Communication and Jesuit Mission in Chinese Context September, 2005

Benoit Vermander, S.J. Communication and Jesuit Mission in Chinese Context September, 2005 http://www.erenlai.com/index.php?aid=1862&lan=3

Communication and Jesuit Mission in Chinese Context

Benoit Vermander, s.j.

What I intend to do in this paper is to reflect upon the experience we have developed at the Taipei Ricci Institute during the past ten years or so. The underlying question can be summarized as follows: how did a Jesuit-run research center on traditional Chinese culture evolve into a network trying (a) to build new lines of communication in China (b) to help to redefine what is at stake in China today in the broader context of sustainable development and world governance issues (c) to foster a sense of mission and urgency among Jesuits?

- I - The Ricci Institute: a historical background

Catholic missionaries arriving in Taiwan from 1950 on have concentrated their efforts on pastoral, educational and charitable concerns. At the same time, a number of them have developed a keen interest in Chinese culture and language and undertaken some research in that field. The earlier generation had been formed in the Mainland and was already sensitive to the efforts needed in order to implement a real “inculturation” of the faith (though the term was not used till after the Second Vatican Council). Research and writing were seen as prerequisite for grounding such inculturation on a real knowledge of Chinese language, psyche and customs. Other missionaries have gradually come into the field of Chinese studies through exposure to popular religion and ways of life or because of the theological and pastoral developments taking place in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council.

What is now known as the “Taipei Ricci Institute” was and is still officially named “Ricci Institute, Center for Chinese Studies.” The creation of other Ricci Institutes throughout the time explains for the shift in name. In 1971, Fr Claude Larre founded the Paris Ricci Institute (now directed by Fr Michel Masson). Fr Malatesta created the San Francisco Ricci Institute in 1984, within the premises of the University of San Francisco. After his death, which took place in 1998, Dr Wu Xiaoxin succeeded him. In 1999, the Macao Ricci Institute started under the impulse of Fr Sequeira and Camus, the latter one having worked at the Taipei Institute for more than twenty years, building up its library and playing a key role in the Dictionary project. These four Institutes are all Jesuit-led works. However, their internal structures and research focuses greatly vary. They are loosely connected through a network called the “International Ricci Association for Chinese Studies” (IRACS). Another Jesuit-led institution is part of the network, namely the Socio-Cultural Center at Fu Jen University now directed by Fr Edmund Ryden who is also the convener of the IRACS network. The Socio-Cultural center continues the mission first started by Fr Ladany when he launched the “China News Analysis” newsletter, a work that came from Hong-Kong to Taipei in 1994 and ended publication at the end of 1998.

If the successors of Mateo Ricci had been the vanguard of Chinese studies, if they had to some extent ”invented” sinology in the classical and somehow “orientalist” meaning of the term, things had certainly changed much during the nineteenth century. The pastoral focus had shifted from the cities to the countryside. In the Western world, and consequently in the Church, to the early “sinophilia’ had succeeded a robust “sinophobia” that certainly was not favorable to the undertaking of any serious research in Chinese language, traditions or philosophy. However, around the end of the century the limits of the pastoralist approach were starting to clearly appear; the sufferings and humiliations endured by the Chinese nation were also raising new questions in the mind of several missionaries; furthermore, the revival in the study of the Chinese language and research on the newly discovered oracular inscriptions constituted a focus around which the early Jesuit sinologist tradition could be revived. At the turn of the century, within the premises of the Zikawei compound in Shanghai, the “bureau d’etudes sinologiques”, mostly composed of French Jesuits, was editing a number of seminal works, one of them being Fr Joseph Doré’s monumental “Recherches sur les superstitions chinoises.” The “Bureau” was soon to become a haven for lexicographic research, and the history of the “Grand Ricci”, the Dictionary finally published in 2001 by the Taipei and Paris Ricci Institutes, is to be traced back to that period.

Since the history of the Taipei Ricci Institute is closely linked to the Dictionary project, I have to say a few things about this large-scale endeavor.

