A City Of Refuge

 

Jesuits in China?
      YES INDEED! 

 Father Adolfo Nicolás, a Spanish priest and missionary to Asia, was elected the new Superior General of the Jesuits.
A TIME article notes that Nicolás, also known as the “Black Pope,” holds a “lifetime posting” that “has sway over a network of priests, universities, hospitals and other missionary institutions around the globe.”ⁱ TIME also states that “...the rest of the Church never allowed a Jesuit to be elected to the real papacy for fear of concentrating too much power in the hands of the order.”ⁱⁱ
What TIME doesn’t mention is the incredible global power that the Jesuits already hold. According to historian Dave Hunt, “The Pope has thousands of secret agents worldwide. They include Jesuits, the Knights of Columbus, Knights of Malta, Opus Dei, and others.” Jesuits aim at universal dominion. They have rendered themselves indispensable to the Pope and to U.S. governors. They hold revolutions in their hands, and, as it was written by Luigi Descantis in 1865, “it is they who rule the world.”ⁱⁱⁱ
Given the Jesuits’ dominion, how powerful is their Superior General? In 1720, Michael Angelo Tamburini, then General of the Jesuits, said to the Duke of Brancas,

 "See, my lord, from this room-from this room I govern not only Paris, but CHINA: not only China, but the whole world, without anyone knowing how 'tis managed."

 To succeed in China, the Jesuits built close linkages with the emperor's court and with elite literati in Peking. To ease integration they dressed in silk robes after the mandarin fashion and lived in well-appointed houses that contrasted sharply with their vows of poverty and egalitarian ideals. To facilitate communication they delved into Confucianism and argued that it was not a religion but a secular system of politics and ethics; hence, its practices could be recast within a Christian mold. Critics pounced on their tolerance of ancestor tablets within the Chinese Rites, despite Jesuit protestations that these were no longer for "worship of ancestors" but simply paid "gratitude" to forebears. Some scholars see the China Jesuits and their cultural accommodation as forerunners of "modern" or "tolerant" attitudes, but debate remains (p. 61). A cynic could seize on the fact that when Ricci died in 1610 and was allowed to be buried near Peking, other Jesuits appealed to their Confucian duty to care for an ancestor's tomb to justify their continued presence. Illustrations from Chinese Jesuit publications show a mix of standard Christian and Chinese motifs not pursued by Brockey. For example, a seventeenth-century Madonna and Child image from Shaanxi province shows the Christ Child with a topknot, a class indicator marking the Ming scholar/official.
A LITTLE MORE HERE:

''LIKE A SWARM OF LOCUSTS!"