Mappa Mundi
China, Holy See and the reality (that is more important than the idea)
In February 2018 when the 4000th edition of La Civiltà Cattolica was published, Pope Francis, in a special audience in the Vatican, recommended to our journal, as an example to follow, a man who loved China totally: Matteo Ricci, or Lì Mădòu as he was known in China (1522–1610). This Jesuit — who transferred to China when he was 30 years old — made a great mappa mundi (map of the world) depicting the continents and the islands then known. In this way the Chinese could see far distant lands in a new way, and they were named and briefly described. Ricci put China in the centre. This way he broke up the Eurocentrism of his audience and show the reality of China and the need for spreading the Gosple’s message.
His mappa mundi was used to create connections between western civilizations and the Chinese people. The mappa mundi, in fact, was a bridge connecting lands, cultures and civilizations that are under the same sky. In a divided world such as our own, in a world of walls and obstacles, the ideal of harmony and of a land in peace is very inspirational.
Harmony is also a term we use in music. President Xi Jinping quoting Yan Zi (578–500 BC), prime minister of Qi, a contemporary of Confucius, used the image of music that combines length, rhythm, feeling, tone, style … “Who could tolerate the same tone being played continually by a single instrument?”, he said. Hence his conclusion: “Today we live in a world with different cultures, ethnic groups, skin colors, religions and social systems and all the peoples on the face of the earth have become members of a community that is intimately united and shares the same destiny.”
In an address to UNESCO in 2014 the president used also another image, the one of many colors,to describe the “magnificent genetic map of the path of human civilizations” on the earth. And he added that the palette of colors of the various civilizations is enriched by “greater exchanges and reciprocal learning,” offering prospects for the future. That talk was diametrically opposed to the so-called “clash of civilizations.”
Pope Francis too used the image of the palette of colors and proposed the “civilization of encounter” as an alternative to the “uncivilized clash.” We also recall how Francis stated in his interview with Professor Francesco Sisci published by Asia Times in February 2016: «The Western World, the Eastern World and China each have the ability to maintain an equilibrium of peace and the strength to do so.»
The global context
This kind of equilibrium is not the fruit of compromise and division but it is the fruit of dialogue. We need dialogue. We live in a world that, regardless of the ambiguities of what we call «globalization», is constantly becoming more universal. History today must help us to understand that globalization does not coincide at all with the «westernization» of the world, but must be framed within a broader perspective.
The interdependence between peoples, cultures and nations of the world is a characteristic reality of the time in which we live and is projected as an essential dimension of the future world. Contributing to reconciliation and justice, in the present and in the future, presupposes, first, recognizing the richness that the cultural diversity of our world means and, second, ensuring the just participation of every cultural expression in the multicultural face of universal humanity.
Even when we speak of the Christian faith in a global context, whether it be five hundred years ago or today, we are faced with a ever fluid tension between the universality of its claims and the myriad cultural realities that define it locally over time and that provide the “context”.
The peculiar and fundamental universality of the Church prevents her from forging preferential links with one area of the world at the expense of others, or with one civilization at the expense of others. In particular, this universality pushes the Holy See to nurture no distrust or hostility toward any country, but to follow the way of dialogue in order to reduce distances, overcome misunderstandings, and avoid new divisions.
A look at the current world tells us that, without reckoning with everything that China represents today, it is not possible to advance in reconciliation among the peoples of the world. Even less, without the conscious and active participation of the Chinese people, it will be possible to achieve the planet’s sustainable ecological balance and to achieve the goals of the United Nations in terms of overcoming poverty and human development.
The Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, concerned about divisions and conflicts that pervade the globalized world, in a preface of a book I recently edited wrote that «the Holy See hopes to be able to collaborate with China to promote peace, to address the serious environmental issues of our time, to facilitate the encounter of cultures, and to advance the good of humanity».
And he himself in a interview to the Global Times published last may said: «sophisticated international entities — like China and the Apostolic See — may become ever more aware of a common responsibility for the grave problems of our time. Global responses have to correspond to global challenges. Catholicism by its nature is a global reality, able to promote in an original way the search for meaning and happiness, to bolster the value of belonging to a specific culture and at the same time experience universal fraternity».
Among the global challenges which need to be faced with a spirit of positive cooperation are «the great issues of peace, the fight against poverty, environmental and climatic emergencies, migration, the ethics of scientific development and the economic and social progress of peoples». «I am sure — he concluded — that we will be able to overcome mistrust and build a more secure and prosperous world».
A bridge between East and West
We must be aware of the deep bond that there is in history between East and West. It is time to retrace the long history of the Silk Road, active between the first century BC and the fourteenth century. We rediscover an Eurasian continent that in the first millennium and beyond has been deeply interconnected, even from the cultural point of view. The Silk Road relaunches centuries of history of political and commercial relations. That is why it requires great attention today.