There is a Hungarian Jesuit whose name is known by all China watchers - Fr Laszlo Ladany (1914- 1990), the founder of "China News Analysis", a newsletter that for decades was the most insightful source on the Beijing regime. Another Hungarian Jesuit deserving the same fame as Fr Ladany is Fr Eugene Zsamar. Fr Zsamar, who died in 1974, was the instigator of the most daring enterprise in Chinese lexicography attempted by foreigners during this century - an enterprise which started officially in Macao in 1949 and came to an end more than fifty two years later. Fr Zsamar's dream was to gather a team able to compile an encyclopedic polyglot dictionary in five languages: Hungarian, English, French, Spanish and Latin. Although Jesuits had compiled numerous dictionaries during their 400 hundred years of presence in China, there was a need for a systematic work on every aspect of Chinese language and culture. The initial stage of the project was soon disrupted by the political chaos in China. Father Zsamar took refuge in Macau. In 1949, a French Jesuit Father Deltour joined him and enriched the basic research material with some 200 dictionaries or related works which he had brought with him. The first two language teams were Hungarian and French. During the fall of 1951, the Spanish team was organized. Later on, at the request of Chinese seminaries, a Spanish Father and an Italian engaged in the compilation of the Latin section. The English team joined last, in 1952, when the team had already settled and settled in Taichung, central Taiwan.

Father Zsamar had envisioned a dictionary that would cover the whole of Chinese history and culture. For this reason he selected as a reference all the material included in the three most well known Chinese dictionaries. Together, these three works included about 16,000 single characters and 180,000 compounds. It took two years to inventory all this basic documentation on cards. With the help of thirty collaborators, they added all possible translations in French, German, Spanish and Hungarian. This work amounted to an inventory with two million entries. Soon, a French Jesuit, Fr Yves Raguin, had to succeed to Fr Zsamar, whose health was deteriorating, as director of the project. Fr Raguin was to continue in this capacity until 1996 (he died in December 1998). Financial difficulties, deaths, the departure of many Jesuits towards other apostolic fields slowed considerably the completion of the project. Soon, the French section was the only one where a sizable number of Jesuits

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 2 and collaborators were able to continue the work. The English section was dissolved after the unexpected death of its leader, Father Thomas Carroll, an archeologist.

In 1966, after two years of preparation, Fr Raguin created the Taipei Ricci Institute, in order to give an institutional basis to the dictionary project and to include it within a broader range of research programs. During the seventies, medium-size Chinese-French, Chinese-Spanish and Chinese-Hungarian dictionaries were published by authors of the Institutes, their material based on a selection taken from the archives gathered during the years. However, it was the coming of the computer that saved the whole project, as it helped to organize and treat the data in a systematic way. It enabled the data to circulate between Taipei and Paris, where sinologists revised the material gathered by former generations of Jesuit scholars.

Finally published in January 2002, the Dictionnaire Ricci de la Langue Chinoise contains 13,500 single characters and 300,000 Chinese expressions, spanning seven volumes and 9,000 pages. The Grand Ricci (as it is known) is an unparalleled publication effort in any European language, covering more than 4,000 years of the history of the Chinese language, the origins of its script, and extending up to the most contemporary usage. An association has been constituted in order to supervise the follow-up: shift to the pinyin romanization system, specialized lexicons, commercial contracts, maintenance of the database… A contract with Beijing Commercial Press for an abridged Mainland edition of the Dictionary has been secured and was signed in Paris in September 2002. Summing up, on the Dictionary front, the mission has been accomplished, but the work nevertheless is continuing, in a more cooperative and diversified fashion.

- II – Vision, Tradition and Trials: 1966-1996

I have said that Fr Raguin and Lefeuvre created the Ricci Institute for giving an institutional basis to the Dictionary endeavor. However, from the start, the vision was much larger. In a document dated March 20, 1966, which signals the effective launch of the Institute, Fr Raguin, Lefeuvre and Larre sketch out the following program:

“(The Institute) will be an extension of the Five Languages Dictionary Project. (…) The purpose of the Institute is to promote the study of questions concerning China, both ancient and modern. It should be noted that the past will be studied in order to understand the present and effectively plan for the future. (…) (These studies) will aim at throwing some light on the constant and profound cultural characteristics of China, both ancient and modern. (…) The Ricci Institute’s program should be coordinated with the even wider plan of action envisaged by the Vatican Council: namely a precise knowledge of the world around us, so that our presence may be made thus more real, our action will be made more profound and more respectful regarding the individual genius of a particular people. (…) This requires a professional attitude towards true scholarship and genuine scientific method inspired by a Christian outlook of Man and culture. When the time is ripe, the Institute will publish its own periodical, but only after many years of preparatory work.”

