Starting From and Beyond Matteo Ricci

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 100-118
Author(s):  
Francesca Leto
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
Ritual Action ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
Real Process

Between 1500 and 1600, the Jesuit Ricci carried out a real process of inculturation of Christianity in China. Subsequently, he operated according to acculturation: a form of colonialism. This process consisted also in the construction of churches, which were built in the neo-Gothic style. In 1926 dom Gresnigt was sent to China with the aim of creating a new Sino-Christian style, supported by Bishop Costantini and the new missionary policy. These attempts at architectural inculturation, however, focused on stylistic issues. We must act according to an intercultural dialogue. Starting from a textual translation of the liturgical books and the ritual action, this dialogue can provide the architect with images of experience that can be implemented as places and movements within the horizon of the sacred. Metaphors must be found, and even better affordances must be constructed to increase the effectiveness of ritual actions, making even those that can only be imagined emotionally perceptible.

Christianity and Empire: The Catholic Mission in Late Imperial China

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 208-224
Author(s):  
R. Po-chia Hsia
Keyword(s):  
Qing Empire ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Opium War ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
Global Christianity ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Chinese Rites Controversy

Reflecting on the theme of ‘Empire and Christianity’, this article compares two periods in the Catholic mission to China. The first period, between 1583 and 1800, was characterized by the accommodation of European missionaries to the laws, culture and customs of the Chinese empire during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The work of the Jesuits, in particular, demonstrated a method of evangelization in which Christian teachings could be accommodated to the political realities of Late Imperial China as exemplified by the work of Matteo Ricci, Ferdinand Verbiest, Tomas Pereira, Joachim Gerbillon and many generations of Jesuits and missionaries of other religious orders. The Chinese Rites Controversy, however, disrupted this accommodation between Christianity and empire in China. Despite tacit toleration in the capital, Christianity was outlawed after 1705. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Catholicism in China became increasingly indigenized. In 1842, after the defeat of the Qing empire by the British in the First Opium War, the prohibition of Christianity was lifted. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries entered China, backed by Western diplomatic and military power. This led to the confrontation between China and Christianity, culminating in the 1900 Boxer Uprising. A concerted effort to indigenize Christianity in the early twentieth century ultimately failed, resulting in the separation of Christianity in China from global Christianity after 1950.

Editorial

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (16) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Andrea Meza Torres
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Enrique Dussel ◽  
Point Of Departure

The essays in this dossier are the result of the course  “Interreligious and intercultural dialogue from a decolonial perspective”, which took place between May and June 2017 at the CEIICH in the UNAM. In this course, I proposed to link a decolonial theoretical perspective to the topic of “intercultural dialogue” and, beyond, to “interreligious dialogue”; anyhow, this last topic turned out to be the point of departure to explore more profound dialogues, linked no only to religious phenomena but to sacred traditions and spiritualities. During the course, emphasis was put on this last aspect due to the fact that the topic of “the Divine” (in its different expressions), although central to decoloniality, has been poorly studied. Moreover, it has been marginalized within secularized social sciences —and this not just in Mexico, but in most occidentalized universities throughout the globe. This vacuum towards the study of “the Divine” —and, beyond, its limitation through a concept of culture (which is, at the same time, associated to the colonized and to the “other” of modernity)— led the participants of this volume to research deeper that which philosopher Enrique Dussel has described as the “spaces denied and oppressed by modernity”.

Choir

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Pryce
Keyword(s):  
Formal Group ◽  
Body Awareness ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Contemplative Practice ◽  
Ritual Action ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
Positive Knowledge

Expanding on the notion of “keeping intention,” introduced in Chapter 2, Chapter 5 shows how contemplative Christians refine their capacity to “keep attention” and cultivate “contemplative senses” through formal group rituals, body awareness techniques, and the construction of aesthetic environments. It notes the contemplative Christian concept of the Body of Christ in which individual bodies and the collective body are perceived as interconnected entities with expandable and contractible boundaries. The chapter describes the monastic Daily Office and how non-monastic contemplatives adapt monastic rites to their lives outside monasteries. Introducing the important relationship between agency and habitus in contemplative practice, the chapter also develops a model that explicates the process of changing perception, called “contemplative transformation,” as an ever-moving ritualization between “posture” (intentional cataphatic ritual action and positive knowledge) and “flow” (apophatic, ambiguous “inner gestures” and “unknowing”).

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