Ricci Street
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 What
is a religion?
What made the issue?
Not only did Matteo Ricci learn to dress, speak, and write
Chinese. He also allowed those he baptized as Christian to continue to honor
ancestors and deceased relatives and to pay the respect which the
educated felt bound to pay their master, Confucius. It took a hundred and
forty years and a huge ongoing controversy for the Church to settle it. |
What was the issue?
In this corner ... Confucianism is a religion
that must be abandoned for Christianity.
In that corner ... Confusianism is a set of social
customs essential to the cultural identity and unity of the Chinese
people.
Standard English dictionaries, by the way, refer to it as an
ethical system or a philosophy, not a religion.
Ricci's view (1602)
nothing suggestive of idolatry
"The honour they pay to their parents consists in serving
them dead as they did living. They do not for this reason think that the dead
come to eat their offerings [the flesh, fruit, etc.] or need them. They declare
that they act in this manner because they know no other way of showing their
love and gratitude to their ancestors. ...
"Likewise what they do [especially the educated], they do
to thank Confucius for the excellent doctrine which he left them in his books,
and through which they obtained their degrees and mandarinships. Thus in all
this there is nothing suggestive of idolatry, and perhaps it may even be said
that there is no superstition."
Pope's view (1742)
tainted with superstition
"The Holy See did not touch on the purely theoretical
questions, as for instance what the Chinese rites were and signified according
to their institution and in ancient times. In this Father Ricci may have been
right; but he was mistaken in thinking that as practised in modern times they
are not superstitious or can be made free from all superstition. The popes
declared, after scrupulous investigations, that the ceremonies in honour of
Confucius or ancestors and deceased relatives are tainted with superstition to
such a degree that they cannot be purified."
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1552 - 1610
