Cultural Syncretism and Mosaic-The Research on the Relationship between Cathlic Mass Liturgy and Taiwanese Local Cultures

• Main Authors: Tseng, Li-Chuan, 曾麗娟
• Other Authors: Kung, Kao-Der
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/14867193587352953630

碩士 === 高雄師範大學 === 台灣文化及語言研究所 === 97 === According to the records left behind, the Nestorians evangelized in China in the 7th century; these non-catholic missionaries offered their efforts to the “Localization” at the initial stage. After 600 years, during the 13th century, Giovanni da Montecorvino built the first Catholic Church in Beijing. Due to the different strategies of evangelization and the attitudes of Chinese emperors, as well as the Holy See not continuing to send missionaries to China zealously, the missionary work in China began to decline. In 1582, Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit Priest who spent his whole life in China, took a moderate method of pervading Catholic doctrine. Although he respected the Chinese ancestors’ rites and the behavior of worship to Confucius, some missionaries had different views against his concept; this brought about “the dispute of Chinese ritual”, which lasted nearly 300 years. In 1939, the Vatican announced that to worship the ancestors and Confucius was the merit of Chinese civil culture, hence the dispute of Chinese ritual was settled. The above event was caused by cultural shock produced by the collision between two different cultures which brought different ways in thinking, or in behaviors. To solve the problems of rituals while evangelizing to different cultures that had been occurring since the 15th century, the Holy See in the Vatican Council II held during 1962 to 1965, promulgated the most effective “Constitutio De Sacra Liturgia” that straightened out the dilemma of evangelization due to the Chinese rituals and offered a solution of “Inculturation”. The “Constitutio De Sacra Liturgia” advocated the principle of “Inculturation”, which should respect different languages, cultures, and arts as encountering different races so that the Gospel of Christ could be interiorized into the local people. Thus, using local languages, rituals, local music and incultural arts of church architecture the liturgy has the definite orientation and is enriched significantly with inculturation. Therefore, the Catholic Mass liturgy is more realized and accepted by local Taiwanese that shorten the gap between Catholic and Taiwanese cultures and let the Catholic doctrine integrate into local culture; on the other hand, the value of Taiwanese culture is also merged into the Catholic doctrine for disseminating the Gospel more smoothly.