Zen mythology
Catholic.org has several features about China today, and they are important news items. They include an interview with Cardinal Zen that is totally Cardinal Zen from the Catholic Herald. While the interveiw is good, some of the background information provided seems to be inaccurate. In fact, it perpetuates a myth I've read over and over for several years about Cardinal Zen.
I know it makes for a nice, daring narrative to say that once he left China he never looked back. I think a lot of people like the idea of his being something of an exile over there in Hong Kong. However, it probably would come as a surprise to his former seminarians (including some priests I know here on the Mainland) and definitely a surprise to the Cardinal himself that he did not spend several years in the late 1980s and into the 1990s teaching at Mainland seminaries, including Shanghai's Sheshan. I've linked to it before, but Adam ran this post showing pictures of then Father Zen celebrating the first Novus Ordo Mass in Chinese at Sheshan Seminary. So much for never looking back.
I'm not saying that Cardinal Zen is one of those that perpetuate this myth. The truth, though, shows something a lot of news sources aren't capable of describing--the incredibly complicated situation of the Church in China. I know I hammer at this frequently, but it doesn't make it less true. Cardinal Zen did not leave China, never to return. He spent years shaping the future of the Church in China by teaching in seminaries in China, and in a real act of daring, celebrated that first vernacular Novus Ordo Mass in total defiance of the Chinese government.
I would think that this part of his biography, all the time he spent working on the Mainland, would give him a lot more credibility in the world when he talks about the Church in China. But it doesn't make for the daring exile narrative a lot of us prefer, does it?
Born in Shanghai in 1932 to devoutly Catholic parents, Joseph Zen joined the Hong Kong Salesians in the late 1940s and so was spared the horrific persecutions of Mao's Cultural Revolution. He has stayed on the peninsula ever since, and increasingly used the territory as a kind of soapbox from which to berate his intransigent neighbour.
I know it makes for a nice, daring narrative to say that once he left China he never looked back. I think a lot of people like the idea of his being something of an exile over there in Hong Kong. However, it probably would come as a surprise to his former seminarians (including some priests I know here on the Mainland) and definitely a surprise to the Cardinal himself that he did not spend several years in the late 1980s and into the 1990s teaching at Mainland seminaries, including Shanghai's Sheshan. I've linked to it before, but Adam ran this post showing pictures of then Father Zen celebrating the first Novus Ordo Mass in Chinese at Sheshan Seminary. So much for never looking back.
I'm not saying that Cardinal Zen is one of those that perpetuate this myth. The truth, though, shows something a lot of news sources aren't capable of describing--the incredibly complicated situation of the Church in China. I know I hammer at this frequently, but it doesn't make it less true. Cardinal Zen did not leave China, never to return. He spent years shaping the future of the Church in China by teaching in seminaries in China, and in a real act of daring, celebrated that first vernacular Novus Ordo Mass in total defiance of the Chinese government.
I would think that this part of his biography, all the time he spent working on the Mainland, would give him a lot more credibility in the world when he talks about the Church in China. But it doesn't make for the daring exile narrative a lot of us prefer, does it?
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