But we must also to be aware that the western culture has learned so much from the great Chinese culture and wisdom that arrived in Europe thanks to the study and passion of the Jesuits, after the Silk Road was interrupted.
Just an example of them: the Sicilian Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta (1625–1696), a great scholar and translator of Confucius. Philosophers like Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) have taken advantage of this lesson. Leibnitz acknowledged its debt to China and from there comes all the following scientific and mathematical thought. Giovanni Battista Vico (1668–1744), who attended the Jesuit school in Naples and established the first study centre on China there, was influenced by China in seeing the centrality of history and the philosophy of history, concepts that would later influence Hegel (1770–1831) and therefore Marx (1818–1883) and also the contemporary world.
Even David Hume’s (1711–1776) gnoseological revolution, which first talks about spreading knowledge among all people, probably came from a Jesuit, Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), who was the first to translate and introduce the Tibetan Buddhist canon in Europe. Philosophers and Buddhist scholars have noted the affinities between David Hume’s empiricism and the Buddhist philosophical tradition. It was possible for Hume to have had contact with Buddhist philosophical views. The link to Buddhism comes through the Jesuit scholars at the Royal College of La Flèche where Hume went to study. Charles Francois Dolu was a Jesuit missionary who lived at the Royal College from 1723–1740, overlapping with Hume’s stay. He had extensive knowledge both of other religions and cultures and of scientific ideas. Dolu had had first-hand experience with Theravada Buddhism as part of the second French embassy to Siam in 1687–1688. In 1727, Dolu also had talked with Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit missionary who visited Tibet and made an extensive study of Tibetan Buddhism from 1716–1721. It is possible that Hume heard about Buddhist ideas through Dolu.
The letters of the Jesuit missionaries in China — real reportages — at the time of the Enlightenment were also an opportunity for intellectuals such as Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau to get to know Chinese culture. In spite of their aversion to organized religion, the fascination of the French Encyclopedists with all things Chinese, whom Voltaire highly praised in his Dictionnaire philosophique of 1764, was based mainly on reports and letters published by the Jesuit missionaries.
The French concluded that the Chinese were a highly civilized country. Some influential missionaries such as Alessandro Valignano even thought that Chinese society was in some respects even more advanced than Christian Europe. So thanks to the Jesuits, Chinese culture affects thought and taste in a profound way in the great European culture. We could say that the Jesuits were pioneers in the sinicisation of the West.
Unfortunately, European colonialism between the 19th and 20th centuries imposed a Euro-centric vision. The Opium Wars have made Christianity appear to the Chinese population as a foreign religion, that of the colonists.
Pope Francis has clearly contradicted this colonial vision several times. Let us remember that, at the end of his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, he spoke explicitly about the new role that China is playing in the international context. He said: «China today is a world power: if we see it from this side, it can change the landscape». The «change of landscape» evoked by Pope Francis summarizes the reflections that we have made so far. And it is in this «panorama» that the provisional agreement of 22 September last between China and the Holy See must be placed.
Considering this big picture I want to mention two big challenges.
The message of the «One Belt one Road Initiative»
For being aware of this «change of landscape» and for taking advantage of it we must remember of the the Silk Road along which an extraordinary meeting of different religious traditions took place: Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians and Buddhists met and lived side by side. Precisely in this pluralistic environment Christianity was willing to enter into a fruitful dialogue with cultural and religious traditions very different from the Jewish and Greek-Hellenistic ones with which it was confronted at its beginning. Christianity in the Tang era along the Silk Road remained faithful to the Gospel, fully assuming the Buddhist and Taoist vocabulary, becoming — without fear and hesitation — fully Chinese: many centuries before Matteo Ricci.
Thanks to the September Agreement, the old links are reconnected in a more harmonious way. The confidence is that you will proceed as you ride a bike, at the right speed that makes you stand and allows, without skidding, to move forward and not to stop.
All this considered, we must now look ahead and consider how the Chinese initiative cannot be assessed solely for its economic and financial importance. That would be short-sighted. Beijing places great emphasis on cultural exchanges between the peoples of the Euro-Afro-Asian ecumene, and it does so by investing resources in countless initiatives dedicated to the intangible cultural heritage: museums, fairs, exhibitions. Culture is fundamental to China’s strategy for ensuring its international influence.
We are certainly experiencing the overcoming of Western modernity and a change of mentality in both the East and the West. Historians wonder if we are experiencing the end of five hundred years of Western dominance. The debate reflects the dilemma of a Western society that feels the future of the world less and less in its hands.
The presence of other major players on the international scene (India, Japan, Brazil, Russia, etc.) makes the picture very complex and requires global governance. In this respect, Europe must find its own coherent profile. And then let’s not forget subjects such as multinational and transnational corporations, non-governmental bodies…. It is not imaginable an East that emerges and submerges the West. Nor is it possible to imagine an East or a West in which there is a unique «centre» with respect to so many suburbs.