On the long run, the continuity of purpose is striking, even if the operations had to be considerably scaled down. The most obvious achievement has been the completion of the Dictionary project, which has been already described. The second achievement is closely linked with the Dictionary project and is

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 3 to be attributed to one man, Fr Jean Lefeuvre. Fr Lefeuvre, in charge of the etymological part of the Dictionary, slowly developed an unrivalled competence in bone inscriptions (and to a lesser extent in bronze inscriptions as well. Likewise, the third achievement comes from the labor of an individual, Fr Raguin himself. The corpus of works he leaves is a contrasted one. The best part is composed of his spiritual writings, inspired at the same time by his own personal experience and by attentive reading and meditation of the spiritual tradition, both Chinese and Western. The fourth achievement has been the revival of the “Varietes Sinologiques” collection, carried out by Fr Larre and Fr Raguin. It allowed the Institute to publish important works that might not have been published otherwise. The fifth achievement has been the constitution of a good research library, which is mainly Fr Camus’ contribution. The last and most important achievement has been the constitution of a network of Jesuits and friends.

These achievements should not hide the limitations encountered in the course of the history of the center. It would be unfair to list all the things that could have been done, considering the paucity in manpower and financial means. However, some points need to be noted in order to understand the shifts that took place during the last ten years: - Obviously, the vision, as it is sketched out at the beginning and implemented later on, remains clerical in scope. It is supposed that a steady supply of Jesuit manpower will continue to come in, allowing the Order to nurture a research center of its own independently from society as a whole and specifically from universities. The crisis in recruitment in the aftermath of the Council is not foreseen, and is not dealt with afterwards. In the course of the years, a good number of the young Jesuits who were supposed to help in the Ricci left the Society. Furthermore, from the start lay people are seen as “collaborators”, “helpers”, rather than partners. This contributes to a gradual closing down of the vision and of the boundaries of the institution. The separation from the university makes it also harder to maintain academic standards. - The concept of “Chinese studies” referred to in the Institute’s documents is a rather static one. It implies a concentration on the ‘grand narrative” of the Chinese tradition and pays little attention to the specificities of Taiwan where the Institute is located – in a nutshell, it remains very much a “Mainlander” vision. There was no special interest in the margins of the “grand narrative” – ethnic minorities in the Chinese context, popular literature or wisdom -, fields in which the former “bureau d’études sinologiques” had shown better insights indeed. - During the course of these years, the main difficulty was to keep a balance between the tedious and all-embracing work on the dictionary and other ventures. Finally, the necessity to complete the main endeavor became so compelling that almost no place was left for developing other publications or research projects.

- III – The Ricci in Transition: 1996-2003

In October 1996, changes took places in the Institute’s structure and leadership. The health condition of Fr Raguin and the difficulties encountered in completing the Dictionary explain for the reforms occurring around that time.

Fr Vermander was appointed director, Fr Edmund Ryden assistant director, and Fr Camus secretary general. In 1999, due to the fact that Fr Ryden and Camus both received new apostolic mandates, Fr Weingartner was appointed assistant director, and Prof. Elise DeVido secretary general. Meanwhile,

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 4 young researchers (Claire Shen Hsiu-chen on Taiwanese cinema, Ann Heylen on language movements in colonial Taiwan) or assistants have embarked on new projects. Abroad, a younger generation of Jesuits, most notably Fr Thierry Meynard, has also nurtured our discernment and research work In August 2003, new adjustments took place, as Fr Jacques Duraud was appointed executive director of the Institute and publisher of the Renlai monthly (see below), while Fr Vermander was appointed academic director and chief-editor of Renlai.

In 2000, a mission statement laid out the following principles:

“ (…) During the past decades, the Taipei Ricci Institute established a solid reputation in the field of Chinese lexicography, as well as undertook comparative studies on religions and philosophy. It has strived to maintain the standards expected of the Jesuit scholarly tradition, while fostering an in-depth dialogue with Chinese intellectuals. These last year, it undertook projects within the following tripartite scope: two research areas, “Languages and Identities in the Chinese World;”, “Religions and Society in China and Taiwan;”, and one focal mission, to create and cultivate spaces for dialogue with Chinese intellectuals. Now and in the future, the Institute’s team stresses: - “Working with” the pluralist cultures and peoples within China and Taiwan, no longer simply “working on Chinese Culture.” - Selecting research projects that purposefully address issues and concerns common not only to China and Taiwan, but to all in the global community. The world is not to be a “Babel,” a place where people and cultures are torn between the two extremes of uniformity and estrangement. Bridge-builders are engaged in an ongoing “Pentecost,” a process through which differences are the very basis for a deeper union of hearts. Being part of the encounter between China and the rest of the world allows the Ricci Institute to contribute to shape, with others, a pluralistic spiritual civilization relevant for the whole of humankind.”

