Changing China

by William Gascoyne-Cecil; Lady Florence Mary Cecil

CHAPTER XV

ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN CHINA

It is only just to put in the forefront of the influences that are Christianising and changing China the French, Italian, and other missions of the Roman Catholic Communion. Our first contact with the wonderful work which these missions are accomplishing was in French China, at that very interesting but most pestilential locality, Saigon. We were received with the greatest kindness by the Sous-Gouverneur at the French Government House, a palatial residence worthy rather of an emperor than a governor, compared to which Government House at Hong-Kong seemed but a cottage. Yet even there life was hardly bearable even under an electric fan. The heat was stifling. It had been impossible to drive out except in the middle of the night, and so we were entertained by being taken by night to see our first glimpse of Chinese civilisation, for the Chinese once dominated this country, and have left their civilisation behind them.

Driving back, our French host regaled us with stories of the people, and incidentally mentioned the great power which Christianity has in these colonies. We were much impressed by his testimony to the efficiency of mission work, for the French official is far from favourable to the Roman Catholic Church. He told us not only was a large part of the country round Saigon Christian, but Christianity was such a vital thing that the Church had no difficulty in getting sufficient money to build splendid churches. Next day I called on the Bishop. He was a splendid type of Roman Catholic missionary, with his white beard and his courtly manners. We found several such in our wanderings, for Catholic missions are spread all over China, and have been founded many years. He spoke of the great success of the work, and thought that the hostility of the French Government was in some ways preferable to their patronage, for the personal lives of many of the officials are far from admirable. Their morality would better befit our Restoration Period than the twentieth century. A Governor's mistress was a person recognised and courted by official society, and it was perhaps to the advantage of the mission that in the native mind Christianity was dissociated from such evil doings.

I asked him how he supported the climate, which we had found barely endurable for two days. He replied that the climate was quite cool to the missionary who lived a chaste and temperate life, but that the Government found it terrible for their officials. This may be quite true, but still I think chaste and temperate Englishmen would find the climate of Saigon intolerable. We do not make sufficient allowance in speaking of a healthy or unhealthy climate for the origin of the missionary. If he comes from Marseilles in the South of France, it is not perhaps wonderful that he should find the countries which are not hotter than his native land in the summer quite tolerable.

The history of Catholic missions is apparently to be divided into three periods. The first period terminates in 1742 and commences with the first mission of the Jesuits under Father Ricci in 1584. During this period the Roman Catholic missions, directed by a series of men of extreme ability, endeavoured and nearly succeeded in converting China from the "top downwards," for, owing to their wonderful scientific attainments, the missionaries received important posts under the Chinese Government. The fall of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of China by the Manchus only served to improve their position; they directed not only the Government astronomical observatory, but they even superintended the arsenal and became the cartographers of the empire. They had many adherents chiefly among the learned. Christianity, like Confucianism, had commended itself to the intellect of the country. In pursuit of this policy they endeavoured to harmonise Christianity with the thought of the literati of China; such a process was no doubt extremely dangerous, but they thought that it was possible to tolerate ancestor worship and the adoration of Confucius; whether they were right or whether they were wrong, while they did it Christianity had many educated adherents.

Another kind of missionary next appeared in China, the Dominicans, who made up in fanaticism for what they lacked in wisdom. These men offended every prejudice of the Chinese; they taught the harshest and narrowest form of the Roman Catholic doctrine. The foot was to be made to fit the shoe, and not the shoe to fit the foot. There were riots and troubles, and the Dominicans blamed the highly placed Jesuits and freely accused them of having denied the faith and of having accepted high office as the reward for unfaithfulness. Appeals were made to Rome. Rome, many thousands of miles away, wavered, unable probably to understand either the controversy or its importance. The heroism of missionaries travelling over miles of sea and being shipwrecked in their endeavours to reach Rome reads like a romance. But in 1742 the matter was finally settled by Benedict XIV. in a Bull "Ex quo singulari," and the Jesuits were defeated—a defeat which was completed by their suppression in China in 1773.

