The
truth is always more complicated than fiction. While it is tempting to portray
the Church in China in monochrome, a more accurate depiction provides us with a
polychromatic canvas, and this more truthful painting casts more honest lights
on both China and the Church. Let me give you an example.
When
the bishop of the Society of the Divine Word, Johann Baptist von Anzer,
established his mission in China during the late 19th century, he brought with
him an intense German nationalism, just as the French Jesuits had carried
French nationalism with them when they built churches, schools, and French
market areas in Shanghai. When Anzer arrived at his mission he draped a massive
German flag from his church steeple and above the veranda of his rectory he
installed a sign that read, “Vivat,
crescat, floreat Germania,” or “May Germany live, flourish, and grow.”
German nationalist songs were often intoned from his chapel with brio, and the
native Chinese wondered if missionaries like him came to convert China or
colonize it. Only a short decade previously, Britain had bombed China’s shores
and bullied its court into legalizing the sale of Western opium, as well as to
open all China to foreign missionaries. It did not help matters that Christian
missionaries were thereafter connected to guns and opium in the eyes of most
Chinese. There is little mystery, then, why common Chinese had become
suspicious of Westerners and their religion. But despite appearances, most
missionaries were not in favor of guns and opium, nor were most missionaries in
favor of open displays of European nationalism.
I
often tell my students that propaganda involves telling only one side of a
story. And the more they read about history based on primary sources the more
they agree with this assertion. Too often, historical monographs provide biased
and un-nuanced depictions of the past, recounting a history that validates
one’s preconceptions rather than explain what really happened.
Gerolamo Fazzini’s The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs, a collection of primary biographies, autobiographies, and
documentation of Catholic martyrdom in modern China, provides readers with
first-hand testimonies of the turbulent Maoist era; readers can decide for
themselves how to interpret China’s policies regarding the Catholic Church from
1949 until Mao’s death in 1976. And by presenting these sources unedited,
Fazzini avoids propaganda, allowing those witnesses to present both the brutal
years of suppression and the more lenient years that followed Mao.
The
Maoist interpretation of Christianity in China was formed both by Mao’s
knowledge of Western imperialism (mixed as it was with mission churches marked
by foreign flags) and Marxist materialism, which views religion as a form of
self-comfort under the yoke of class exploitation. There is almost no evidence
that Mao, or his comrades, truly understood the history, belief, and goals of
Christianity apart from its nationalist underpinnings. While there were a few
Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, who indeed embraced the
imperialist enterprise in China, it is incontestable that the greater majority
of these foreigners loved China and expressed that love through unselfish acts
of charity. The manifest value of Fazzini’s book is that it consists of a
collection of original testimonies by Chinese Catholics who demonstrate a
profound love of their own culture, while also expressing an abiding belief in
God in an era of forceful transition. We do well to recall as we read these
testimonies that it was not Chinese culture that most harshly persecuted
Christianity, but rather Western Marxist materialism that inspired the
suppression of all religious commitment.
In
the biography of Father Li Chang, written by his cousin Li Daoming, we have an
excellent example of how Catholic Christianity, as Fazzini describes, “at last
began to breathe an atmosphere of relative freedom” after the reforms of Deng
Xiaoping had begun (p. 138). Father Li was arrested and transferred from one
labor camp to another; his crime was refusal to surrender to China’s Marxist
indoctrination. While held in Camp 101,
Li was interrogated in a dark room:
“Are you Li Chang?”
“I am Father Li Chang.”
“Don’t talk nonsense! This is a courtroom! Speak! What crimes have
you committed against the Country?”
“Everything I do, I do for the good of my Country. Those who know
me can testify to that.”
“Nonsense! We know that you are a liar and we have proofs of your
misdeeds. . . . We are merciful with those who confess their crimes and severe
with those who disobey us” (p. 179).
At
the end of the trial it was revealed that Father Li’s “crime” was “secretly
hoarding” objects, which were in fact a number of religious articles he used
for Mass and devotions. For his inability to apprehend why this was a “crime,”
and for his refusal to malign the Church hierarchy, Li was “locked up in a tiny
cell where he remained for ten days” (p. 180).
During
the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Father Li was subjected to a string of
“struggle sessions,” during which he was forced onto a platform in front of a
large crowd, made to kneel, and “accused of corruption and fraud . . . spat
on,” and insulted “with vulgar epithets” (p. 196). Father Li, because he
remained loyal to the Pope, was accused of being “a spy, a dog in the pay of
the imperialists,” and ordered, “Acknowledge your offenses, confess!” (p. 198).
He simply responded, “Show me some evidence and I will confess,” and since
there was none, he was at last accused of the “crime” of believing in God (p.
198). For that he was punished and humiliated. As Fazzini recounts, Li accepted
his years of suffering and trial as a good priest, “with great dignity and
courage” (p. 138).
