Like many of East Asia ’s metropolises, the city in which I live is
unashamedly attracted to the profit motive. There is a standing joke that the
temples to which people go to worship on a regular basis are the banks. Indeed,
both rich and poor share an interest in the stock market and each day anxiously
examine the rise and fall in prices.
However, impressions are deceiving. Having
lived here for ten years, I find the people remarkably religiously-minded. On a
daily basis I see indications they are deeply sensitive to the spiritual and non-material
world, more so than most urban dwellers in the West.
In this city there is scarcely a
home or shop that does not have a well-tended family shrine. During the ‘Month
of Lost Souls’ people burn incense and place fruit outside their door for
passing ‘hungry souls’. The festivals of local deities are major community
occasions and thousands queue up at temples to seek a blessing at the lunar New
Year. The police (and the Triads) offer annual service to Kwan Ti, the deity of
courage and loyalty. No building or new enterprise is launched without a religious
ritual.
I have found the ordinary people to
be friendly, family oriented, law-abiding and hard working. While they have their
human weaknesses, their efforts to live a moral and conscientious life are at
least as sincere as those of any other nation.
With so much in common, and with
freedom of religion and no dominant non-Christian creed restricting it, you would
expect the church to be flourishing here at all levels of society.
However, in this city of some eight
million people it is estimated that there are just 250,000 Catholics and that
the total number of Christians of all denominations is about 10%. The Catholic
Church has been firmly established here for many years and is the envy of other
Asian churches for it range of educational, medical and social services. Many
of the government officials are graduates of Catholic schools and many ordinary
citizens have availed of its institutions. The bishop is well known and
popular, in 2002 he was voted the city’s ‘Person of the Year’ for his stand on
social issues. The vast majority of the clergy, religious and lay leaders are
local, many of them highly talented and experienced. There must be no one in
the city who has not heard of the Church yet only 3% are Catholic and this
percentage is unlikely to grow unless there is a major change in the Church’s
image.
One undoubted element in this image,
which it has in common with other Catholic churches in Asia and which is
responsible for their limited growth, it is its foreignness – its distance from
the religious thinking, experiences and approaches of the ordinary people.
This development is understandable,
though regrettable. For most of the past hundred years the goal of mission, in Asia and elsewhere, was to establish vibrant and self-sufficient local churches.
The original intention was that those churches would then take on the task of
spreading the message among the local people in ways which would be more
familiar to them and closer to their heart and situation. Eventually large
numbers of individuals, families and communities would be finding it natural to
turn to these churches in moments of need, truth- seeking or thanksgiving. In few
cases has this dream been fulfilled and today many young churches are no closer
to localization than when the missionaries left or took a back seat.
Why did this happen? There are a
number of reasons or, rather, a chain of reasons.
The emerging local leadership had
been formed according to the universal guidelines laid down by the responsible Vatican authorities in order to ensure that their training
would be both comprehensive and uniform. Once in charge, the indigenous leadership
felt its duty was to continue and stabilized the system they had inherited. It
had not been made clear to them that they were expected to move out of their
foreign shell and bridge the gap with the wider population by developing a
church more suited to the local situation.
The blame for this lapse can be put
on the missionary societies which had focused too narrowly on establishing
self-sufficient local churches. They had failed to remember that this was only
a first step and a second one remained: for the newly established local
churches to take responsibility for reaching out to all levels of society in ways
that would be more intelligible and fruitful among the ordinary people. Setting
up of local churches was meant to be a means and not an end.
Undoubtedly there were also some missionaries
who deliberately encouraged the young churches not to drift too far from the
universal model of the Latin church. They feared that inexperience might lead
them to be influenced by some of the less acceptable elements in their local culture.
There were concerns that any tinkering with the existing system could lead to
disagreements and divisions, based on a failure to understand fully the reasoning
and justification behind existing practices and the need for unity. Others
believed that, theologically, the church was never intended for all people anyhow
but would always to be a ‘little flock’ or ‘tiny flame’ that would inspire and
enlighten those in the surrounding darkness. It was more important for it to be
‘orthodox’ than to be ‘accessible’.
These considerations may have some
validity but they should not become obstacles in making the gospel available to
all people, no matter what their educational level or cultural background.
The challenge, then, is for the missionary
societies to recall that their achievement in helping to set up local churches was
a step in the road to proclaiming the gospel but not the end of the process,
nor of their responsibility. They may now need to consider what they can do to encourage
and facilitate the young churches in making discipleship possible for a larger percentage
of the population.
Simultaneously, they need to use their experience and cross-cultural credibility
to draw the attention of the authorities in the Vatican
This would call for a five year plan to initiate the process and, then,
a further twenty year plan to see it through its early stages. After that, the
missionary societies might be in a position to claim that their primary missionary
task has been completed.
Hugh MacMahon SEDOS Bulletin: Nov/Dec 2006
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