Challenges to the Churches in Asia Today*

Challenges to the Churches in Asia Today* Georg Evers ABSTRACT Georg Evers, in “Challenges to the Churches in Asia Today,” begins with a brief overview of the situation of the Asian churches before Vatican II. He then discusses the significance of the Council for the Asian churches with special attention to the founding of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. He describes the main characteristics of the Catholic churches in Asia. In the main theme of his talk, “The Challenges to the Asian Churches,” Evers presents prophetic figures who have inspired the churches to radical Christian commitment and invites us to examine contemporary secular and theological challenges. *Talk given at the East Asian Pastoral Institute Alumni Homecoming, 4 October 2005 (Manila, Philippines). Originally published in East Asian Pastoral Review 43, no. 2 (2006): 152–72.. 20 Evers, Challenges to Churches in Asia Today 21 Introduction My personal competence – if I may claim to have any – results from 22 years of having been on the Asia Desk of the Instiutute of Missiology, Missio in Aachem, Germany. In this capacity I observed developments in the Asian churches with a special focus on contextual theologies, the theology of religions and interreligious dialogue within Asian theology for our bibliograph- ical journal Theology in Context. For more than ten years, I took part in the annual meetings of the Theological Advisory Commission, now called Office of Theological Concerns of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC), first as an observer and later as a resource person. My extensive trav- eling in Asia brought me into contact – however short the time – with most Asian countries and the local Catholic churches there. Briefly, I’ll give you an overview of the structure of my talk which is part of the modules of the East Asian Pastoral Institute’s (EAPI) general theme: 40 Years After Vatican II. First, I start with looking back at the Situation of the Asian Churches before Vatican II (Part I). This I do by characterizing briefly the general situation of the Church in some Asian countries and reviewing the state of theology at the time. Second, I deal with the Significance of Vatican II for the Asian Churches (Part II) by mentioning some contributions by Asian bishops to Vatican II. Then I refer to the founding of the FABC and describe the implementation of Vatican II in some Asian countries. Third, I give a brief description ofSome Characteristics of the Catholic Churches in Asia (Part III). The fourth part deals with the main theme of my talk, namely: The Challenges to the Asian Churches, by presenting some charismatic and prophetic figures from the Asian churches (Part IV). Finally, the fifth part will briefly sum up The Secular and Theological Challenges of Today. The Situation of the Asian Churches before Vatican II A Brief Look at some Asian Countries Vatican II marked a caesura in recent church history and for the Asian churches it was the beginning of a new way of being Church, of celebrating the liturgy, of doing theology, and simply living the faith. Before the Council, the Asia Pacific Mission Studies 1.2 (2019) 22 churches in Asia were still mostly “mission territories,“ entrusted to different foreign missionary orders and congregations, but not yet local churches in their own right. If we look at the situation of the Catholic Church in different Asian countries at the beginning of Vatican II in the 1960s, we can detect several common traits. There is first the endeavor to respond to the political, economic, cultural, and social changes in Asia after the end of the Pacific War in 1945, which signaled not only the defeat of Imperial Japan, but also meant the end of the colonial enterprise of European nations and the emergence of independent national states in the region. For the missionary activities of the Catholic Church new opportunities opened up in some areas, and new dangers and obstacles in others. In the early years after the end of the war, in which Japan was defeated, Asia was seen as a prosperous and promising mission territory, and thousands of European and American missionaries flocked there to start schools, univer- sities and engage in social activities to gain converts to Christianity. The strong attraction Christianity had for the Japanese did not last long and the number of baptisms soon dropped. In China, however, foreign missionaries were expelled from the country after the Communists under Mao Zedong had won the civil war against the forces of the Guomindang under Jiang Jieshi in 1949. The Catholic Church in China became isolated after its ties with Rome and the Pope were interrupted. No Chinese bishop from the mainland was allowed to take part in the prepa- rations and in the actual sessions of the Council. The Catholics in mainland China had to wait until the beginning of the 1990s, before they got the oppor- tunity to learn about the many changes Vatican II had brought. It was only then that they stopped having the liturgy of the Mass in Latin and began using Chinese as liturgical language. During the Korean civil war (1950–1953), the