Introduction
Indigenization, which was launched according to the teaching of Vatican II , requested that the Catholic Church become ālocalizedā. The local Church then seemed to become more indigenized when it stopped using Latin in the liturgy , in theological teaching and in dispensing the sacraments . Also ālocalā clergy replaced missionaries in leading posts and the laity took an increased role in parish and diocesan life . In theory, the endeavor to indigenize the Taiwan Church could make the church more local, when theology was taught in Chinese, and the sacred liturgy was conducted in Mandarin or Minnan dialects which were also used in communication between foreign and local clergy . Paradoxically, the result of the indigenization has had reverse effects. The Taiwan Catholic Church has become more global and universal than before.
First, it has attracted more foreign missionaries to Taiwan now that Taiwanās religious vocations have been declining. In the three major Taiwanese cities, the foreign missionaries outnumber local clergy ; the proportions of local and foreign priests are: Taipei 107:138; Taichung 30:39; and Kaoshiung 30:52. In the whole of Taiwan, the foreign missionaries outnumber local clergy (foreign priests 350; Chinese priests 276; foreign brothers 56; Chinese brothers 51) (Catholic Church Directory Taiwan 2014, 158, 304, 409). This phenomenon reflects that after Vatican II the Taiwan Church has become less local and national but more global.
Secondly, Taiwanese Catholics have paid attention to the Holy Father and to the papal message about the integration of Catholic faith into daily life (Catholic Truth Society 2011). An example is the latest Apostolic Exhortation entitled āAmoris Laetitiaā dealing with the problems of family life and marriage. It was quickly translated into Chinese and studied by Taiwanese Catholics, who learned from the papal teaching how to deal with daily problems in the context of their Catholic faith . On 24 December 2016 Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Kaohsiung , even invited Fr. Louis Gendron S.J., a moral theologian of Fu Jen Theologate, to explain the new pastoral approach to problems arising from marriage and family outlined in āAmoris Laetitiaā as part of its Christmas celebrations.
Thirdly, now that overseas trips have become fashionable among Taiwanese Catholics, they have the opportunity of making a pilgrimage to Rome to see the Holy Father in person. They can also visit biblical holy places, such as those in Israel and Turkey, to discover on site what they have found in the Bible. Chinese Catholics in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada and Catholics round the world share the same beliefs and liturgy. Taiwanese Catholics migrate to Singapore, Hong Kong, the USA and Canada without needing to make any change in their belief, their religious obligations or their worshipping customs and continue to participate in the universal nature of their Catholic faith . They can even integrate with the Chinese Catholic communities in some parishes in major cities in the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Australia as they did in their home parishes in Taiwan. All this reflects that the universality of the Catholic Church with its dynamics interacts with indigenization. In the Catholic Church in Taiwan, indigenization has been growing without losing its characteristics of catholicity and universality. In the modern world, when globalization is prevailing, Taiwanās indigenization in every aspect of Catholic life has been taking place within the socio-political atmosphere of modernity . Moreover, this research was inspired by a significant event in 2015. The special event of that year, namely the fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), gave more vigor to research on indigenization within the Catholic Church in Taiwan.
The two fundamental steps in inculturation are to make the Word of God (the Bible) available in the language of the nation and also to make the liturgy available in that language.
Historically, this process began in China before Vatican II.
- Publication of a modern, expert translation of Books of the Old Testament began in Hong Kong in 1948 by a team of biblical scholars from Beijing, and the complete Old and New Testaments in Chinese were published in 1968.
- A Daily Missal in Chinese was published in Hong Kong in 1956.
The importance of these historical facts is that inculturation in terms of language has always been a vital part of the life of the Church. It began with the Acts of the Apostles (āEvery man heard them speak in his own tongueā, Acts 2:6). In Chinaās case, the Holy Spirit chose the most colonized and Western-dominated part of China to ensure that the post-Vatican II needs of the Chinese people would be met in full. The important work of biblical translation was done in Hong Kong, a British colony in which Chinese language and Chinese studies tended to be slighted because the official language was English. In the 1970s though, when Vatican II requested liturgical reforms, the Bishop of Hong Kong, Francis Hsu Cheng-pin, admitted that Hong Kong did not have the personnel capable of providing translated liturgical texts. It was Taiwan which took up this heavy task, shouldering the burden with the help of experienced church scholars who had fled to Taiwan from Communist rule in the 1950s.
The fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council (1963ā1965) turned a new page in the relationship of the Catholic Church with the world aiming at enhancing its capacity to evangelize in the modern world. The former Europe-centered Church changed its direction to the building up of local churches for different peoples. The Federation of Asian Bishopsā Conferences (FABC) , one of the first fruits of Vatican II , held a meeting in Taiwan in 1974 and confirmed that the indigenization/inculturation of the Church and religious dialogue would be the major endeavor of the Catholic Church in Asia in the days to come (Lee 2010, 25).
In Taiwan, the 1949 civil war in Mainland China forced a great number of Chinese intellectuals to relocate to Taiwan, and elevated the parochial, provincial Taiwanese culture to become the national guardian of Chinese culture with its National Palace Museum and Academia Sinica (Yang* 2015, 65ā69). The Taiwan Catholic Church received an unexpected advent of well-educated human resources from the persecuted Church on the Mainland. Young church scholars, who had been sent from various dioceses on the Mainland to further their studies abroad, had to settle down in Taiwan after their foreign training in the post-1949 period. This group of bilingual and bicultural church scholars provided the Taiwan Church with a valuable human asset for theological and liturgical indigenization. Throughout the Chinese world, not even Hong Kong, which, from the point of view of the English, was more advanced in economic development and education, could take up the heavy responsibility of indigenization because it lacked the human resources with sufficient training in Chinese studies and Chinese language for the task.1 Now, in 2017, it is time to recall and to discuss the indigenization of the Catholic Church in Taiwan from a proper perspective since the launch of the policy half a century ago.
The indigenization of the Taiwan Catholic Church took place in a society with an influx of refugees from the Mainland and within a newly created Catholic Church hierarchy, bedeviled with a scarcity of resources. Because of the rapid increase of Catholic population within a short period of twenty years (the 1950s to 1960s), Taiwan was divided into seven ecclesiastical territories. However, the indigenization of theology and the translation of liturgical texts was being quietly carried out by church scholars who had returned from abroad, and they worked on the projects with great seriousness.
Incidentally, in 2015, events in the Taiwan Church signified achievements of indigenization but prophesied that the sustainability of indigenization had come to a crossroad of hidden anxiety because there were now no outstanding scholars to sustain the good work of indigenization initiated by the great masters during the earlier years.
2015: A Significant Year in the Taiwan Catholic Church
The Catholic Church in Taiwan experienced some significant events in 2014 and 2015 marking a turn in Catholic life in society. Firstly, in February 2015, in the Holy Name of Jesus Church, a parish church in the third deanery of Kaohsiung diocese, wedding and funeral liturgies for the same family were celebrated simultaneously without mourning sentiments.2 The new theological orientations toward death and life were mobilized to justify the blending of the two events. A funeral is the culmination of a Christian life on earth; a wedding means the beginning of new Christian family life . In fact, sentiments of thanksgiving and joy filled the Church, which was packed with participants who came from many parts of the island for the Holy Mass celebrating this special event. This controversial ecclesiastical ceremony aroused theological discussions among Catholics inside and outside the island with arguments pro and con.3 It could be a v...