Titles matter, and the element calling for immediate justification is thus the term “invasion.” No ordinary history of Catholicism in China, it would appear. For all its chronological ambition, Mungello's monograph is a meditation on one central theme, namely the perception of the Catholic church in China today, in particular by the country's Communist authorities, as well the press and the educational system under their direct aegis. The concept of Christianity's invasive presence is first taken up in the introduction to the historical background, with the reception of the Jesuit mission by the late Ming elite in focus. At this point, the author's insight into the confrontation versus inculturation debate comes to the fore, in essence contradicting the notion that the Catholic message was imposed on the late imperial population by force. This verdict becomes more nuanced, however, with the establishment of Catholicism as a cultural component of the French presence in China during the second half of the 19th century. Rather than defending the missionaries as pure emissaries of peaceful tidings, Mungello depicts the conflicting realities of their spiritual, denominational (and therefore political), cultural (hence political), economic (therefore political) and diplomatic (and thus overtly political) roles. In brief, the intended function of the Catholic missionaries, namely the transmission of a spiritual alternative to the complexity of faiths in later imperial China, was buried in the public perception by the overriding “political” interpretation of their mission. Rather than sacred souls serving the Lord, missionaries came to be seen as individuals with ulterior motives – sometimes regarded as idealistic, often as depraved and, by the end of the mid-20th century, collectively as being in direct service of an intrusive West. The monograph presents direct empirical evidence for all sub-aspects of this view, from Fernando de Capillas and Auguste Chapdelaine to Zhang Boda, as well as compelling insight into the actual lives within Catholic orphanages, sororities and missionary institutions, from the early 1800s right into the 1950s. But the overall aim is to analyse the negative interpretation of the CCP, coming in the wake of the beatification of 120 Catholic clerics, mostly Chinese, by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000.
Organized into six parts, Mungello's Catholic Invasion analyses two guiding aspects of Catholic history in China, namely the notional conflict between European superiority over indigenous religious practice and, secondly, the problem of deviance within church institutions. The former is subdivided into three thematic chapters, each dealing with interconnected, yet ideologically discrete phenomena. The first chapter creates the historical context for the establishment of the Catholic mission in China, namely one dominated by the gradual encroachment of European powers during the 19th century – “Western imperialism,” in brief. The second chapter develops the theme of European domination from the political to the spiritual, i.e. to the dismissal of all theological agency by Chinese converts and their descendants, and the belief that Chinese Christians were unable to grasp the complexities of the Christian doctrine due to their ignorance of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew scriptures and patriarchal discourse. This analysis leads in all logic on to a third chapter outlining the resistance by the Vatican as well as by the missionaries present in China to indigenization and the creation of a Chinese clergy.
The second thematic unit is more complex – and not necessarily thematically connected. Authoritarianism and sexual abuse in children's homes (chapter five) and within the church hierarchy (chapter six) are not a topic of exclusive relevance to China. However numerous the empirical evidence for this may be, the longevity and amplitude of the same problem in Christianity's Western heartland puts any comparison with the Chinese example into the shade. A more detailed analysis of the antipathy within the late imperial population towards organized clergy (particularly Buddhist monks) would have completed the picture.
This book would not have been the same without the brief (seven pages) concluding chapter dwelling on the perceived failure (“debacle”) of the missionary enterprise in China, both Protestant and Catholic, as seen in retrospect from the fateful year of 1949. The chapter summarizes the two-pronged critique of the Catholic mission, domination and abuse, but also establishes a link with the Catholic experience today. It also ties the core theme of the monograph, “invasion,” into the concrete manifestations of the missionary presence.
A thorough look at Mungello's notes reveals a variety of sources. Whilst most citations are derived from English and French language sources, documents from the Vatican and missionary archives in Italian and German play a big role in complementing the former. Importantly, Mungello also consulted Chinese primary sources, from newspaper articles to the writings of Louis Wei Tsing-sing – an important addition to the author's frame of reference, in particular in a volume placing so much weight on indigenization and the role of the native church beset by cultural and political pressure from the European church establishment. There are two appendices, which add value to the current publication. The first, Appendix A, is a detailed list of the 120 Christians, mostly Chinese, who were beatified by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000. The attack against the beatification of these martyrs is the very point of departure for this monograph. Appendix B is a detailed list of the Chinese characters which appear in the book, a glossary containing hundreds of useful names and terms of reference.
In essence, David Mungello's monograph combines the author's chief research interests – namely the role of the Chinese clergy and church elders in periods of state-induced hardship, as well as the behaviour and perception of marginal groups, such as homosexuals, children and deviant priests – in an attempt to reinterpret the crucial century between 1840 and 1950 as part of China's historical experience. The recent official reactions clearly show that this Catholic invasion is anything but history.