With their defeat the Roman missions entered on the second period of their history. They were no longer directed by very able men, and they became rather the Church of the poor than of the rich. They experienced constant persecution, and, to gain weight and position, they finally accepted the French, who were then in the zenith of their power, as their patrons. Such a course necessarily involved that they must do all they could to further the French interests, and the Roman Catholic missions became more and more an adjunct of French diplomacy, defended by France and on their side advancing the interests of the French. It is impossible to say exactly when this policy began. Louis XIV. had sent large gifts to the Emperor of China, but he does not seem to have had any intentions beyond giving countenance and weight to the Roman Catholic missions. Some one pointed out to Napoleon I. the great value of China, and the man of great ideas, always dreaming of that Empire in the East which he was never to found, clearly thought there was something to be made of this. He helped the missionary societies with funds—it is curious to think of Napoleon I. as the supporter of foreign missions. This act came, like most other French secrets of the time, to the ears of Pitt; and he managed that the information should reach the Emperor of China, and sent through a safe channel advice that the Emperor of China should look upon the Roman missions as dangerous and France as a "wicked power." Whether this advice would have been taken to heart or not is doubtful. Roman missions were unpopular in China; still they had powerful friends; but the discovery of one of their missionaries with maps of China intended for the use of foreign countries convinced her of the truth of the English suggestion, and Roman missions were put down at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a relentless hand. In 1840 there broke out the first foreign war between China and the West, and after this Catholic missions became more and more an appanage of French policy. Whether the French had distantly intended the conquest of China, or whether they merely looked upon China as an outlet for her trade, they used the Catholic missions as a means whereby French interests should be pushed. Certainly the author of Les Missions Catholiques Françaises does not hesitate to suggest that France was rewarded for the protection of missions by an increased trade.

In 1842, as the result of a war, a treaty was signed to which we have before referred, and in 1860 it was followed by another. Both gave missionaries extensive rights. Can you wonder that the peace-loving Chinaman, looking back on history, finds it difficult to understand why the preachers of the gospel of love should have been so often followed by the armies and fleets of the military races of the West? The coping stone to this policy of propagating Christianity by the power and influence of a foreign nation was placed by an edict which just preceded the Boxer movement. That edict astonished even the Roman Catholics, for the author of Les Missions Catholiques Françaises au XIX. Siècle speaks of the extraordinary surprise it was to the Roman Catholic body. This edict ordained that bishops and priests should have official rank in China; that the bishops should be equal in rank to viceroys and governors, and the vicars-general and the arch-priests should be equal to treasurers and judges, while the other priests should be equal to prefects of the first and second class; and that if any question of importance arose in connection with the missions, the bishop or missionaries should call in the intervention of the Minister or Consul to whom the Pope had confided the protection of the Catholics. The edict closes with three injunctions. First, that the people in general were to live at peace with the Catholics; secondly, that the bishops should instruct the Catholics to live at peace with the rest of the world; and lastly, that the judges should judge fairly between Catholics and non-Catholics.

This edict can perhaps be regarded rather as a victory of French diplomacy than of the Roman Church. French diplomacy had converted the whole of the Roman Catholic work into an agency for the national aggrandisement of France; the Roman Catholic Church had sold herself to the French Government; her old traditional policy of employing the powers of this world to propagate Christianity had involved her in this position; and she had presented Christianity to her converts as something which, however great its spiritual gain, had also very real temporal advantages. The Church was a great society which would defend you in this world just as it would give you promises of security in the world to come. So she had instituted a regular system by which her adherents were defended in any lawsuit or attack. This interference in lawsuits was, however, not peculiar to the Roman Catholics. It is an old Chinese custom—a custom in which both Romans and other denominations have acquiesced; still it was exaggerated by the Roman Catholic Church till it brought down upon her the anger of the Chinese official world.

