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"
No comments:
Post a Comment