Paul Shan celebrates golden and silver jubilees.
After returning from the Vatican, Cardinal Paul Shan was cornered by members of his flock and told to follow them. He had been away for a month, and now it was high time to celebrate the golden jubilee of his ordination as a priest and his silver jubilee as a bishop.
On Saturday, May 28, a mass at the Church of the Holy Rosary in Kaohsiung, exploding with tropical flowers and packed with distinguished guests, novices, priests, bishops and laity in an array of brilliant vestments, honored Shan. The choir sang like angels high above it all.
Shan was born in China's Hebei province in 1923. He joined the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuit order, in 1946. Having trained at Jesuit institutions in the Philippines since 1949, he was ordained a priest on March 18, 1955. He took his doctorate in spiritual theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1961. At that time divinity students had to master Latin before they could study theology or philosophy; Shan is of course fluent in the language as well as English, Italian and Spanish, although he never learned Taiwanese.
"I came to Taiwan quite late, when I was 40 years old, and my superior told me that my work didn't need any Taiwanese. I was training young Jesuits and they had all studied Mandarin. Then I was made the rector and principal of a senior high school in Taipei and at that time students were obliged to speak Mandarin," he says. His accented English strikes a new aural connection between the Philippines, China and Europe that surprises and pleases the ear.
He was planning to learn Taiwanese when he was made bishop of Hualien in eastern Taiwan in 1979. Yet because more than 90 percent of the Hualien diocese is aboriginal, his hopes were thwarted. When he considered learning one of the aboriginal languages, he was spoiled with choices: his diocese consisted of eight tribes with eight different languages. "In the beginning I wanted to learn one of them, but when the people heard that, each tribe asked me to learn theirs, so it was impossible to learn all the languages. If you learn one of the languages, you are very much connected with that tribe," he says finally with a small smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
Of Taiwan's 300,000 Catholics, about a third are of aboriginal descent. While the church's history in Taiwan began with Spanish Catholic missionaries setting foot in Danshuei in 1626, successive colonial governments had differing, and sometimes hostile, attitudes toward religious groups. This meant that church representatives could neither provide social services nor proselytize effectively. The newly established Kuomintang government welcomed priests fleeing the atheistic communist regime in China. The island in the 1950s lacked education and medical facilities, so the church responded by concentrating its efforts there. "We established many schools--three universities, 27 high schools and 10 professional schools, 10 elementary schools," Shan says. "Altogether we have a little more than 50 schools in Taiwan."
Shan was rector of St. Ignatius High School in Taipei from 1970 to 1976, after which he became director of the Kuangchi Program Service, a Catholic media enterprise, from 1976 to 1979. Kuangchi's mission is to "produce high-quality audio-visual programs and media services to raise appreciation for the meaning and quality of life." The service pioneered color TV program production in Taiwan, distributed its shows on Taiwan's three terrestrial channels and provided training courses for TV production throughout Asia. During Shan's tenure as president, Kuangchi won national industry awards for best documentary, best socioeducational and best religious drama series.
While bishop of Hualien, the tireless Shan also did a lot of work with the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conference and the Chinese Regional Bishops' Conference (CRBC), becoming president of the CRBC for three consecutive terms. At the time of Shan's transfer to the Diocese of Kaohsiung and installation there as bishop in 1991, the pope named a young Taiwanese priest as his auxiliary, or coadjutor, bishop.
His elevation to cardinal of Taiwan in February 1998 by Pope John Paul II made Shan the highest Catholic authority in the nation, and he named a young aboriginal priest as his vicar general. In 2000, when 120 Chinese martyrs were canonized, the cardinal was delighted, saying that as a child, he used to pray for it. He thinks that saints are very important in the church and that the canonization will be a great source of encouragement for Catholics in Taiwan and China; other Asian nations all have their own saints, even though the church was established in China earlier.
As a member of the College of Cardinals, Shan was in attendance at the Vatican after John Paul II's passing, but was prevented from selecting the new pope by a regulation that prohibits cardinals' voting rights after the age of 80.
His position as leader of the church in Taiwan means that Shan has had to deal with the media concerning the pope's death. "Patience and explanation are key [to handling the task]," he says. "It is nothing new."
Since President Chen Shui-bian flew to the Vatican to attend the pope's funeral mass in April, speculation has been rife over the state of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Taiwan. The relationship is frequently miscast as a purely political one, and the Taiwanese media overplayed the news when rumors surfaced that Rome would switch diplomatic recognition to China.
While Beijing eventually voiced its condolences to the Holy See for the passing of the pontiff, it reiterated the two preconditions it insists upon for the establishment of diplomatic relations. The first is to sever ties with Taiwan, and the second is to renounce the right to appoint members of the church in China, which it regards as "interference in internal matters."
"When you look at the diplomatic relationships of the Holy See, you have [to do so] from the religious perspective to see the thing," says Shan. The second Chinese condition strikes at two core articles of Roman Catholic faith: the communion, or unity, of the church and the Holy See's supremacy over that communion. In all countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations, the Holy See retains the right to appoint members of the church such as bishops and cardinals. The fundamental implication of this right is that temporal and spiritual powers are separate and exclusive, that states exercise authority over the civil, economic and political rights of their citizens, while the church does so over the spiritual lives of its members. Totalitarian Beijing, however, lays claim to spiritual authority over its citizens and views papal supremacy over the Chinese faithful as an affront to its sovereignty.
