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Chapter Fourteen |
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The Evangelization of the World |
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| I. | Introduction: The world becomes smaller. With the discoveries of new countries the Church really becomes Catholic in the truest sense of the word. With increased trade, colonization, political fortunes and world wars the Church moved out into the world. | |||
| A. | The Great Missionary Enterprises of Modern Times | |||
| 1. | Conditions and motivation: | |||
| See Handout #187 | ||||
| a. | Conditions--with the discovery that the world was round, the compass and increased sails on ships the world began to shrink. Although it took months and years to travel abroad and half the people on board might die of any number of diseases, missionaries traveled to distant lands to evangelize the church. | |||
| b. | Gold, pepper and souls--by the end of the fifteenth century economic conditions in Europe forced Mediterranean countries to go in search of gold and spices to trade in the East. They found cheaper spices in the plantations of America and gold in California. When a ship sailed, it sailed with an entire Catholic community on board to establish a homeland away from home. With the colonization of the West Indies, Americas, and Africa there were also atrocities committed by the church. Franciscans set up crosses and massacred the American Indians. Cortez had an Indian woman baptized before he took her as his concubine. Pizzaro demanded an enormous ransom for the Inca king and then baptized him and strangled him. | |||
| 2. | Missionary Organization | |||
| a. | Patronage--in the fifteenth century the Holy Office gave the Portuguese exclusive temporal and spiritual jurisdiction over all new lands discovered and those yet to be discovered. This led to many problems for other countries; i.e., Spain and Christopher Columbus and the West Indies, Sir Francis Drake from France etc... | |||
| b. | The Congregation of Propaganda--because of these problems the Holy See established this congregation to deal with the situation. To separate out lands for the Spanish, Portuguese and French. It supplied missionaries with resources in order to carry on their work; i.e., printing house, seminaries and universities. It established missionary bishops directly responsible to the pope. | |||
| c. | Missionaries--secular priests would often accompany the conquerors of other lands, but they were primarily interested in making their fortune rather than evangelizing the world. The first real missionaries were the Ordered Priests; i.e., Augustinians, Carmelites, Franciscans and Dominicans. The Jesuits came a little later. | |||
| 3. |
The Christian conscience and colonization: |
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| See Handout #188 | ||||
| See Handout #189 | ||||
| a. | The Abuses of colonial exploitation--especially in the Americas the conquerors sought their fortunes in gold, spices, sugar and coffee. As they emerged on the continent they brought their European diseases; i.e., measles, smallpox and TB. Natives were forced to work in the mines and quickly the Indian population was all but decimated. The Dominican priests complained about the ill treatment of the Indians which angered the settlers that took it to a Spanish court. The court ruled in favor of the priests insisting that Indians be treated as free men and that their masters should be treated in a Christian manner. | |||
| b. | Bartolome de Las Casas--a Dominican priest, who once exploited the Indians himself, had a change of heart and became one of their strongest supporters. He devoted his life to getting the king of Spain and the pope to making laws against mistreatment and forced conversion to Catholicism. Thanks to him Paul III wrote a bull in 1537 A.D. that affirmed that Indians were free men and could not be forced into conversion. In 1540 A.D., Bartolome wrote a very Brief Narrative of the Destruction of the Indians. Because of his stance on the Indians the settlers forced him to return to Spain. Because of his and others challenges on living out the Gospel with the Natives some headway was made to treat them more humanely, but it was also a time when the colonies were filling the coffers of the king and he wasn't really into stopping that. So the Indians continued to be enslaved and they continued to die. | |||
| c. | Slavery--with the death of so many Indians the need for cheap labor rose. Since the crusaders took Turkish slaves from those wars it was already in their minds that slavery was an acceptable practice when they conquered the Americas. When the conquerors of Africa discovered a ready supply of black men, they became the chief source of cheap labor. This slavery trade lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Between fourteen and twenty million black men were shipped throughout the new colonies in North and South America. Christians justified slavery by quoting the book of Genesis Chap.9:5. It is the story of the sons of Ham. Slavery was also justified by Christians because it brought them into contact with Christianity. Even missionaries had slaves with no one to defend them. One exception would be Peter Claver who attempted to improve their lot in life in Colombia during the seventeenth century. | |||