It is hard for a Westerner, with his ideas of an independent court of justice, to comprehend the system. A lawsuit is not regarded in China as a thing to be settled simply on its merits. They are only a factor in the decision. The general desire is that, if all things are equal, justice shall be done; but together with justice the judge has to consider the social position of the litigants and their power of vengeance or of reward. The best analogy to a Chinese lawsuit is an English election. If you read the speeches and addresses you will conceive that the whole desire of a candidate engaged in an English election is that justice should be done, but in practice you soon discover that the influence of individuals has to be considered as well. A candidate who always disregards justice is universally condemned; but a candidate who wilfully offends powerful people, who is not prepared to give and take, to sacrifice a conviction here, to push forward a little beyond the line of justice there, is equally unable to gain the suffrages of the voters; and in China the judge stands in the same position as the candidate does in England. If he is convinced that a certain cause is backed by very powerful people who can secure him a better appointment and a higher salary, or who if angered might even succeed in getting him dismissed from his post, he decides the case in that litigant's favour. If, on the other hand, the parties are about equally matched in influence and power, like the English candidate he then considers the justice of the case; and therefore the first thing a litigant does is to try and secure all the influential support within his reach. Chinese officials told me that they have to have their cards printed with "for visiting purposes only" written on them, otherwise they are stolen and used without their knowledge in the furtherance of some lawsuit, and English Protestant missionaries confirmed the story.

Though this interference in lawsuits is a universal custom, its extreme use is peculiar to the Roman Catholics. To attack a Roman Catholic was to bring the whole strength of his mission, with the diplomacy of France behind it, against you. It was in furtherance of this policy that the Roman Catholics were anxious to hold official rank. An official will not speak to any one below his rank; the missionary finds access to the Viceroys very difficult; but if the Roman Hierarchy had this high official rank, the Bishop had only to pay a visit in his green official chair, when, by the strict etiquette of China, he must be received with all politeness, and his visit must be returned. To procure these privileges the Roman Catholics were prepared to sell to France the large and undoubted influence they had among many thousands in China. There is a certain poetic justice in the Roman Catholic Church suffering from the actions of the French Government at home.

Still justice compels us to remember that they have not been alone in this policy. Missionaries of other faiths and other lands have both relied on the defence of foreign powers and have interfered with the lawsuits of their converts. A Protestant missionary from the Southern States of America frankly defended the system. He boldly asserted that non-interference in a lawsuit would be simply misunderstood by the Chinese. When he was young he had absolutely refused to interfere in a case where a widow was being oppressed, and a non-Christian Chinese gentleman had interviewed him, and after some circumlocution, had remonstrated with him on his hardness of heart, that he, a teacher of the religion of love, should neglect the widow in her necessity. Still, the Roman Church, as in Ireland, as in France, as in Italy, is an institution which is essentially political; and the traditional policy of the Roman Church has been followed in China with the invariable result, first, that when the power of the State is used to promote her tenets she grows strong, and next when that power is withdrawn or becomes hostile she feels the loss of the earthly support on which she has relied and apparently grows weaker. This is, however, only transitory; the Roman Church, for instance, is growing stronger, not weaker, now that she has lost the support of French diplomacy, and the missions have entered upon their third epoch when they are preaching Christianity without any special support of a foreign government and are succeeding. For there are few bodies of people in this world who are more heroic and devoted than the Roman missionaries; they have died by fever, have been massacred, they live on a miserable pittance; I was told that one enlightened missionary, once a Professor in Paris University, lived on £12 a year; and their heroism and self-denial reaps a large reward.

Their most beautiful and most successful works are the orphanages which they maintain. They accept any of those children whom the Chinese mothers cast out to die, either because of their poverty or because they are girls. These children are brought up with infinite care and kindness, and are taught embroidery, lace-making, and other trades. No more beautiful sight can be seen than one of these orphanages, with the happy children hard at work and rejoicing as only Chinese rejoice in pleasant labour. When these children grow up they are married to Christians, and from them springs a native Christian population, which has never known any of the horrors of heathenism. As a rule they live in small societies. I believe there is an island on the Yangtsze which is entirely peopled by Christians. The work may be great, but the cost is great too. Many a life has been laid down so that these children might be Christians.

