Guo Kang's plan received positive response from the priests.
All branches and organizations of the God-worshiping Church actually have great potential, especially the Orthodox Church.
Although in many places, a town may not be able to have a standard church, but this is due to the insufficient number of trained priests, which is a limitation caused by objective reality rather than a theoretical problem.
Even without the Purple Horde Khanate, the Orthodox Church itself has a relatively complete organizational system. According to the priests, Brother Tian once told his disciples, "Wherever two or three people gather in my name, there I am among them." Therefore, according to their traditional teachings, three believers can build a church. Organizations and religious activities began.
The church has been trying to explore theories and organizational methods in this area, even more actively than the Catholic churches in Western Europe. The only problem is that the Orthodox Church was disbanded due to military defeats before, so these works can only remain on paper for a long time.
The first batch of recruits numbered less than 1,000, and the plan required more than a dozen priests and nearly a hundred monks. This number seems to be a high proportion, but the absolute number is actually not difficult to satisfy.
Moreover, these monks are not necessarily formal clergy, because Guo Kang believed that since it was an experimental model army, all aspects were tested at once. In other words, this force will not only explore how to organize new recruits, but also explore various supporting parts. How the church can better provide support to the military is also one of them.
Ordinary monks who join the plan are actually trainees. According to the plan, when the second batch of expansion is completed and the establishment of the three brigades is filled, a group of trainee priests will also be included. It is not only the soldiers and officers who receive training and training in the army, but also the priests. They also need to adapt to this new environment, exercise their abilities, and constantly identify problems to help make adjustments.
Of course, in this process, the elimination rate will definitely be high. Priests usually prefer civilian jobs, but there is a big difference between life in the army. Especially since this method is still relatively new, most people may not be able to adapt to it. Even if only one-tenth of this group of priests is left in the end, it will be considered a success. Guo Kang was not impatient either.
"You can go pick people up. I plan to go to the slums this time and bring a few priests with me. The Patriarch has also signed up for priests, and I am also going to ask them to follow." He thought for a while, and finally He said to Father Mikhail: "You just said that you hope that I can understand the daily life of ordinary believers. I agree very much. And I think everyone should have such an understanding."
"Our priests have different origins. Some grew up in Greece, some grew up in Romania, and some grew up in Russia. The environment they are exposed to is not necessarily the same as here."
"Moreover, those who can learn literacy are basically citizens; those who can become trainee priests are relatively educated people in their respective parishes. These people and our recruits do not necessarily live in the same environment."
“If our priests and priests cannot understand the soldiers, their social environment and cultural background, their family’s living conditions, their basic thoughts and simple desires, and they only know how to read the scriptures, It will definitely not have any effect. You all have been preaching among the people for many years, so you should be very clear."
"That's true." Father Andre also agreed: "If you want to fulfill your responsibilities as a pastor well, you have to put aside your arrogance and do your best to commune with believers, understand and help them, just like the priests in the apostolic era. I think other brothers will agree with this conclusion."
Guo Kang nodded.
He felt that Andre was on to something. The problem of arrogance is indeed the biggest obstacle to the growth of the church.
This is particularly evident in East Asia. The failure of the Roman Catholic Church can be summed up in two words: putting one's sights higher than one's goals and bullying the weak and fearing the strong.
In the early days of his mission, Matteo Ricci and the Jesuits he belonged to proposed that the traditional rituals of Serris were consistent with doctrine and compatible. They; but the Dominicans and Franciscans believed that these rituals were in conflict with doctrine, and believed that Matteo Ricci and others were engaging in heretical behavior. The two sides were at loggerheads with each other, involving a series of disputes over doctrine and culture, as well as complex political and sectarian struggles, which lasted for hundreds of years and were known as the "Chinese Etiquette Controversy."
However, from beginning to end, doctrine is not the main reason. The church has been preaching for so many years and has recognized many customs and local religions. There is no need to dwell on this kind of thing. However, due to the partisanship between the two religious orders, things reached an irreconcilable point.
In 1704, the Pope banned ceremonial activities such as ancestor worship, Confucius worship, and mourning, and sent an envoy to announce the order. The following year, the special envoy came to the capital, and Kangxi personally took action to explain the situation to the special envoy, explaining that ceremonies such as worshiping heaven and worshiping ancestors were only to express respect and had nothing to do with religion.
The two sides debated scriptures many times, and even invited the priest who caused the incident to explain and testify on the spot. But even though the Qing Dynasty explained that etiquette was of great importance and was willing to admit that the other party's god and its own heaven were the same concept, the church was still unwilling to compromise, and the negotiations ended in vain.
In 1707, the papal envoy came to Nanjing and unilaterally announced a ban. Kangxi immediately arrested the envoy and ordered the Portuguese to imprison him in Macau. At the same time, he stated that missionaries must abide by the "Matteo Ricci Rules" or they will be expelled.
But at this time, Kangxi still hoped to persuade the other party, and sent missionaries several times to Rome to explain the situation to the Pope and defend the disputes between scripture and meaning. However, the Holy See still insisted on its opinion and detained the French missionary who was the representative of the Qing Dynasty, forcing Kangxi to write another letter to plead for mercy before agreeing to release him.
In 1720, the Pope sent a special envoy to the Qing court for the second time, and Kangxi once again appeared in person to explain the origin of the Confucius tablet and other issues. However, this defense still ended in vain. In 1721, the official document of the Holy See's ban was sent to Kangxi, and the Qing government gave up and announced a ban on preaching.
However, until the Yongzheng era, the prohibition was not too strict, and the Jesuits also made a last effort to compromise and re-formulated a set of workarounds to replace the "Matteo Ricci Rules". But this attempt was quickly rejected by the church. In 1742 (the 7th year of Qianlong's reign), the Pope officially issued an order prohibiting missionaries from discussing issues such as liturgy, ending related issues. The ban took effect throughout the East Asian cultural circle and basically ended the history of missionary work.
The end of this ban will be even more dramatic.
In May 1932, something happened in Japan: At Sophia University founded by the Jesuits, an army officer led some students to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. Among them were Catholic students who refused to salute on the grounds that this was idolatry. The Japanese military was extremely dissatisfied with this, and the incident gradually escalated. In October, the Japanese media, which had been instructed, began to report the matter in a major way, calling it "the incident of the wise master's refusal to participate".
Just one month later, the Holy See announced that visiting shrines is a ceremony to express respect and reverence and does not count as idolatry, and Catholics are allowed to participate. The ban that lasted for two hundred years has expired in Japan.
In 1934, under Japanese control, the Manchukuo government proposed to the Roman Church that Catholics also participate in activities such as worshiping Confucius, and the church immediately gave in. Bans in mainland East Asia have also expired.
In this case, the original provisions have lost their meaning. In 1939, the Pope officially issued a document announcing the formal recognition of activities such as ancestor worship and Confucius worship. The centuries-long liturgy war came to an end.
In this way, the problem that Kangxi and Yongzheng failed to solve in many debates was solved by Puyi...
This incident has made the church’s face swollen. Anyone who understands this period of history will not be surprised why the reputation of the church in the modern East is so bad - this is not only a matter of arrogance towards other civilizations, it cannot even maintain its arrogance, and in the end it can only become a clown.
(End of chapter)