| d. | The meeting of cultures--conquerors and missionaries were totally unprepared for the different kinds of practices among their foreign conquests. They knew absolutely nothing about the human sacrifices of the Aztecs or the homosexual practices of the warring tribes of Native Americans. They could not separate the message of the Gospel of the past fifteen centuries from their own cultural biases. This meant a "clean sweep" mentality of all other religions. The native religions were viewed as from the devil and with the destruction of their religions the Christians managed to destroy whole cultures and societies. | |||
| II. | Across the Continents | |||
| See Handout #190 | ||||
| See Handout #191 | ||||
| A. | Africa--in the fifteenth century the Portuguese focused their explorations on the continent of Africa. They converted influential kings of tribes and made many inroads of Christianity. The first black man to made bishop came from the Congo. Syncretism (mixing of Catholicism with native religion) began to creep into the Church and one woman in particular was burned at the stake in 1706 A.D., Beatrice was her name. In the seventeenth century the French came to the Ivory Coast. | |||
| B. | The Americas--the Spanish focused on the Americas, especially South America. The Franciscans organized their churches setting up bishops throughout the country. | |||
| 1. | Pastoral missionary work--crosses were set up and idols were destroyed. They were determined to make a "clean sweep" of all old religions. The missionaries were determined to learn the language, customs and cultures and literally became the historians to the Indians, but their greatest conversion weapon was fear. Instilling it and keeping it alive. | |||
| 2. | The Christian communist republic of Guaranis--in the region of the three rivers of Parana, Paraguay and Uruguay the Jesuits evangelized the nomadic Indians settling them into reductions; i.e., Christian villages. There were about 500,000 inhabitants in these villages. Everything was held in common and no private property was owned. It seemed like a Christian community had reached a Utopian existence until the Portuguese forced the Jesuits out in the eighteenth century. The reductions were dissolved and Utopia was lost. | |||
| See Handout #192 | ||||
| 3. | French America--from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries the French evangelized the Canadian Indians. The Huron Indians were converted en masse and their arch enemies the Iroquois were not. Consequently, when the Iroquois attacked the Hurons they refused to fight based on their non-violent teachings from the Gospels and they were slaughtered to the last man, woman and child. The results of converting the Northern American Indians by the Jesuits was a dismal failure. After one hundred years of sending missionaries into that country there were only two thousand converted Indians in the Church. | |||
| C. | Francis Xavier, India and Japan--Francis arrived in Goa, India in 1542 A.D. He was Portuguese and a student of Ignatius of Loyola. He baptized several thousand natives along the fishing coasts of South East India. He moved onto Indonesia in 1546 A.D. And to Japan in 1549 A.D.. In Japan he took a different approach to evangelization by learning their customs, their philosophy of life, and learning their language. He wore their traditional clothing and eventually began making converts. Later decided to go to China, the seat of wisdom for the Japanese, but died before he could accomplish much. Legend attributes millions of converts and miracles to him. | |||
| See Handout #193 | ||||
| 1. | Japan's Christian Century--the Japanese people had a penchant for the novelties from the European countries and that became the cause of many conversions. Japan had local "daimios" or chiefs of small areas and many chose Christianity. Christians numbered in the 300,000's in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because of the in fighting of the different orders of missionaries and the concerns of the shoguns a new order began to emerge; i.e., restore Japan to its original religions and drive the Christians out. In 1597 A.D., 26 missionaries were executed in Nagasaki by crucifixion. By 1614 A.D. Christianity was totally outlawed in the land. Christians were horribly tortured and in 1636 A.D. 35,000 were massacred. Japan succeeded in eliminating Christianity from its land until the nineteenth century. | |||
| 2. | India--Thomas' conversion of India may be legend, but there were Christians in India before the missionaries arrived. They spoke Syriac and were attached to the Nestorian church of Mesopotamia. The Portuguese missionaries wanted them to be Latin and in fighting began between the Eastern church and Western church. Goa remains the only Latin Church in existence in India | |||
| D. | China, Indochina and Korea | |||
| See Handout #194 | ||||
| See Handout #195 | ||||
| 1. | From Macao to Pekin--the Portuguese Jesuits settled in Macao. The Chinese converts were forced to cut their hair and adopt the European lifestyle. Father Maeo Ricci was sent into the interior of China to Pekin. He adopted the lifestyle of the Chinese, dressed like them, studied Confucianism learned their language. He began to question why the Chinese could not continue to pay their respects to their dead and to Confucius. How could he intermingle what was Christian and what was Chinese without turning them away. | |||
| 2. | Hope and Crisis--1615 A.D. Pope Paul V authorized the translation of the Bible into Chinese, but no Chinese liturgy was ever approved, though it probably was used. The Jesuits gained in favor with the Chinese emperors because they were learned men in law, how to organize a calendar and mathematics. At the end of the seventeenth century there were over 300,000 converts and 120 missionaries in the country. China's practice of drowning girls as soon as they were born led to friction between the Christian gospel and the Chinese culture that was to finally undo Christianity in China. In 1762 A.D. the Jesuits were suppressed by the Holy See and the Chinese emperors, angry over the in fighting between the Portuguese and the French began to purge China of Christianity. | |||
