我是天主教徒

10 thoughts on “我是天主教徒”

1. I have some experience reading Chinese characters and 我是天主教徒 does mean “I am a Catholic.”

2. Is this man CATHOLIC Catholic, or “PATRIOTIC” Catholic?

3. I belive that Donald Tsang is a Roman Catholic.
   http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/10/news/tsang.html
   [block quote]
   Tsang is a devout Roman Catholic who attends services every morning of the week, in a city where the Catholic diocese is at the center of the democracy movement.
   The Catholic bishop in Hong Kong, Joseph Zen, is a tireless campaigner for universal suffrage in Hong Kong. He is also a leading critic of China’s repression of the branch of the Catholic Church that operates in mainland China but is not officially sanctioned by the Chinese government, which does not recognize the Vatican.
   Government-subsidized Anglican and Catholic schools in Hong Kong have been turning out English-speaking graduates for more than a century, who frequently rose to prominence in the civil service or legal profession. Many of these graduates favor greater democracy, even as their economic standing has faded as fellow Hong Kong residents who studied Mandarin Chinese instead of English have earned fortunes through investments in mainland China’s boom.
   Tsang has said little publicly about his faith, except to affirm its importance to him. In an interview in late 1998 with the newsletter of Hong Kong’s civil service, he said that, “If I can’t go to Mass for several days in a row, I get a bit edgy, because I’m missing out on my time to reflect.”
   [end block quote]
   http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1354020/posts
   [block quote]
   Tsang’s religious beliefs probably will turn out to be the major barrier to his political future, as leaders in Beijing are all atheists – at least in theory. Educated in a Roman Catholic school, Tsang is proud to be a devout Catholic, while Beijing’s relations with the Vatican are strained. Besides, Beijing viewed with great suspicion and distrust Joseph Zen, the Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, who frequently challenged China’s authority and continued to promote the democracy campaign. Of course, Jiang Zemin was weary of the prospect of dealing with another prospective headache in the person of Tsang.
   [end block quote]