The geopolitical gaze that Francis has been carrying on since the beginning of his Pontificate insists on reversing the sclerotic scheme of relations between a «centre» and its «peripheries».
In their new global order the Church travels in an open ocean. In particular this papacy feels called to intervene to speak with everyone, to seek dialogue with Muslims, as happened at the great theological university of Al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, or with the Buddhist abbots in Yangoon, Burma. Muslims and Buddhists for so long enemies of the Church are now meeting in the common need to curb and stop the tensions that accumulate in the world. In addition, it seeks to heal the wounds in the Christian world, with Protestants and Orthodox. The pope feels the need to remove the screen of using religions to justify the battle of interests. They are efforts, without certain results, but dictated by the urgency of contributing as much as possible to rethinking the world.
China is looking for its own way considering its relationships with India, Russia, Europe, the African countries, those of Latin America and the United States themselves in their search for a new role.
Just an example… along the Silk Road are the Arab countries. The Turkish conquest of Istanbul in 1453 and the establishment of the Ottoman Empire were among the causes that interrupted the Silk Road. Today, that fracture between west and east needs to be reabsorbed. And China and the United Arab Emirates have already signed agreements that intertwine the two worlds.
Let us not forget in this sense that the other event with a strong geopolitical impact of Francis, in addition to the Chinese one, is the Document on human brotherhood signed in Abu Dhabi with the Imam of Al-Azhar. It is not difficult to understand that peace in the world passes through China and Islam, two major priorities of the Pontificate of Francis, who has equipped himself with a needle and a reel of resistant thread…
Sinicing Christianity?
Another big challenge we face is the inculturation of the Church in China, which is also a solid understanding of what is called «sinicization». As China has its own characteristics, the Catholic Chinese Church is called to be fully Catholic and fully Chinese, so as to inculturate its teachings and the values of the Gospel. Taking on Chinese characteristics means an in-depth approach to the process of inculturation.
Card. Parolin said to Global Times: «Catholicism by its nature is a global reality, able to bolster the value of belonging to a specific culture and at the same time experience universal fraternity». So he concluded: «The principal actors in this commitment are Chinese Catholics, called to live reconciliation in order to be authentically Chinese and fully Catholic»
We have always to remind that in order to bridge cultural divides the missionaries «sinicized» themselves, transcending their nationalities. In an article published by China Daily on November 25th 2017 (just the day before Pope Francis left Roma for his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh) we read: «Jesuits who arrived in China to preach the gospel between the 16th and 19th centuries left an indelible mark on the country, and it was there that they spent the rest of their natural lives». In the same article, Zhang Xiping, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, who has spent most of his academic life researching the cultural exchanges between China and the West, said about the Jesuits: «From the very beginning they realized that in recruiting in the name of God they had to be very flexible, to ‘become all things to all,’ to use the words of Loyola himself,» Zhang says.
The Church can dialogue with Chinese cultures and traditions, with its rich history of art, music, literature and poetry. President Xi Jinping, in the address to UNESCO quoted above, praised the role of religions in the life of the country. He said: «During the last 2,000 years, religions like Buddhism, Islam and Christianity have been introduced to China, feeding the country’s music, painting and literature.»
In the case of Christianity, the examples are countless. We note only the role of the great painter Giuseppe Castiglione (Láng Shìníng, as he was known in China), who was born in Milan in 1688 and died in Beijing in 1766. When Qianlong Emperor decided to build the Old Summer Palace — originally called the Imperial Gardens (Yù Yuán) — he employed Castiglione to carry out the work to satisfy his taste for exotic buildings. It was a complex of palaces and gardens in present-day Haidian District, Beijing. Castiglione received imperial funeral rites from the Emperor Qianlong who thought highly of him.
We have to remind that in 1860, during the Second Opium War, the French and British troops reached the palace and conducted extensive looting and destruction. The palace, fruit also of the work and creativity of this Jesuit was so large that it took 4000 men 3 days of burning to destroy it.
A reflection on the past can be useful here. We recall that for Christianity it was essential to embrace its own universal mission, beyond its original experience and Jewish culture, and for Christianity to immerse itself into Greek culture. This had a strong influence on the development of the life and mission of the Church, even managing to transform the world of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was not the only culture shaped by the Greeks. Aristotle and Plato influenced all the culture that went from Rome to the foothills of the then-unsurmountable Himalayas. Christianity is thought of in Greek concepts.