After
all his imprisonments and torments, Father Li was released once Mao had died,
and by 1979 he was able to celebrate Christmas Mass with a large and jubilant
assembly of Chinese Catholics, who had also endured the chaos of the Maoist
era. Two days before Mass, the faithful from neighboring villages began to pour
into his small church for confession: “he remained in the confessional for two
days and two nights and continued to hear confessions until the beginning of
midnight Mass” (p. 217). Shortly after Christmas, Father Li’s health declined
from years of mistreatment; the area’s Catholics gathered and knelt to receive
his final blessing, and Li died just as the Church in China began to recover from
its long suppression.
While
the diaries of Fathers Francis Tan Tiande and John Huang Yongmu are poignant
descriptions of the Church in China before its restoration in the early 1980s,
Gertrude Li Minwen’s prison diary is a more raw and candid account of agonizing
determination to remain Catholic in a context wherein countless friends and
priests collapse under the pressures of abuse and brainwashing. As I read Ms.
Li’s diary, I was reminded of a Catholic man I know from Shanxi who, while
sharing lunch one afternoon, told me in passing of his days as a Red Guard
“struggling against” his fellow Catholics through the 1960s. I asked him to
elaborate; he responded simply, “I was Catholic in my heart, I’m sorry for what
I did, I went to confession after it all ended, those days are gone now.” He is
now dedicated to Our Lady, loves his country, and is one of the more tender
persons I’ve ever met. China after 1949 is complicated, and so is Gertrude Li’s
story.
When
Father Giovanni Carbone, PIME, was expelled from China at the end of 1952, he
brought with him 25 pages of tiny Chinese characters “sewn into the soles of
the missionary’s shoes” (p. 225). It was the prison diary of Gertrude Li
Minwen, who had been arrested by Party officials along with several other young
Catholics for their affiliation with the Legion of Mary, which was labeled
“counterrevolutionary” by the state. This secret diary was written by her hand
and contains vivid accounts of official tactics to coerce Catholics to provide
testimonies against foreign priests and their fellow believers.
Gertrude
and her friends were arrested after a tense confrontation between Catholics and
Party officials on April 1, 1951. Li writes that on that day outside of the
bishop’s residence, a crowd of “students from Hua Yang School shouted, ‘Down
with the imperialist [Father] Crotti!’…the bishop came outdoors, and the same
students started shouting again: ‘Down with the imperialist [Bishop] Pollio!’”
(p. 232). Angry from the shouts of the Maoist students, another priest, Father
Edoarto Piccinini, came out of the church and countered with the exclamation,
“Long live Monsignor Pollio! Long live the bishop!” (p. 232). On the pretense
that the Catholics had stirred trouble among the people, the foreign bishop,
priests, and members of the Legion of Mary were arrested for examination.
Interrogations
and indoctrination sessions with the Chinese Catholic youth began immediately;
they were told that the April 1 confrontation represented “the warfare between imperialists
and the people” (p. 236). In essence, they were notified that to remain
Catholic was to turn against their own Chinese people; they were to choose
between China and an “imperialist” foreign religion. As was common, Gertrude
Li’s faith wavered as she heard of the “crimes of foreign invaders.” After
being subjected to unremitting examinations and propaganda, she yielded: “I
admit that the bishop and priests are imperialists” (p. 240). And when she was
asked how she would demonstrate this realization, Li responded, “I will break
off all relationships with them” (p. 240). But when she was moved to a better
prison cell as a reward, she could hear from the coughing in the room beside
hers that the bishop was her new neighbor, and she regretted her betrayal. By
the end of her prison journal, Gertrude Li Minwen had decidedly turned against
her captors, who in the face of her renewed spiritual commitment expressed one
last warning: “Can you imagine what might happen to you?” (p. 283). To this
threat, Gertrude writes: “I remained silent” (p. 283).
Fazzini’s
final entry is the most dramatic section of the book, and recalls one of the
most sensitive events in the history of the Party’s treatment of China’s
Catholic Church. (In fact, I recall once after Mass in Beijing, when asking
about the 1947 Communist army’s torture and murder of Trappist monks outside of
Beijing, being told in an urgent whisper that this was a “dangerous topic to
discuss in China today.”) This entry deals with the “via crucis” and death of the monks of Yangjiaping’s Our Lady of
Consolation Abbey, mostly Chinese, who were forced from their monastery,
restrained with thin metal wire, and taken on a death march; 33 monks died from
the abuses. When some of the monks were finally released by the Communist army,
they fled to Beijing where an American Jesuit, Father Charles McCarthy, SJ, was
stationed for Fides News Service and National Catholic News Service. Father
McCarthy was the first person to collect and record the testimonies of those
Trappists who survived the brutal afflictions they endured with their
confreres.
