CV NEWS FEED // One hundred years ago, the First Council for China was held in Shanghai in 1924. Last weekend, the University of Saint Joseph in Macao hosted an historic symposium to commemorate the first plenary council and to reflect on its relevance for the Catholic Church in China today.
According to the University’s website, the “International Symposium on the Centenary of the First Council for China” took place on June 26-29. The University invited scholars and experts across disciplines to present their interpretations of the historic event.
The First Plenary Council for China was a meeting of Catholic bishops that took place in Shanghai in 1924 with the goal of implementing the “localization” of the Catholic Church in China.
AsiaNews reported on June 29 that the event brought together roughly one hundred scholars from the People’s Republic of China, Macao, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Formerly under Portuguese administration from the mid 16th century till 1999, Macao is a special administrative region in the southeast corner of the People’s Republic of China. Boasting a congregation of some 32,000 faithful, Macao is widely believed to have the largest Catholic population in East Asia, according to The Macao News.
The event was “a moment of frank exchange of opinions among the participants, with space also for interlocutions that allowed for fruitful debate,” according to the report, which highlighted the central discussion of how China in particular may approach Christianity as a nation.
“On the part of many Chinese,” stated scholar Leopold Leeb, “there is interest in what Christianity has that is new and different to propose. And one must also consider the path China has had to take to approach and understand Christianity. The true encounter, therefore, calls for this mutual integration.”
AsiaNews explained that the event comes in wake of discussions regarding the desire to enhance local Chinese culture in the context of the Church that had been brought to the region by western missionaries.
The Symposium also screened a 1949 film titled, Ageless China, which depicts “an emotional glimpse of what life was like for the Catholic community in Shanghai in the late 1940s.” The screening was widely attended by local Macao Catholics, according to AsiaNews.
“The Catholic faith has been inseparable from Macao for almost 450 years – ever since the Diocese of Macao was declared by Pope Gregory XIII on 23 January 1576,” the local publication stated, noting that “almost immediately, Macao became the teeming headquarters of Catholic evangelism in the region.”
The post Symposium revisits Catholic history and culture in Chinese territory appeared first on CatholicVote org.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Madalaine Elhabbal
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://catholicvote.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.