. Tai Chi Research: The Source for Tai Chi Research, Tai Chi Articles and Tai Chi Videos. 5 July 2010. http://www.taichiresearch.com/
2. Lan C, Lai JS, Wong MK, Yu ML, “Cardiorespiratory function, flexibility, and body composition among geriatric Tai Chi Chuan practitioners”, Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 1996 June, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8831482?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=12