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Taiwan’s Role in the Chinese Catholic Church: The Bridging Endeavor

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Abstract

Vatican-Taiwan diplomatic relations were adirect outgrowh of the dissolution of Vatican relations with mainland China. Established in 1942, these relations were formally broken in 1951 with the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Riberi. Riberi, after a short stay in Hong Kong went to Taipei to establish the Nunciature. This relationship has served as both a sticking point on progress in Sino-Vatican relations and a productive party to the Vatican’s efforts to reach out to Catholic communities on the mainland and to build up the Catholic Church in China. This chapter looks back on Taiwan’s role in the history of the Chinese Catholic Church, as a church in exile after the Communist takeover of 1949, and in the Church’s “Bridging Endeavor” in the era of China’s reform and opening-up. It also looks ahead to the future of the Catholic Church in Taiwan vis-à-vis Vatican diplomatic relations and as an instrument of Catholic religious life in Taiwan.

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Notes

  1. In February 1984 when Pope John Paul II received Taiwan Bishops who made their ad liminia visit to the Holy See, the Holy Father made this request. See Beatrice Leung, Sino-Vatican Relations: Problems of Conflicting Authority, 1976–1986 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.189–256.

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  2. Ye Xiaowen, “Danqian de Zongjiao wenti” (The Contemporary Religious Questions of the Motherland) in Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao baogao xuan (Selected Reports of the Party Central School) vol. 101, no. 5 (1996), pp. 9–23 (internally circulated document).

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  3. Beatrice Leung, “The Catholic Bridging Effort with China,” Religion, State and Society (UK) vol. 28 (June 2000), pp. 185–195.

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  4. For a discussion of the Shanghai resistance in the 1950s, see Paul Mariani, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

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  6. Jean Charbonnier, Guide to the Catholic Church in China 1986 (Singapore: China Catholic Communication, 1986), p. 14.

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  7. Qu Haiyuen, The Socio-Political Analysis of the Change of Taiwan Religion (Taiwan zong bianqian de shehui zhengzhi fenxi) (Taiwan: Quai Kuan Press, 1997). Chapter 7, “The Development Trend of the Catholic Church in Taiwan” (Taiwan diqu de tainzhujiao fazhan qushi zhi yanjiu), explains this situation clearly.

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  12. Marcus Wang and Beatrice Leung, “The Triangular Relations among China, Taiwan and the Vatican: A Taiwan Perspective,” in Challenges and Policy Programmes of China’s New Leadership, ed. Joseph Cheng (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2007), pp. 495–522.

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Cindy Yik-yi Chu

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© 2014 Cindy Yik-yi Chu

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Leung, B., Kuo, Wb. (2014). Taiwan’s Role in the Chinese Catholic Church: The Bridging Endeavor. In: Chu, C.Yy. (eds) Catholicism in China, 1900-Present. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353658_10

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