| 3. | Indochina--Japanese converts moved to Cambodia and Siam to avoid persecution in their homeland. Jesuit Father Alexander de Rhodes learned the Vietnamese language, culture and customs and a permanent Christian presence in this area was established. | |||
| See Handout #196 | ||||
| See Handout #197 | ||||
| 4. | Vicars apostolic--because the church would not ordain local natives vicars apostolic were appointed by the Holy See. These were bishops who did not occupy their see, but operated directly under the pope. These bishops arrived in Vietnam in 1641 A.D. and began ordaining the first Vietnamese priests and established a seminary. | |||
| 5. | A lay church in Korea--in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Korean scholars discovered Christianity through books which had come from China. In 1784 A.D., Yi-Seung- hun, a young scholar on a voyage to Pekin became baptized and he and a friend worked out a Christian theology from the Confucian tradition. He returned home and founded a Christian community with baptism, mass and confession. Seized by doubts he solicited Pekin for a priest. It was too late, Pekin had already massacred their priests. | |||
| 6. | Russian Asia--in the 16th and l7th centuries the Russian church began to expand its missionary activity into China and Alaska | |||
| III. |
Missions from the European Perspective and the Crisis of the Eighteenth Century |
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| A. | Missions and European opinion | |||
| 1. | Missionary Literature--these writings of missionaries sent back to Europe gained great popularity. The Chinese Jesuits sent back great scientific value specifically contributing to the Europe's knowledge on geography. These same writings demonstrated some very old civilizations, some very advanced civilizations, and those that had developed separately from Europe. | |||
| 2. | A New Picture of Non-Christians--hesitantly Christians began to look at non-Christian in a different light. Was it possible to look on some pagan religions as forerunners of Christianity? With this type of thinking missionary literature became a weapon against Christianity. | |||
| B. | The Great Mission Crisis--bishops in the Far East continued to fight amongst themselves. | |||
| See Handout #198 | ||||
| See Handout #199 | ||||
| See Handout #200 | ||||
| 1. | The dispute over rites--the question became what methods and attitudes should Christians adopt when faced with other cultures. Should Christian rites utilize some of the pagan rites in liturgy? Should culture be allowed to continue to use the caste system as in India? Can the Chinese continue to honor their dead? | |||
| 2. | The condemnation of Chinese and Malabar rites--in 1693 A.D. the vicar apostolic forbade the use of Jesuit vocabulary to denote God in Chinese and the traditional Chinese rites performed by Christians. The pope was called in to settle the dispute and he finally condemned all Chinese and Malabar rites in 1742 A.D. | |||
| 3. | The missions--victims of international politics--with the suppression of the Jesuits, 3000 missionaries were called back to Europe. Many Christian converts were left to their own devices. The French Revolution had its continuing fight with England over the rule of the seas and missionary activity overseas. The final results of the eighteen century were disillusioning. A certain feeling of powerlessness had crept into the church although she was now a universal church. | |||
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Handouts |
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| 187 | Gold, Pepper and Souls. Extracts from Christopher Columbus' trips. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 188 | The fight for justice in the Spanish Colonies. A defender of Indians. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 189 | One does not abolish idols in a day. Tough life of missionaries. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 190 | Slavery, commerce and evangelization in Africa. Black slavery. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 191 | A mission journal entry. Paganism and Christianity collide. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 192 | The Good Shepherd: not easy to read in our day, but enlightening. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 193 | St. Frances Xavier describes his methods of Christianizing pagans. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 194 | The Evangelization of China. A priest acculturates himself to them. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 195 | The baptism of moribund infants in China. Girls are expendable. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 196 | The Vatican sends envoys out into the missionary fields. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 197 | The beginnings of Christianity in Korea. Interesting tale of laymen. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 198 | China as seen from Europe. A philosopher gives an opinion. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 199 | The Chinese are older than Europeans? Cause for concern for missionaries. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
| 200 | Condemnation of Chinese rites by Pope Clement XI in 1704 A.D. | |||
| See Full Text | ||||