4. Who first brought Catholicism to Hong Kong?

5. Try this history page:
   http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/cinema/features/christianity.html
   [block quote]
   Matteo Ricci was not the first Catholic missionary to enter China, that honor probably going to John of Montecorvino, a Franciscan, who went to the east in the first years of fourteenth century. He reports making many converts and staying at the court of the great Khan. But by the end of the fourteenth century, the Black Death devestated Europe and interest dissolved, while the eventual end of the Mongol empire and rise of the native Ming Dynasty rendered Central Asia impassible and China, having just expelled a foreign dynasty, inhospitable to further outside influences. Although John wrote in letters to Rome that he converted over six thousand, and built a church to minister to them, no trace remained by the time Matteo Ricci came to China at the turn of the 17th Century.
   Ricci was a member or the Society of Jesus, also called the Jesuits, founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola specifically to convert the heathen overseas. They conceived their mission as conquering the world for Christ. They placed great stress on education, and it was not by accident that Ricci was a deeply learned man with knowledge of a wide variety of subjects.
   When Ricci and his companions first entered China to preach in 1583 after rigorous study of the language while residing in Macao the year prior, they elected to dress in the same robes as a Buddhist priest, so that the people would understand they are people of religion. However, they soon realized that Buddhist priests had little social status in China, and in fact were considered to be lecherous drunks of ill repute. By 1594 Ricci decided to discard his grey robes and replace them with a scholar’s robe. The transition was an immediate success with the literary class, who accepted him as an equal and thought highly of his knowledge, his friendliness, and his books, which he wrote in Chinese.
   All the while Ricci moved closer and closer to Peking, and to the Emperor whom he hoped to influence, and if possible, convert. In 1601 he at last entered the capitol, where he stayed until his death in 1610. He became well established in the highest circles, and given the utmost respect. But in regards to the Emperor himself he met disappointment, as the Ming dynasty was in drastic decline under the lack of rulership of Emperor Wanli, who stopped holding court audiences or reading state papers, while court eunuchs, who controlled access to the Emperor, consolidated their control. Still, even without seeing the Emperor, Ricci was able to ingratiate himself to the court and convert several eunuchs, officials, and scholars.
   Ricci hoped his work would establish the permanent presence and acceptance of Catholicism in China, in this, he failed. A brilliant and respectable man himself, he made three decisions that were perhaps too smart for his own good, and these choice proved the eventual undoing of the Jesuits work. Ricci was not alone in his convictions, though, in most cases he followed the same beliefs that drove Ignatius of Loyola himself. It is ironic that Ricci’s greatest successes were eventually to cause the Jesuits their greatest failures. These decisions were to focus on ministering the ruling class, to teach western knowledge as an enticement to conversion, and to accept Confucian ancestor worship as an act of filial piety, not of worship, and thus an acceptable behaviour for Christian converts to practice.
   To minister to the ruling class, the elites, the scholars, was not in and of itself a bad thing. In fact, although conversions may be fewer as a result, the prestige of the religion would increase infinitely more. This technique, though slow, nevertheless reaped great rewards for the Jesuits and likely would have continued to do so had they not been swept up in historical forces beyond their control. When the Manchu forces took advantage of a fierce and bloody civil war sweeping northern China in 1644 and took the capital, the reigning Ming Emperor hanged himself, and the Qing Dynasty began. Some Jesuits accompanied the fleeing Empress Dowager and the remainder of the Ming court, and converted many of them, who then wrote letters to Rome to plead their case and ask assistance (perhaps the reason for the rapid conversions). But most of the Jesuits, who still remained in Peking, immediately switched over to serving the Manchus. The Manchu court welcomed them freely, and the Jesuits influence seemed undiminished. But in actuality, their immediate turn to the Manchus alienated the Jesuits from the scholars and officials who were the original focus of the ministry. The ethnic Chinese scholars, although no longer in power, were still an influential force. They were not yet committed to the new rulers, and indeed, Confucian ethics required that they fight and die for their former soverign. Many chose not to do so, but neither did they choose open acceptance of the Manchus. The Jesuits were perceived as political pawns at best, traitors at worst. Never again were they able to convert highly respected men of great power and influence, as Ricci did just over thirty years earlier.
   Ricci drew maps, taught astronomy and Euclidian geometry, presented prisms and mechanical clocks. It was his idea that to illustrate these solid and powerful truths in mathematics and science would then by association prove Christianity to likewise be true. He attracted a great amount of students to him through the use of these aids, some of whom converted to Christianity. In the short term, it interested elites in the Jesuits and gave them influential positions from which they could preach the gospel, and aided the mission. But in the long term, it may have caused permanent damage to relations between the Western nations and China which still reverberate today. The educated Chinese soon realized that there was a ‘bait-and-switch’ going on, and they didn’t like it one bit. They grew to be suspicious of all Western learning that was offered, because they were suspicious of what the Westerner’s intent truly was. This feeling wasn’t helped by the fact that the Jesuits often did not even mention Christianity until they had already engaged their audience with some other scientific topic of interest. If merchants were the first to use this technique, the final result would have perhaps not been as profound, since their interest is easy to understand: profit. But to teach science as an attempt to change a person’s religion to that of a foreign land, a religion that in many cases did not respect traditional Chinese morality and learning, this is something to be concerned about.
   But the straw that broke the camels back was without a doubt the Rites Controversy. Ricci believed that accomodation was an important part of the mission. Without in some way incorporating and accepting some Chinese ways and habits, they could not succeed. It was with this in mind that they first donned priest’s cowls, then scholar’s robes, instead of wearing western vestments. It was with this in mind that they studied Chinese, and read widely the classic texts. The issue of accommodation arose most importantly in the matter of Confucian rites. Several times a year, Chinese families would offer fruit, meat, silk, and incense in front of their ancestral tablet. Each household contained one, on the surfaces of which the names of dead ancestors were written. Ricci had to determine whether this was worship, idolatry, or crude spiritualism, or was this in fact an act of filial piety, and nothing more. Ricci quoted from the classic book the Doctrine of the Mean, which describes King Wu and the Duke of Chou as “serving the dead as they would have served them had they been living, which is the summit of filial piety.” The offerings then were simply an expression of love and gratitude, much as placing flowers on the grave of the deceased in Western countries. The Jesuits rallied around his decision, and were eventually in nearly complete agreement as to its correctness.
   But before long the Jesuits weren’t the only game in town. By the 1640’s, Dominicans and Franciscans entered the scene and were scandalized by what they perceived to be the weak compromises of the Jesuits. The argument erupted and was carried back to the West, which sent back acceptance of first one side, then the other. Soon the Rites Controversy was the hottest topic of debate from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Books and broadsides were published in Paris and Rome. Leibnitz, a Protestant, came out in support of the Jesuits. The theological faculty of the University of Paris and the Inquisition came out against. In 1700, the Jesuits actually petitioned Emperor Kangxi for an opinion. He sided with the Jesuits, stating that the Rites were meant as commemoration not worship, affirming Ricci’s view.
   The issue was finally decided against the Jesuits by a number of papal decrees. As always, it seems, the people in ‘the field,’ who understand what is happening, are overruled by the ‘home office,’ who consist of completely clueless bureaucrats. The Emperor Kangxi just got more and more pissed off, writing at one point, after reading a decree, “Seeing this proclamation, I at last realize that their doctrine is of the same kind as the little heresies of the Buddhist and Taoist monks…These are the greatest absurdities that have ever been seen. As from now I forbid the Westerners to spread their doctrine in China; that will spare us a lot of trouble.” Oops.
   With the conclusion of the Rites Controversy, the failure of Catholic missions was pretty much complete. They were no longer welcome in China, and when they were there the only converts they could get were poor farmers and villagers of low social standing, who would forever more be the main source of converts. By the 19th Century, Catholic presence in China was at an all time low. But by the middle of the Century, China was pried open once again. It is this time period, and the result of Christian conversion on a local, village level, that concerns us in the next section.
   [end block quote]

6. I live in Hong Kong and on occasion go to Mass at the same church Tsang does. A friend who is the daily altar server there confirms that Tsang goes to Mass every day before going to his office. It is not a rare occassion for him to be reading one of the Mass Readings.
   That Church is run by an Irish American and a French (the good kind 😉 priest.
   There is no Patriotic Catholic Church in Hong Kong, afaik.
   Tsang has been recently quoted as saying Hong Kong families should aim to have at least three children each.

7. I believe that Mr. Tsang will do great performance in either politics and Catholic.
   God bless Tsang!

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