Eastern religions may currently be giving Vatican officials heartburn, but there is one Eastern notion they should be able to appreciate: karma. The Roman Catholic Church has a long history of antagonism with the East. When it comes to Catholicism in Asia, it seems, what goes around keeps coming around—again and again and again.
The Roman Catholic push into the Far East began in the Middle Ages, with high hopes, as Western ventures to Asia often do. Yet preaching in the East was much tougher than evangelizing the New World, where priests followed conquistadores who could easily overcome native cultures. (The Phillippines was an Asian exception, thanks to Magellan and centuries of Spanish might; the island nation still accounts for two thirds of the more than 100 million Asian Catholics.) In China and Japan and India, on the other hand, Catholic priests found elaborate civilizations older than their own, with established—and profoundly different—philosophical and religious traditions, all backed by imperial authority as ruthless as the divine-right monarchies back home.
For example, the Ming Dynasty that drove the Mongols from China in 1368 also sent the Franciscans packing. Two centuries later the Jesuits returned, led by Matteo Ricci, who became the first Westerner invited into the Forbidden City. He learned Chinese and wore Chinese dress. He was also willing to allow Chinese converts to maintan folk rituals, like offerings to their ancestors, arguing that they were social, not religious, functions. Rome disagreed, declaring such rites pagan superstitions incompatible with Christianity. When the Vatican ordered a halt to such practices, the emperor retaliated and shut the church down. In India, the Jesuit Roberto de Nobili also adapted Hindu customs and dressed like a Brahmin priest, with somewhat better results. But in Japan, Jesuit and then Franciscan missionaries were brutally persecuted under the 16th-century shoguns for trying to sow the faith. As the past is always present in the Catholic Church, Rome will next year beatify 188 Japanese martyrs from that era—priests and other missionaries who were beheaded, burned at the stake or scalded to death in a volcanic pit.
Fast-forward to the the modern era, and in some respects much remains the same. In China, bishops and priests loyal to Rome are routinely jailed and often die in prison. In Pakistan and India, the Catholic Church struggles to survive amid ethnic and religious upheavals and government scrutiny. Even the return of religious freedom to Japan under the 19th-century Meiji dynasty, which led to the rebirth of a Catholic community in Nagasaki, seemed ill-fated. The atomic bomb dropped by a U.S. warplane not only ended World War II, it also wiped out two thirds of all Japanese Catholics. In Vietnam, the communist triumph led to fierce suppression. When Chinese communists expelled the church in 1950, they set up a government-approved Catholic group, which has since competed with the underground Catholic Church faithful to Rome. (The election of Pope Benedict XVI after the death of the great anticommunist John Paul II was supposed to augur a thaw. But the standoff has resumed.)
Still, Catholicism continues to survive, and even grow. Yet so do other Christian denominations. Protestant churches, especially Pentecostal and fundamentalist sects with no hierarchy to rein them in, are drawing the most converts, thanks to free-wheeling services and no hesitation about incorporating the rites of indigenous folk religions. In South Korea, where priests and other Catholics were beheaded just 150 years ago, Christianity is rivalling Buddhism and Confucianism in popularity—but much of that growth is among non-Catholic churches. (Last summer's drama in Afghanistan, in which 23 South Korean Presbyterian missionaries were abducted by the Taliban, underscored the fact that South Korean Christians send more missionaries to foreign lands than any country except the United States.)
Indeed, the next great challenge for the Vatican may come not from the bullying of repressive governments or loyalty to native traditions but from competing churches. The choices facing Rome are much the same: how much to adapt to local cultures without compromising the heart of the faith. What is different from previous cycles of growth and suppression is that Christianity now has Asian roots so deep that Rome can only exert so much control.
At the beginning of the last century, 80 percent of all Catholics lived in the Northern and Western Hemispheres. By 2020, experts say that eight in 10 Catholics will live in the Eastern and Southern Hemispheres—"the next Christendom," author Philip Jenkins calls it. As Thomas C. Fox, author of "Pentecost in Asia: New Way of Being Church," writes: "The locus of Catholicism has already shifted dramatically in our lifetimes to such nations as India, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Vietnam and South Korea … In the year 2000, the number of Jesuits in India exceeded for the first time the number of Jesuits in the United States."
The question is how much freedom Benedict XVI will allow the Asian church. In the pope's previous life as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he once described the Hindu notion of reincarnation as "morally cruel, because these eternal returns to earthly life resemble a hellish cycle." On the other hand, Catholicism in Asia keeps coming back, each time with renewed hope that the gate of heavenly peace will open for good.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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