This
is perhaps one of the most tragic stories of Catholic persecution in the
history of modern China. Fazzini recounts:
With their hands tied behind their backs with iron wires, their
shoulders bent under the heavy baggage of the soldiers, subjected to countless
cruelties and torments, half-naked, devoured by lice, their bodies stooped, the
monks watched their companions die little by little along the way (and often they
had to abandon them on the spot without burying the corpses). Another six were
executed. All told, the “long march” imposed on the monks took the life of
thirty-three of them, fourteen priests and nineteen brothers. (p. 288)
The
episode began on July 1, 1947, when the monks were summoned to be tried by a
“people’s tribunal”; the charge against them was that they had “oppressed and
exploited the people,” and even worse, that they collaborated with the invading
Japanese (p. 292). All of this was pure contrivance, but the “people” had much
to gain by facilitating the charade; the Party promised to divide the monastery
property if the monks were convicted. As Aristotle wrote, “The least initial
deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold.” One accusation
led to another, and by July 8 the tribunal had relinquished the monastery and
all its belongings to the local farmers, after the troops had first taken
whatever they wanted. It was after the trial and plunder that the monks were
taken on their march.
The
trials were fierce. According to witnesses, the Party tribunal approached a
local delegate of the “people” for the verdict: “They must die. Hand them over
to us, if you want. We will take up stones and kill them” (p. 300). The
tribunal’s reply: “The Communist government is the government of the people; we
can only make the people’s decision our own” (p. 300). The monks were brought
to the chapel corner, where the lamp of the Blessed Sacrament was hanging, and
they were bound in chains; their “cinctures, scapulars, rosaries, and medals
were snatched away,” and their imprisonment began. “They set out on their march
in the late evening carrying the soldiers’ heavy packs, and, what was worse
according to the Trappists, they were endlessly berated for their faith. One
soldier reportedly said, ‘We know that you have no fear of death, but we will
beat and torture you without respite until you are half-dead. In that state we
will induce you to agree with us’” (p. 304). By October, the death march had
ended, the remaining monks were released, and the monastery was completely
destroyed by the army. Despite their torments, the monks remained Christ-like
in their attitude of forgiveness. In Father McCarthy’s record of his interviews
he writes:
I asked Brother Joachim how he felt during those weeks. He
answered that his heart was at peace and even joyful. “The reason,” he said, “was
that we were not guilty of anything.” … When asked what he would do to the
Communists if they were taken prisoners and handed over to him, he answered, ‘I
would forgive them.”
There
are no Catholic monasteries in China today.
As
I stated at the outset, there are good historic reasons for China’s suspicion,
and perhaps even disdain, for foreigners, and there are examples of Christian
missionary collaboration with imperialist ambitions. I should, however, add
here that an entire book could be written about instances wherein Christians
were protected and harbored by native Chinese—many of whom were not Christians
themselves. Fazzini’s collection, The Red
Book of Chinese Martyrs, provides important historical examples of where
Chinese suspicion and disdain went too far, and resulted in injustice,
persecution, and violence.
What
is often overlooked, however, by scholars who insist on connecting Christianity
in China to Western colonialism, is that the missionaries were almost
unanimously in disagreement with the guns, opium, and arrogance that followed
Western diplomats and businessmen. Yes, Christianity sometimes used the
vocabulary of conquest, but as the English poet, painter, and printmaker
William Blake once said, “The glory of Christianity is to conquer by
forgiveness.” One of the manifest virtues of Fazzini’s book is that it
illustrates this point with brilliant clarity, not through the usual narrative
of a secondary study, but rather through the original voices of those who lived
through one of modern China’s most turbulent eras.
The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs
is not comfortable reading, but as China grows more influential on the global
landscape, and as it hosts one of the world’s fastest growing Christian
populations, it is imperative that we better understand all sides of the
history of the Church’s role in China’s modern rise. After religious practice
began to recover in the 1980s, China’s long-abandoned churches also began to
hear hymns and prayers as the faithful crowded again into the dusty pews. After
Father Joseph Li Chang’s release from the labor camp he organized Benediction
of the Blessed Sacrament. A Catholic man had years earlier buried the
monstrance deep in the earth while the church was being ransacked by radicals.
Before Benediction the elderly man dug up the monstrance, then “covered with a
layer of rust and filth” (p. 219). Father Li carefully cleaned the monstrance
with lime, and when it appeared again before the large crowd of Catholics, they
all knelt. The visible Church had returned.
The
Red Book of Chinese Martyrs
By Gerolamo Fazzini
Paperback, Ignatius Press (2009), 390 pp.
[Editor's note: An earlier version of this essay incorrectly identified Johann Baptist von Anzer as founder the Society of the Divine Word; he was a bishop of the Society, which was founded by St. Arnold Janssen.]