What would it mean to think of it in Chinese concepts? To reflect on this theme, it might be useful to consider what then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote in the preface to the Chinese translation of his book-interview Salt of the Earth: «The true question is: Can the Christian faith be a long-lasting response, lived not only by a minority of the Chinese but also become a force that shapes all of China? […] Will there one day be an Asian or Chinese Christianity, just as a Greek and Latin Christianity appeared as a result of the transition from Judaism to Paganism? Or as in the late classical period, a Germanic, Slavic and European Christianity?».
Today the world is no longer just Hellenic, or the exclusive son of Plato or Aristotle, but it is not the son of another specific culture either. Rightly, the various parts of the world rediscover their basic values and want to take them all over the world. So for the Church and for anyone with universal aspirations the discourse is much more complicated than it was 2,000 years ago. It is no longer enough to be Greek to be universal. You have to become African or Latin American or Chinese and at the same time citizen of the world, which is composed of many elements.
It’s right for the Church to become sinicized, but this sinicization must become enrichment of the global Church. It’s right that China values its culture but not at the cost of rejecting the culture of others. Vice-versa, it is right that the Chinese Church be universal, but not at the cost of losing its Chinese roots. Without those roots his contribution would be diluted. So also China must embrace the world, but without losing its origins.
There is in this a work in enormous theory that the Church and China can do together both in China and at the universal level. The Church, today as 400 years ago, has no political or ideological agendas but the good of the world, of China and of the Church, that are and must be one. Moreover, the Church has experience and determination to take this path, as the work she did four centuries ago shows.
If it is clear that no religion can become a mere instrument of the political apparatus, it is equally true that the content of the tasks that the government asks religious organizations and believers to actuate is far from being defined. In a changing context there is perhaps space for encounter and imagination.
Card. Parolin in his interview to the Global Times used a very clear approach: «I would like to highlight an aspect which is particularly close to the heart of Pope Francis: That is, the true nature of dialogue. In dialogue, neither of the two sides gives up its own identity or what is essential for carrying out its own task. China and the Holy See are not discussing theories about their respective systems nor do they want to reopen questions which by now belong to history. Instead we are looking for practical solutions which concern the lives of real people who desire to practice their faith peacefully and offer a positive contribution to their own country».
And this sentence mirrors one of the most important pillars of the Pope Francis’ thought: «Reality is more important than the idea». Reality is, while the idea is the result of an elaboration that can always risk falling into sophistry, detaching itself from reality. Life come first. Practical solutions are better than theoretical clear but abstract and lifeless solutions.
Let the friendship guide us
In this navigation I talked about and in which the Church and China seek their own way, the routes cross. A big intersection was undoubtably the provisional agreement singed on September 22nd. What is the criterion for their navigation? Let Matteo Ricci guide us again.
He had friendship in his heart. In 1601 Ricci wrote a treatise on friendship where he brought together Chinese wisdom and Western wisdom. The echo of that work became an opportunity for the mandarins and the literati of the Ming court to encounter the thought of the great Western philosophers; but it was also the occasion for other Jesuit fathers to come to understand and dialogue with the great intellectual traditions of China. The challenge was based on the existential power of dialogue, which was able to transform souls, sometimes requiring great dedication and sometimes also suffering.
«When you consider your friend as yourself — wrote Ricci — then what is distant becomes close, the weak become strong, the disgraced are brought to prosperity, the sick are healed.» Trust brings us together, strengthens and heals wounds — even those wounds that are still open and deep, the fruit of persecution. Trust is a process that requires time. It is a «way» more than a «goal»: a way that is aware how unity prevails over conflict. The processes of change should not be blocked in destructive and insurmountable conflicts. Trust is also that just mechanism which, as when riding a bicycle, allows us to stay upright and, as we find the right speed, ensures we go forward and do not stop.
The path of the Churches and China is converging towards a single track, but it is a question of building a new balance, which at the beginning could be very unstable. We must go forward.
It is not by chance that Fr. Martino Martini (1614–1661) in his Treaty on Friendship used the metaphor of sea, navigation and shipwreck to look at the theme of friendship. There is beauty in suffering and friendship. Reconciliation and dialogue, based on a trust able to overcome obstacles and errors, are a deep form of relationship to which we are all called.
In his recent interview to Global Times cardinal Pietro Parolin said: «There are elements which demonstrate an increased trust between the two sides. We are inaugurating a method which appears positive and which will still have to be developed over time, but which, for now, gives us hope that we can gradually arrive at concrete results. We have to journey together, because only in this way will we be able to heal the wounds and misunderstandings of the past in order to show the world that even starting from positions that are far apart, we can reach fruitful agreements».
This is why Pope Francis chose the theme of friendship to speak about China. Francis undoubtedly feels empathy toward the Chinese, an empathy that can put into motion a dynamic which leads forward, encounter by encounter. The situation of the Church in China has changed much over the decades and also during the last decade. This is very important as we look for the most adequate and accessible ways to continue the journey today.