In 1957 the Chinese government created the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) to replace the pope's hierarchical position above the Bishops' Conference, the body that presides over the National Catholic Council, comprised of priests, nuns and the laity.
The effect of this change in church organization was devastating: "If they cut the tie with the Holy See, cut the connection, the communion, the union with the universal church," says Shan, "what is the difference between an independent Catholic Church in China and the Anglican Church or some protestant church?" The CPA therefore deprives the Roman Catholic Church of its universality, the catholicity inherent in its name.
Outside Taiwan, international media reports seemed sure that the new pope, Benedict XVI, would bring change to the church's position on a number of issues, such as contraception and AIDS, as if he were the newly elected leader of a democracy with a raft of reform in tow. Shan again addresses this short-sighted political view: "The Holy See will have one pope, another pope, the change of the pontificate, but I think all the popes have the same line, there's a continuation. Not because there's a new pope, the doctrine of the faith will be changed."
Shifting in his full-length traditional Chinese robe and touching a large crucifix, Shan departs from the view only afforded to members of a 2,000 year-old institution, and turns to his own advanced years. "As a newly ordained priest I took the motto, 'I shall labor like a good soldier in the service of Jesus Christ.' I was young and energetic and felt like a soldier. Now I'm getting older and closer to the Lord, I have changed my motto: 'I shall sing of the Lord's mercy for eternity,'" he says.
Walking up the aisle of the cathedral, a young novice swung a silver censer in a broad arc of perfume and smoke. Smiling faces turned to welcome the procession, and the man of honor greeted them with a broad grin. "The purpose of today's celebration is to thank God for the blessings and graces I have received during my 50 years as a priest and 25 as a bishop with some of my good friends," says Shan. While the communists in China view this humble prince of the church as a sovereign threat, the diocese of Kaohsiung clearly see him as a partner in good faith.
Go East, Young Man
Cardinal Paul Shan is a member of the Society of Jesus, one of the largest orders in the Catholic Church, which has an illustrious history in the Chinese world. The order was founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius Loyola, a nobleman from the Basque region of northern Spain. While defending the Spanish border fort of Pamplona against French invaders, Loyola's leg was shattered by a cannonball. His long recovery affected a conversion; he dedicated himself to God, did charitable work and eventually entered the priesthood. With fellow students in Paris, he formed a group that followed his Spiritual Exercises, which included rigorous self-examination, and later the group offered its services to Pope Paul III in 1540.
The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived at the Ming court in 1583 and remained there for 27 years. Immersing himself completely in Chinese culture and language, he introduced Western astronomy, geometry and cartography to China and eventually became the court's mathematician.
His insistence on fellow Jesuits adopting Chinese customs was so successful that in 1715 the young painter Giuseppe Castiglione was received by the aging Qing emperor, Kangxi. Despite court favor, under the reigns of Kangxi and his successor Yongzheng, Christian proselytizing was severely curtailed. At the same time as the new emperor Qianlong took delight in Castiglione's paintings, visited his studio frequently and commissioned him and Michel Benoit to design pavilions for his sprawling Summer Palace on the outskirts of Beijing, priests without imperial employ were expelled.
The site of the Church of the Holy Redeemer, known as Beitang in Chinese, was given to the Jesuits by Kangxi in gratitude to Jean de Fontaney and Claude de Visdelou, who cured an imperial bout of malaria with Western medicine.
The society used Chinese terms to convey the idea of the Christian God and maintained that Confucian rites were civil rather than religious and therefore not incompatible with Catholicism; Clement XIII, unconvinced, prohibited the rites and insisted on Roman terms. Rivalry among the Catholic orders culminated in 1773 with Pope Clement XIV suppressing the Society of Jesus in all countries. Restored in 1814, the order experienced broad growth in education and mission work.
Father Jacques Duraud of Taipei's Ricci Institute was attracted to the society by its absence of specificity. "I was interested by the fact that being a Jesuit you are not automatically involved or dedicated to any special task. It's that you have to find a way," he says. Although the order is famous for its educational institutions, such as Taiwan's Fu Jen Catholic University, Loyola's vision was not restricted to teaching alone. "His intention was to bring together a group of people [who are] disposable to be disposable to help the church where the church needs people," says Duraud. So in addition to Jesuit professors and cardinals, there are also priests working in remote mountain areas with aboriginal tribes and in cities with migrant workers.
Duraud is in charge of the Grand Ricci project. Initiated 40 years ago by a French Jesuit Yves Raguin in Taichung, and completed in 2002, the Ricci is now the largest Chinese-French dictionary in the world, containing over 300,000 entries. Duraud is currently involved in producing specialized follow-up editions, including, for instance, medical terms, and he is also working on producing a digital version of the dictionary. The Ricci Institute also publishes a magazine, Renlai, targeting readers concerned with general social issues, and the Institute's library is an important resource for Buddhism and Chinese religions.