The third workshop on the study of the introduction into “the Chinese Rites Controversy and Sino-foreign Exchanges” will be held online on Friday.
Academic support will be provided by the editorial department of the Journal of Beijing Administrative College, the Chinese Department of Shanghai Normal University, and the editorial staff of International Comparative Literature.
Speeches will be given on topics such as the Integrity of Man and Nature in Chinese Religion and the God-man Relation of Christianity as well as Define Confucianism: the Chinese Rites Controversy and Debates over China and West.
The last session will be a roundtable dialogue between Christianity and Chinese religion on the Chinese Rites Controversy and the recent debates over China and the West.
The Chinese Rites Controversy was an important issue during the Chinese and western cultural exchanges. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, western Catholic missionaries argued whether the traditional Chinese rites violated Catholic doctrines.
This was an argument originating from the debate between the Kangxi emperor and the missionaries over the Confucian ceremonies. Pope Clement XI supported the Dominicans, who regarded the rites as being incompatible with Christian belief, suppressing the Jesuits. The Pope’s decision resulted in countermeasure by the Qing Dynasty, which placed restrictions on the missionaries’ activities.
It was not until 1939 that the Holy See reversed the ban on the rites.
- Translated by Karen Luo