I will simply sketch out what have been the main works of the Institute since 1996: - It has authored or published more than 30 volumes in Chinese, English or French on various China- related topics. - It completed the publication of the “Grand Ricci.” It also has secured a contract with Beijing Publishing House for a Mainland China edition of the Dictionary and has published other books together with the same publishing house. - It has published a twelve-volume collection of early Chinese writings, edited by Nicolas Standaert and Ad Dudink. - It has organized seminars in Mainland China on “Art and Spirituality”, “Harmony”, “Peace Education”, “Environment and Development”, “The Body in Contemporary Art” with partners such as the Chinese Academy of Arts, the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, and the monthly “Art Observation.” - It has held several symposiums in Taiwan, on aboriginal languages and religions and other topics, and its members publish on a regular basis in Taiwanese newspapers and magazines - It has maintained an internet database in Chinese and English (www.riccibase.com); the database allows for the ordering of the Institute’s publication, and several hundreds of articles by members and friends are available online. - It has helped in supporting a primary school in an ethnic minority area of Sichuan and has organized teams of Chinese, Taiwanese, American and French students volunteering in that area.

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 5 - It has sponsored research programs on Buddhist nuns in Taiwan, Sichuan Yi religious classics, Taiwanese aboriginal languages, peace culture in China, aesthetics of Chinese cinema. - It has sponsored painting exhibits in Beijing, Chengdu, Taipei, Paris and Tokyo, for celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Ricci’s arrival in Beijing among other occasions.

- IV –Beyond “Chinese Studies”: the birth of Renlai monthly

When I arrived at the Ricci, I tried to “communicate” better on our research and mission. Indeed, it proved to be relatively easy to get articles and audio-visual programs on what we had been doing on lexicography and religious studies – the echo in Taiwan went even beyond our earlier expectations, especially after the publication of the Dictionary. When organizing an exhibit on the Dictionary project at the Shanghai library for instance we are continuing the same kind of work in the Mainland. More important however than communication proper, was the re-focusing of our research: how to make our work relevant for today’s China and the Jesuit mission in Chinese context?

As the academia tends more and more to specialize, independent research centers may be spaces of encounters, of intellectual freedom and cross-fertilization. This is especially true in “Chinese studies” (a vast and somehow undetermined field of studies). Furthermore, the present situation in China calls for places of debate and inventiveness where to foster a new cultural, social and ethical model. In this perspective, without becoming exactly “cultural centers”, institutes similar to the Ricci can become centers for cultural and social concerns, evolving according to the needs of the time.

In 2003-2004, trying to give a new focus to this evolving mission, the Taipei Ricci Institute has decided to embark on a new flagship project: the launching a Chinese monthly of cultural, spiritual and social concerns (Renlai). As is the case with a number of Jesuit-inspired reviews throughout the world, this monthly aims at helping to discern the signs of the time and offering analyses on issues of importance for people interested in peace and justice issues as well as intercultural and inter-religious dialogue. The start of the monthly took place in January 2004. Presently, we are selling around 1,700 copies per month (subscriptions and bookshops) and giving away around 800 copies in the Mainland and Taiwan. We are associated with five different radio programs every week.

Though based in Taiwan, this monthly (eleven issues per year, each issue now 108 pages strong) targets the whole Chinese cultural world. From the start, it strives towards diffusion in Mainland China through a special website, book series and publishing agreements. It is a Chinese-language publication, most of its articles being original contributions. However, some of them are translated from Jesuit journals around the world, thus contributing to its international outlook.

Topics include: “are we all mentally ill now?”, “sustainable development and climatic change”, “genetically modified foods”, “looking for peace of heart’, “dreams of the youth”, “foreign workers in East Asia’, etc…

We have also started an internet magazine eRenlai (www.erenlai.com), available in English, Chinese, both traditional and simplified.

