Chinese Rites controversy

The debate discussed whether Chinese ritual practices of ancestor veneration and other formal rites qualified as religious, and thus incompatible with Catholic belief.

Pius XII issued a decree on 8 December 1939, authorizing Chinese Catholics to observe the ancestral rites and participate in Confucius-honoring ceremonies.

[9][10] In a decree signed on 23 March 1656, Pope Alexander VII accepted practices "favorable to Chinese customs", reinforcing 1615 decrees which accepted the usage of the Chinese language in liturgy, a notable exception to the contemporary Latin Catholic discipline which had generally forbidden the use of local languages.

[11] In the 1659 instructions given by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (known as the Propaganda Fidei) to new missionaries to Asia, provisions were clearly made to the effect that adapting to local customs and respecting the habits of the countries to be evangelized was paramount:[12] Do not act with zeal, do not put forward any arguments to convince these peoples to change their rites, their customs or their usages, except if they are evidently contrary to the religion [i.e., Catholic Christianity] and morality.

[14] The Jesuits made an important contribution to the Empire's military, with the diffusion of European artillery technology, and they directed the castings of cannons of various calibers.

[18] The Europeans are very quiet; they do not excite any disturbances in the provinces, they do no harm to anyone, they commit no crimes, and their doctrine has nothing in common with that of the false sects in the empire, nor has it any tendency to excite sedition ... We decide therefore that all temples dedicated to the Lord of heaven, in whatever place they may be found, ought to be preserved, and that it may be permitted to all who wish to worship this God to enter these temples, offer him incense, and perform the ceremonies practiced according to ancient custom by the Christians.

[22][23] Besides the Jesuits, other religious orders such as the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians started missionary work in China during the 17th century, often coming from the Spanish colony of the Philippines.

[24] They raised three main points of contention:[8] In Rome, the Jesuits tried to argue that these "Chinese Rites" were civic rituals, rather than religious, and that converts should be allowed to continue to participate.

[27][28] Pope Clement XI condemned the Chinese rites and Confucian rituals, and outlawed any further discussion in 1704,[29] with the anti-rites decree Cum Deus optimus of 20 November 1704.

The mission, led by Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon,[30][31] communicated the prohibition of Chinese rites in January 1707, but as a result was banished to Macao.

The tablet that bears the Chinese words "Reverence for Heaven" should not be allowed to hang inside a Catholic church and should be immediately taken down if already there.

Chinese officials and successful candidates in the metropolitan, provincial, or prefectural examinations, if they have been converted to Roman Catholicism, are not allowed to worship in Confucian temples on the first and fifteenth days of each month.

V. Whether at home, in the cemetery, or during the time of a funeral, a Chinese Catholic is not allowed to perform the ritual of ancestor worship.

[21] The Controversy debate was most intense between a group of Christian literati and a Catholic bishop (named Charles Maigrot de Crissey) in Fujian province, with the Chinese group of converts supporting the Jesuits and the bishop supported by less accommodating Iberian mendicants (Dominicans and Franciscans).

While the Yongzheng Emperor appreciated and admired the Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione's artwork and western technologies, he also reinforced anti-Christian policies in 1737.

In 1939, a few weeks after his election to the papacy, Pope Pius XII ordered the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples to relax certain aspects of Clement XI's and Benedict XIV's decrees.

[39] After the Apostolic Vicars had received guarantees from the Manchukuo Government that confirmed the mere "civil" characteristics of the so-called "Chinese rites", the Holy See released, on 8 December 1939, a new decree, known as Plane Compertum, stating: It is abundantly clear that in the regions of the Orient some ceremonies, although they may have been involved with pagan rites in ancient times, have—with the changes in customs and thinking over the course of centuries—retained merely the civil significance of piety towards the ancestors or of love of the fatherland or of courtesy towards one's neighbors.

[40]Overall, Plane Compertum asserted: According to Pope Pius XII's biographer, Jan Olav Smit, this meant that Chinese customs were no longer considered superstitious, but were an honourable way of esteeming one's relatives and therefore permitted by Catholic Christians.

[43] As the Church began to flourish, Pius XII established a local ecclesiastical hierarchy, and, on 18 February 1946, named Thomas Tien Ken-sin, who was from 18 July 1939 Apostolic Vicar of Qingdao, as the first Chinese national in the Sacred College of Cardinals[43] and later that year – on 10 May 1946 – appointed him to the Archdiocese of Beijing.