I recall one scene at Ichang. There rises near the town a great orphanage, and when we visited it, we found the French sisters looking weary and whiter than their white robes. An epidemic of smallpox had broken out in the orphanage, and out of 140 orphans, 28 had died of small-pox, besides which the sisters had suffered themselves from malaria. One could but admire the devotion of these women living far off from their own country, tending children whom no one else would tend, and gaining as their reward hatred and misunderstanding from the Chinese. A Bishop belonging to this mission had been murdered, and a lay brother told me that it was because they were accused of stealing children to make Western medicine out of their eyes. This strange slander arises apparently from the desire, which is not understood by the Chinese, to save and preserve the lives of other people's children. Chinese ethics have no place for such altruism. Your duty never extends beyond your own relations, either by blood or from official position. There is another reason, however, for this notion. The Roman Catholics have a system of native agents who are prepared to baptize any child, whether of heathen or Christian parents, who is dying. This system is very well organised. Some of these agents perambulate districts and some remain at fixed points. Perhaps not unnaturally the Chinese cannot understand this methodical search for dying children, and as a reason must be found, and as the reason that seems most probable to the Chinese mind is some form of personal gain, they have invented this slander.

Whether we approve or disapprove the general action of the Roman Catholics—and our feelings are probably very mixed on this subject—we must recognise that they are a very great factor in the change that is coming over China. For centuries they have stood before the Chinese as associating with Christianity the science and the knowledge the Chinese have always admired. The wonderful work done by the Jesuits of the eighteenth century has established a tradition of excellent scientific work which is well maintained by the learned brothers of the Ziccawei Observatory. Many hundreds of lives have been saved at sea by the splendid meteorological service they have organised, and the sailor who cares nothing for Roman or for Protestant walks down on the Bund to see what the Ziccawei brothers can tell him about the probability of a typhoon. The benefit of their service, though great, is not limited to the number of lives of mariners that their science preserves; their science is an object-lesson to the Chinese—an object-lesson especially useful at a time when materialism is taunting Christianity with obscurantism.

Missionaries in the field do not entirely recognise the connection that exists between their own work and the work of other denominations. The man on the mission field sees his bit of work, and realises that it is a failure or that it is a success, but he does not realise how intimately associated that success or failure is with world movements over which he has but the very slightest control. These world movements are dependent on many factors that must be beyond his direct knowledge, and one of the factors that influence the success of Protestant missions is the wide influence of Catholic work. Conversely every new Protestant mission that opens the door of a school or a college probably tends to augment the number of Roman Catholics in China. The question put to the Chinaman is not, "Will you be Roman or Protestant?" That was the question that was put to the European in the sixteenth century. The question is, "Will you become a materialist or a Christian?" And the answer he makes must be largely affected by his experience of the intellectual efficiency and high moral tone of those he calls Christians. I despair of persuading my Protestant friends that the reputation of the Ziccawei brothers is a valuable asset in evangelical work, and I equally despair of persuading the Roman Catholic that the splendid educational establishments of American Protestantism is one of the reasons why their numbers are increasing by leaps and bounds; but the Chinaman would probably think the remark self-obvious.

How small the differences appear that we think so profound was first brought home to me as we passed through the Red Sea on the French mail in company with a body of Coptic schoolmasters who were going to civilise Menelik's subjects in Abyssinia. As it was Sunday morning these young men came up to me to ask an explanation of the ceremony of ship inspection which is performed with some pomp by the French captain on that day. With a wholly exaggerated idea as to the religiosity of the French they had concluded that this was a Christian ceremony, and when I had explained to them that on a French ship it was illegal to have a service, they were distressed, for they explained that though they had been educated in many different quarters, they were all in agreement on religious matters. One had been educated in the Protestant College in Beyrout, and another had been educated in the Jesuit College at Cairo, which, he added in explanation, is practically the same thing. This statement would be regarded as accurate by the average Chinaman.

At any rate, no one can doubt the importance of Roman Catholic work in China. They now claim to have over a million of adherents, served by nearly two thousand priests, and when one reads that they declare that they have made in Peking alone thirty-three thousand converts in one year, one realises what a power they are in the Christianisation of China. In the West such figures would mean the downfall of Protestantism, but in China such figures mean the growth of a common Christianity which all denominations can influence and in which all denominations can have a share. Remember, though a million Christians sounds a vast number, it is small compared with the four hundred millions who now form the population of China.