The overall process signals indeed a shift from “Chinese studies”, as they were conceived at the time of the creation of the Institute to a new way of conceiving cultural encounter in a globalized context.

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 6 When Fr Yves Raguin, along with other Jesuits, founded the Taipei Ricci Institute in 1966, the Catholic Church was undergoing a time both of renewal and crisis, following the impulse given by the Second Vatican Council. The Church was striving to inculturate the faith within the various cultures of the world, was preparing an in-depth encounter with other religious traditions and was endeavoring to adapt its theological discourse to social and international realities always on the move. However modest its scale, the Taipei Ricci Institute wanted to play its part in this giant endeavor. More specifically, the reference to Mateo Ricci, the first Jesuit missionary to settle in China, was a significant one: it was time to come back to the original meaning of the meeting between Christianity and Chinese culture, an encounter on equal terms and in an atmosphere of mutual respect which would foster a deepening of different cultural and spiritual traditions for the spiritual progress of humankind.

Almost forty years later, the work that has been done allows us to open up new venues. Thanks to pioneering cultural works, such as those of Fr Raguin on spiritualities East and West or of Fr Lefeuvre on oracular inscriptions, the Church has shown that it was taking Chinese cultural sources seriously, as a vehicle for the working of the Spirit throughout the ages. At the same time, the Taipei Ricci Institute has witnessed the limitations, difficulties and slowness which the whole Universal Church experienced when dealing with world religions and cultures. The deeper the encounter, the stronger the resistance. Whoever wants to stand at the meeting-point of different traditions and cultures had best be armed with lots of patience, humility and a sense of humor.

The team now in charge owes a great deal to the perseverance and the far-reaching vision of its predecessors. It relies on the grand vision that has inspired the Church and the Society of Jesus during the last decades and, at the same time, on a sense of reality acquired through trials that the promoters of inter-religious and intercultural dialogue had to undergo during the same period. It must establish the link between spiritual, cultural and social dimensions, which together constitute the ground in which religious faiths take root and develop. Whatever its limitations, the Taipei Ricci Institute aims to be a bridge: a bridge between purely scholarly endeavors and the rooting of the Gospel within the Chinese world; a bridge between Eastern and Western spiritual and cultural traditions; a bridge between Taiwan, where it is based, and the intellectuals of Mainland China; a bridge also between sinological research and the creative building-up of a new Chinese culture, in a context of globalization. However limited our means, we are indeed a meeting-place, a space open to dialogue, exchange and creativity - and this might be our biggest asset.

- V – Broadening the Vision

This could be the (provisional) end of the story, but I would like to go one step further. Obviously, launching Renlai monthly has helped us to go from “Chinese Studies’ to “content providers in Chinese context”; in other words, it compelled us to link in a better way intellectual pursuits and communication, Jesuit mission and global concerns. But the development of the project has shown us also that there are two areas on which we have to have to concentrate our efforts. The first are is about “articulating together local and global networking”; the second concern is “spelling out what humane and spiritual development means for today’s China.”

Articulating together local and global networking : A monthly of cultural and social debate is a very valuable tool: it helps us to create the right balance between long-term concerns and sense of urgency; it is a channel of accessible yet well-thought

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 7 context. However, in the present environment I do not think that it can survive without linking itself to other communication channels. Basically, we envision a four pillars construction: - The monthly itself, main channel for elaborating content - Readers’ groups a the local level, using this content for discernment and initiatives - Radios and mass-medias for instilling insights and messages - A large-scale website that we hope to finalize next year for linking together readers’ groups all around the Chinese-speaking world and discussion of issues already started in the monthly. At the same time, I personally hope that we will be able to re-structure our communication apostolate in the Province, for instance by creating at KPS a “Jesuit China Communication Service” grouping together KPS, Kuangchi publications and Ricci-Renlai for identifying issues and creating products destined to a large variety of audiences.