Catholic Church in the North was completely destroyed, whereas the number of Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, dramatically grew in the South. Vietnam, too, became involved in a civil war during which most Catholics fled the Communist-ruled North and settled in the South, where the Catholic Church under the leadership of the Catholic president Ngo Dinh Diem (1955–1963) maintained a strong position. Evers, Challenges to Churches in Asia Today 23 On the Indian subcontinent, the Catholic Church lived through the turmoil and the violence accompanying the partition of the country. The Catholics in the newly founded Union of India, as well as in the new state of Pakistan, tried to rid themselves of the stigma of having been in an often close relationship with the colonial masters and had to prove that they were loyal and patriotic citizens. In newly independent Sri Lanka, the Catholic Church became involved in a heavy conflict with the government which had confiscated all Catholic schools. The State of Theology in Asia before Vatican II Before Vatican II, in all Asian mission countries Catholic theology was taught nearly exclusively in regional or diocesan major seminaries or in training institutions of religious orders. The professors teaching in these institutions were recruited mostly from among the foreign European or American missionaries. The theology taught, often still in Latin, and only rarely in the vernacular, consisted mainly of translations of scholastic theological treatises in vogue at the time, and did not make any reference to the specific religious and cultural context of the country. The first timid attempts to take the context into account in theological reflection were then still called by the technical term of “accommodation,” a concept, first developed by Jesuit missionaries in India and China during the 17th to 18th centuries, but rejected by Roman Church authorities in the famous-infamous Rites Controversy. Important attempts to develop new forms in the field of catechetics and liturgy, preceding Vatican II, were made by Fr. Johannes Hofinger, S.J., a former China missionary, who started a new catechetical center in Manila, which later developed into the EAPI. In the years preceding Vatican II, Fr. Hofinger organized international Catechetical and Liturgical study weeks in Nijmegen (1959), Eichstätt (1960), Bangkok (1962), Katigondo (1964), and after the Second Vatican Council in Manila (1967) and in Medellin (1968). In the years preceding Vatican II, ecumenism – that is working for unity among Christian churches and denominations – was not yet an important issue in most Asian mission churches. After all, the missionary activities by Protestant mission groups were seen mostly as nuisance and disturbing the mission activities of the Catholic Church. The antagonistic attitudes among the different Christian churches and groups were so deep, even today, in China and in other Asian countries that Catholicism and Protestantism are treated officially as two completely different religions. Asia Pacific Mission Studies 1.2 (2019) 24 In those days the other religious traditions were seen in the first place as enemies of the Christian mission, and therefore had to be fought and contained. The religions themselves were considered destined, or rather doomed, to be replaced eventually by Christianity. The aim of all missionary activity was defined as plantatio ecclesiae, that is, to build up church structures, and was therefore a rather ecclesio-centric enterprise. The Significance of Vatican II for the Asian Churches The Contributions of Asian Bishops to Vatican II The bishops of the Asian mission churches, or of the younger churches as they were called at the time, did not have a great share in the preparatory work and in the actual sessions of Vatican II (1962–1965). The majority of the bishops from Asia still came from the ranks of the foreign missionary societies and not yet from the indigenous clergy. The Council Fathers from the Asian minority churches were neither familiar with one another, nor did they know much about the situation of the Catholic churches in the other Asian countries. The four sessions of the Council, therefore, were precious occasions to get to know each other and to learn about the many aspects in the pastoral, theological, and social tasks the Asian Christians had in common. It was during these sessions that the seed was sown which later in 1970 grew into the Foundation of the FABC. The contributions made by Asian bishops to the different docu- ments of Vatican II were mostly: • in the field of liturgy (opting for the vernacular as liturgical language); • in ecumenism (deploring the scandal of a divided Christianity in the mission fields); • in missiology (insisting on missionary activity as an essential task of every local church); • in the theology of religions (postulating that the Council should deal not only with Judaism, but should also include the general attitude of the Church to the other religious traditions in its consideration, thus preparing the way for the declaration Nostra Aetate).

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