On the Meeting of Eastern Religions and Christianity

Though, really, I suspect a lot of the questions and tensions between the Christian faith and the Eastern spiritual habits of pantheism and so forth are already fairly well resolved in Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Rite theology. I couldn't really argue for the point--it's just the sense I've gotten from a very superficial reading of tangentially related texts.

But anyway--one of the greatest evangelists of Catholic history sought to inculturate the Gospel in the Chinese context:

China is one of the most colossal challenges that the Church is called to face today. And not only for reasons involving religious freedom.

In fact, the distance between the Western and Christian vision of the world and that of the great civilizations of the East – not only China, but also India and Japan – is decidedly more vast than with Islam, an historical religion that has always had many features in common with Judaism and Christianity.

The challenge is all the greater today, with China rising to become a new global superpower. But it has been one before.

Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this challenge was taken up by a brilliant missionary, Jesuit Fr. Matteo Ricci, the fourth centenary of whose death is being marked in 2010 with exhibits, studies, and conferences, including in China, where he is considered a national treasure. His beatification process is also underway.

In dialoguing with the intellectual circles of Beijing at the time, Ricci adopted an approach remarkably similar to the one proposed by Benedict XVI today. He knew very well that the Christian Gospel was an absolute innovation, come from God. But he knew that human reason also has its origin in the one Lord of Heaven, and is common to all who live under the same sky.

He was therefore confident that the Chinese could also accept "the things of our holy faith," if these were "confirmed by much evidence of reason."

His proclamation of the Christian news was therefore gradual. He took his cues from the philosophical principles of Confucianism, from the traits it had in common with the Christian vision of God and of the world, in order to build gradually to the absolute novelty of the Son of God made man in Jesus.

Matteo Ricci did not do the same thing with Buddhism and Taoism, instead subjecting them to severe criticism. A little like the Fathers of the Church had done before him, being extremely critical of pagan religion but in respectful dialogue with the wisdom of the philosophers...