Spelling out what humane and spiritual development means for today’s China: Discerning the signs of the time means to understand what China today needs and can contribute in a global context. Here, a short excursus might be needed: Today, Globalization is first and foremost the globalization of crises and challenges. This might mean to discover, not only through words but through shared experience, that deforestation, waste of natural resources, spread of AIDS and drugs, sustainability are indeed challenges for all, not only for one region of the world. The feeling of commonality might also arise from a sharing about the collapse of traditional ways to understand one’s world, identity and culture. At the same time, we realize anew the variety of the cultural resources we mobilize or could mobilize for answering such challenges. If we do confront common problems and crises, it is true also that there remain tremendous differences among world-views rooted into Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity or among the core values found in Confucian, African or European societies. Furthermore, our cultural traditions are embedded into historical memories that conflagrate one with another. Discovering the wide array of our differences might be, at the same time, exhilarating and extremely puzzling. This is where a strategic choice is to be made. It seems to me that “meaning” continues to flow and to circulate when we decide to make this tremendous variety of cultural resources the tool box that enables us to interpret anew our own tradition and culture. Our cultures, world-views and creeds are being reformulated through the interpretative resources offered by the other cultures, world-views and creeds – and this operation happens simultaneously for all participants in the exchange.

In this perspective, all cultures, creeds and world-views are perpetually reshaped, and what defines them is never taken for granted but rather is being discovered and challenged throughout the process of exchange and interpretation. Thus, the core of our identity is never “behind” us, it is always “beyond”, it cannot be “essentialized”, it is rather “related to” the Other whose identity is similarly challenged and reshaped. At the same time, this ever-evolving reshaping of one’s culture, creeds and world-views does not lead to a confusion or a mix, it does define and sometimes sharpen one’s sense of belonging and core values. Though identities are mobile and changeable, they are still discrete entities, and the solutions to our common challenges will remain localized and different in substance. However, throughout the interpretative process these particular solutions will considerably vary from the ones suggested by the traditional understanding of one’s culture and identity, and the array of solutions devised form one’s culture or group to another will then be legitimately understood as a correlated set of attitudes, choices and decisions.

Let me then summarize the four stages of this programmatic model for cultural interaction:

© 2005 eRenlai, Ricci Cultural Enterprise, all rights reserved 8 - discovering and pondering a community of challenges, a commonality of crises and problems that the globalization era has made even more stringent; - acknowledging the tremendous variety of cultural responses and resources that can be mobilized for answering these challenges, and the discrepancies among these resources; - re-evaluating one’s cultural responses and core identity throughout the interpretative resources mobilized by the exchange process; - recognizing the fact that these reciprocal re-interpretations and re-assessments do not amount to devising globalized answers to our common challenges; rather, they nurture an ever-evolving sharpening of one’s choices and decisions still rooted into a sense of belonging and identity.

Today, such an exchange-process determines the way China can participate into international partnership: contributing its own cultural resources to the reshaping of our global model of development and governance; interpreting anew its own resources according to other cultural resources. Is not the Jesuit mission to make China a better accepted partner of world partnership while helping China to become a responsible member of the world, committed to tackle (together with other nations and cultures) global challenges? Is not such a mission part of a larger commitment to develop a model of spiritual growth that commits one to involve himself (herself) in changing the world rather than in escaping it? Considering the importance of the Chinese world, does not the fostering of its potential contribution a challenge big enough for deserving the mobilization of our limited energies? In this line, even a modest endeavor such as the development of a Jesuit-inspired monthly means in the end that we are committed to proclaim that China needs the world and that the world needs China’s contribution. We want to create a community of cultures and nations in which listening, interaction, discernment of common challenges and resources help us to foster a different model of development, governance and spiritual-humane growth. The Chinese mission does not differ in nature from our other commitments. And our “communication” mission is always to be referred to this way of looking at the future of the global community.

Our task is not merely ”intellectual” in scope. We do want to promote a model of humane and spiritual growth that is not only about “justice” but also about “compassion”, not only about “reason’ and “words” but also about images, emotions, memory and imagination. A new humanism might be a defined as a way of accepting human weaknesses and frailties without renouncing to utopia and ideals. Ignatian spirituality provides us with a rich and complex way of looking at human nature and to God’s salvation design. “God wants to see all people saved’ throughout the plurality and complexity of their desires, emotions, cultures and spiritualities. But God needs our collaboration, the intermingling of our various resources, stories and dreams. Promoting communications for peace, justice and harmony is nothing else than giving a voice to all people and making these voices heard within the global community, confident that making everyone hear and listen anew is the only way of changing the world without trying to control the final outcome of such a “revolution of hearts.” What is said about the “China mission” throughout this contribution does not differ in scope and essence from our common dream of making the whole of humankind become One, not by making it uniform but rather by making it share and enhance its inexhaustible differences.