www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Russian Orthodox Church to be set up in Beijing

I cannot now locate the news item which covered the funeral of the last Orthodox priest in China but I remember well that it was held in a Catholic Church presided over by a Catholic priest.

The few Orthodox faithful were joined by both underground Catholics and those under the "official" Chinese Patriotic Association.

In the same news item, it was revealed that about a dozen native Chinese seminarians were in training in Russia. Until their ordination, apparently there are no Orthodox priests (native Chinese or Russian or other nationality) in China today.

Amado

Geography seems to be not a decisive factor in the various attempts to evangelize China. It's more cultural (especially mores and language), given the 3,000 years or more of "uninterrupted" Chinese civilization.

Another aspect that might have contributed to the "failure" of Russian Orthodoxy to take hold was the chasm that was created when China jettisoned Russia's Marxist-Leninist ideology in favor of Chairman Mao's own Marxist-Leninist-Maoist "new" ideology. The Russian communists, and anything Russian, became "anathema" to the Chinese communists which nearly led to a full-scale war between the two countries.

On the other hand, the key for the survival and continuation of the Catholic Church seems to be the relative success the Catholic missionaries of yore achieved in the "inculturation" process: the 16 million (12 million underground) or so Catholics in China are mostly, if not all, native Chinese.

Amado